#remember when i used to render shadows and not just rough hatch them in and call it a day lol

[movieboyfriend]

[enchantingkittengaditor]

The FAE | 2. Antisocial

POV: Tegan

“What do you mean it’s their funeral?” I said, no more than a whisper to concerned about my godparents to even bother attempting to raise my voice above its natural volume.

No one dared to speak up until Maya came over to me and placed her hand on my should pulling me into a sort of hug before she started speaking, her attempt at comfort working its usual magic. Kind of ironic now that I think about it.

“If they try to cross the border they could die. The magical border surrounding the school has become much harder to get through since Alfea was attacked. But there is a quick test we can do or I can try contact Faragonda and see if I can get them passes but that’d be more difficult than just leaving them here.”

That was the moment it hit me. The reason Maya had said goodbye not I’ll see you soon or any of our normal variations last time we saw each other, she didn’t think we’d ever see each other again. But the question is why? Surely if she can get into the school she can get out.

The real question was how on earth Simone and I were going to explain this to our parents, who in all likely hood already knew and were just keeping it a secret. But for all we knew it was a recessive gene that had been hidden in our families for generations. The other question was what about school, what about our lives here. We’re known around school, sure for me, it’s as the loner who knows the popular kid and does debate but I’m still noticed enough that the bitches would realize they’re one victim down. But the whole school knows Simone, she’s the one popular girl that makes an effort to know everyone’s names and something about them so she can talk to them, people would definitely notice if she disappeared. I know that at least the teachers would notice if I disappeared, or at least hoped as much.

“So, if these two have magical powers you’d expect them to start at your school right away which means they’d have to give up on their school here?” Natasha questioned, seemingly reading my mind.

“Most likely although there would be the potential for them to be day students at Alfea meaning they could attend both Alfea and their current school although they would most likely have to give up finishing homework and get some sort of constant extension, although from what I hear your goddaughter could handle herself it’s more of a concern for the other one,” an unfamiliar slightly British, voice replied.

“Did I have a seizure again,” I whispered in Maya’s ear hoping that no one else heard.

“No, Headmistress Faragonda just asked us to spell you and Simone.”

“Although, if this girl is as powerful and volatile as you claim Estelle then she may not be a fit for Alfea. I may not remember those of which you speak but I do remember a prophecy that there must always be someone with the powers of Memory and the forgotten in the universe and as we know one of our history of magic teaches is the Fairy of Memory so it may be that she is in charge of the forgotten, which makes her far too volatile to come to Alfea.”

“I can assure you, I’ve known her, her whole life she is anything but volatile at the moment, she’s in therapy, she’s training to keep her emotions in check, she makes sure she remains calm. The only thing that sends her into an at all volatile state is when something bad happens to one of her friends or when she feels a personal connection to something bad that’s happened in the world and that hasn’t happened for a while. She is as stable as a person can be at the moment and if you need more reassurance she’s training with Natasha every day to make sure she’s better.”

“If you don’t take offence Mr Stark we would like to make sure she is stable ourselves in case having her here would make her more of a danger to our students than she is to herself. But to do this she first has to come, Natalia, you’re welcome to join us, but your friends aren’t.”

“Of course headmistress, I’ll see you soon, until then we have to attend to my niece and her friend,” Nat said to the lady completely, blissfully fine with the whole situation.

“Girls you can undo your spell now, I’ll see you all soon.”

With that, the four girls grabbed each other’s hand and started muttering, most likely casting their spell to undo their previous work. My suspicions were correct when a burst of energy allowed me to become fully awake and Simone jolted upright finally awake.

“What the hell just happened?” Simone yelled at the girls trying to figure out how she missed 3 hours of her life to sleep in the middle of the floor, although it wasn’t unusual for her. She would regularly be late to her classes because she was passed out in the middle of the corridor, though she’d gotten better at that since starting the year.

“You’re coming to Alfea with us and Natasha so that the Headmistress can asses whether or not you can attend Alfea without harming the students,” Marketa said her normal annoyed tone shifting to an even more annoyed tone.

After a half-hour of deliberations and discussions, we walked out of the compound towards the giant mark burnt into the ground by something more powerful than myself. Before I could ask how we were getting to ‘Alfea’ the one boy in the group of Maya’s new friends pulled out a phone-like object and messaged someone, most likely alerting the ship above us that we were ready. The ship most-likely meant to be hidden by technology but it didn’t work at least to me, the render was rough compared to the SHIELD tech I grew up around, the shadows weren’t quite right and the engine was very obvious.

When they touched down on the field and the hatch door opened at the back I was greeted by a somehow familiar face and one that was definitely familiar, burnt into my brain by the wanted posters I’d been paid to draw by Simone.

“MEL?” Simone screeched at her sister, the blonde next to her laughed at Mel while a group of guys walked off of the door greeting their friends.

“Simone, how are you?” Mel asked completely calm and not at all concerned by the fact her sister had somehow got a knife in her hand and was walking toward her. “See, Emily I told you I had a younger sister who was murderous.”

“I still don’t get how that was a competition but whatever floats your boat, I’m just glad my sister made it to the age of 16 without dying somehow. Anyway, hello I’m Miss Emily the history of magic teacher at Alfea, and you very clearly know my college Mel, she’s my assistant and one of my best friends. And these are some of the ‘fine’ boys from Red Fountain, although I see you’ve already met Lachie, these are Ben, Nathan, Brenten, Will & Thomas. You’ve also already met the girls. Natasha, it’s lovely to see you again,” The blonde said smiling at us.

“Emily. Should we come aboard? Maybe you can finally have that word with your sister,” Natasha said smirking to her, I guess, long lost friend.

“Come on, we’ll get everyone introduced and explain everything, though I assume Emily has more explaining than the rest of us,” Mel said backing onto the plane as I contemplated going after Simone in her murderous rampage.

Before any of us could get aboard the ship I decide to say, “Simone give me the knife and all your other weapons or so help me I will set my cat on you when we get back home.”

“Is that a threat?” I heard Marketa whisper to Estelle. That was before Emma retorted.

“Do you even know what a cat is?”

“Girls,” Emily said sternly as I stood in front of Simone with a plastic bag open as she placed all of the things that she could possibly use as a murder weapon into it. Then I passed the bag to Tony and just gave him a look of ‘keep this away from any assassins, Wanda and Simone, or else’ he then gulped and took it ready to most-likely dispose of it before anyone got there hands on it.

With that, we all got on board the magical plane it took off flying at speeds that could only be matched by an Asgardian ship. Once everyone else had sat down me and Simone found ourselves sitting between Emily & Mel which caused me to be terrified for a small while before Mel got up and asked Lachie to swap seats with her. Which lead to Emily, Simone and Lachie having a conversation about sport, with Emily barely contributing but doing so more than me as I sat in the middle of them reading my book deciding that instead of engaging with these people I would catch up on my summer reading for school.

All in all the trip took about 2 hours. When we finally touched down in the middle of the school courtyard we were ushered into an office as students were rushing around trying to catch up with friends or rushing to find rooms or teachers. To get to the office we rushed through corridors and up stairways. Until we reached a door marked ‘Headmistress’, where we got told to wait until the headmistress was ready by a terrifying brunette woman.

“Welcome ladies to Alfea and Magix.”

[stanprokopenko]

The Original

Here’s my original caricature of Taylor Swift from one of the premium lessons next to the original photo. And here are some of the exaggeration choices I made in that caricature

I pushed all of her features down low on her head. I made her eyes larger. Her nose became shorter and more upturned. Her chin got smaller and of course I made her teeth pretty big in my sketch. These are the traits which will become more exaggerated in my second caricature of her.

Second Caricature

In my second caricature of her, I’m amplifying all of those exaggerations. Her cranium gets larger relative to her face, which shrinks. And her mouth and teeth take up a lot more space on the smaller face. That’s a great example which shows how some things get bigger and some things get smaller in a caricature of a caricature. Things become more of what they already are.

The nose gets smaller too, and the tip becomes more upturned, because that’s what I did in her first caricature. And now the eyes, squinty in the first sketch, become almost totally closed in this new one.

The structure of the face gets a little more simplified in this second sketch. I’m focusing more on enhancing the likeness through basic elements at the right size and placement here rather than by creating refined anatomy and bone structure. That often happens in my second and third caricatures of caricatures. I tend to let the subtleties drop away, and the newer caricatures become more just a pure expression of the person, with less distraction. If you’re after a style of caricature that is more simple, abstract or geometric, this is a good way to get there.

But after I get the initial drawing laid in I do spend some time here on some cross hatch shading, because after all, in the end, I do like to put a sense of three dimensional volume in my sketches.

In the first part of this drawing, my task was just to exaggerate the previously exaggerated shapes and relationships. So the block-in was focused on simply placing those features so that I could see the likeness with only the outlines of the shapes. But now, as I finish it up, I try to resolve the forms and shadows. But I’m eager to start the third sketch, so it stays pretty rough.

My analysis of this second sketch is that I’m happy with the direction I’ve pushed things. It’s definitely a lot funnier the the first sketch. My execution on this one is a little rushed. But that’s okay. If I wanted to take this sketch and develop it into a finished rendering or painting, I could easily do that using the fundamental techniques from part one of this course. I would do an Abstraction tracing on top of this, and then trace the final drawing on top of that.

When I talk about how it’s important to have strong fundamental skills to do more advanced work, that’s what I’m talking about.

Third Caricature

For this caricature of a caricature of a caricature, things start off even more simply and geometric than my previous sketch. I’m trying to caricature her in as few lines as possible to get right to the main statement or core of the exaggeration. And remember, your goal in this third caricature should be to draw something completely ridiculous. Try to go way beyond what you think you should do. Don’t let logic, anatomy or perspective get in the way. Think abstractly about the face and what the core elements are that you need to include. So don’t hold back.

Since I’ve had practice on her face and built up to this point with the previous two sketches I feel a lot more comfortable abandoning my normal style and habits. And I’m seeing the caricature more clearly in my mind before I put it onto paper.

Remember that the point of this triple caricature exercise is to push yourself, learn to take risks and go beyond what you’re comfortable doing with a caricature. In my own experience, I don’t usually do anything with the third caricature like develop them into a finished piece. Sometimes, it’s because the third sketch just misses the likeness. But mostly, it’s because even when there’s a good likeness, they’re usually a little too extreme for the style of exaggeration that I like to have in my portfolio. But that doesn’t mean the third caricature has no value to me. On the contrary, the extreme exaggerations are really helpful.

For one, they loosen me up and give me the confidence to know that I have that ability to draw upon if I ever DO need it for an assignment or job. And, more importantly, when I go to a more extreme level of exaggeration like this, it shows me what the essence of the likeness is. It shows me what’s necessary and what is not to capture an individual’s likeness. So that when I do an important freelance job or portfolio piece, I can often go extreme in my sketches first and then work backwards to a more tempered exaggeration. Most publications and clients aren’t looking for ridiculously extreme exaggerations, in my experience. But going through a process like this can really help you find your own style and your own voice as a caricaturist.