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Garth von Ahnen

Caricatures are hard. Even with the President.


I expected that it would be easy to draw a caricature of Trump, but it's much harder than I expected. Here's a sheet full of trump attempts.

16 mangled trumps

I've labeled these 1 thru 16 so that you can see their order of creation. The thing is, Trump is such a goofy looking guy that it's easy for an artist to exaggerate his hair or his pursed lips and then just draw the rest of him as proportionally normal. But those don't usually look that good to me, or at least they're not what I'm going for with this satirical portrait. I'm not a big fan of ridiculous exaggeration. Instead I prefer the more subtle likeness that just barley emphasizes a few features making the subject just a bit more deranged then a commissioned portrait artist would dare illustrate.

reference photo

With this caricature, I'm trying (and failing so far) to emphasize this expression on his face. He looks like he's explaining something so simple it's obvious, and he has the self assuredness of a confident man, or maybe a con-man. He looks like he's lying to a child. I mean, just look at those eyebrows. They'll show you all you need to know about his attitude towards the reporter he's speaking with.

I may have just given away what I think of him. Anyway, here's I think the best of those 16 attempts.

I'd say that this one is the closest I've come to the caricature I was going for, but I'm not quite there yet. Surprisingly, this is one of the least exaggerated drawings in the whole bunch. So maybe I was right that less is more when it comes to caricaturing trump. But I'm still missing something in those bugling, white rimmed eyes. Eyes full of insistence. This is from an interview where he's explaining that he thinks he's much more humble than Leslie Stahl would understand.

Okay, back to work. I'll post the final caricature soon.

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