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When I look at a person, I'll often envision a caricature almost immediately. However, give me a pencil and paper, and I'm utterly, hopelessly terrible at drawing a face—caricature or otherwise—despite being a professional artist, which has been a frustration for most of my life. Then one day in 2017 it occurred to me that I might be able to use a computer to help render caricatures: the software would allow me to manipulate lines and shapes until they matched what I saw in my mind's eye.

As a graphic artist, I mostly think in terms of black and white, which is why I chose a high-contrast chiaroscuro technique, although I'll use a different rendering style according to the subject. While it takes an average of about a day to complete one, it can vary from a half-hour to more than a week. Often I'll push elements around the screen a fraction of a millimeter at a time for hours on end, but it's worth all of the work when the last puzzle piece drops into place.

The software I use is CorelDraw, which I've been using since Version 1. The typical rendering consists of roughly 50 shapes, although the count can range from 2 to well over 200. Please bear in mind these are not "computer-generated." I only use the computer to facilitate the rendering process; this is otherwise very much human-generated art. That said, one distinct advantage of this approach is that the drawings can be enlarged literally to any size and they will always remain sharp.

If you'd like to use any, please contact me.

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