With the new Jason Bourne film just around the corner, I felt it was a good opportunity to do a caricature of Matt Damon.
I also felt it was fitting to do some experimentation on him, similar to how he was experimented on as Jason Bourne. But instead of messing with his body and mind, i’m just gonna mess with his face with a new style i’ve been playing around with for the last 2 weeks.
Now what you see here is the result of that experiment and if i’m being honest, I don’t know if the style is 100% there yet. But what I do know is that I am really enjoying the process of getting there, painting in this way is alot of fun and I hope overtime I will be able to perfect this technique so I can use it as an option for caricature work!
So below is a breakdown of the steps I took to reach the final outcome of this piece – enjoy!
From Splashes to Completion
Step 1 – Random Blobs
So what you see here is the chaotic beginnings of the caricature. The only thing going through my head at this stage was to just throw some colour down.
I added the red blob because at the time I felt like it would be a good look for the background of the piece.
Step 2 – Face Shapes and Base Colour
In this step i’m figuring out the big defining shapes of the face. In Matt Damons case I wanted to exaggerate his key features which are his high cheek bones, large brow and his nose. He also has these corner things around his mouth which are important, so I’ve quickly made note of those as well.
Now the great thing about this whole painting process is that you are handling multiple aspects of painting at once, which also happens to be the negative of this process as well. What I mean by that is, typically you would break everything down into very strict steps, like I did in the Alfie Arcuri caricature. But with this process, instead of defining the form in one step, the base colour in another, and lighting and shading in the next, you do it all at once.
What I enjoy about this approach is how organic it feels to paint in this way, it’s alot more natural and freeing, which helps me to get lost in the process of creating and makes it a ton of fun to do.
Step 3 – Refining
Because I was able to figure out the big shapes, as well as lighting and colour in step 2, all i’m doing here is breaking those bigger shapes down into smaller shapes while refining the colours and edges between the shapes.
Adding details is always fun and it’s very easy to get lost in refining little shapes, but the key is to work the subject as a whole, otherwise you risk overdoing certain areas, which at this stage would be a big mistake. My aim is to keep this looking and feeling loose, and for me to do that I need to keep moving around the piece otherwise it begins to stiffen up.
Step 4 – And Refining Some More
Steps 3 and 4 are virtually the same. Its about moving around the piece as you slowly begin to refine the details more and more. As freeing as this approach is it’s also critical to stay conscious of your brush strokes, especially when painting digitally.
The advantage (and disadvantage) digital artists have, is that you can just keep piling on the paint, unlike traditional artists who typically have to wait and give their piece drying time before they can apply more paint. So for a digital artist, it’s so easy to just throw strokes down without really thinking about it, but in doing so you just end up killing the piece. And if i’m being honest here I think I might have done that on this piece but thats ok. Because like I said earlier, digital artists can easily pack on the paint, so if it’s not working, I can just keep working over the top until its looking good.
Step 5 – Finishing The Piece
After taking a lunch break and returning to this piece I felt like the overall palette was kinda dark, and yes it is Jason Bourne and he’s not the happiest of characters, but this is supposed to be a caricature dammit so I decided to spice it up a bit.
I didn’t mess with the face too much, because I felt that if I could counter the desaturated values of the face, with a slightly more saturated background using complementary colours, I could create a better balance in the whole piece.
So that’s what I ended up doing, while also adding in small spots of yellow back onto his face in order to keep the overall piece more harmonious.
Overall i’m pretty happy with the piece, and it was a fun experiment that I learned alot from. Once I can refine this style a bit more I think i’ll definitely start providing it as caricature option.
In the meantime if you want to see other pieces I have done in this style you can check out my Instagram, otherwise thanks for stopping by!
