Editorial Ink Caricature Sketch

Black-and-white editorial caricature sketch of an older man with a heavy moustache and deep-set eyes, in the tradition of newspaper and magazine caricature. Exaggeration: build the entire likeness around one defining feature — an enormous moustache that dominates the lower half of the face — pushed hard, with everything else simplified down to support it. Exaggerate proportion, expression and posture only; never ethnic features. This is the discipline of the form: find the one thing the face is actually about, amplify that, and let the rest go quiet. Line: long confident unbroken contours with a few decisive interior marks, drawn with a dip pen with a flexible nib. Line weight must carry the whole image since there is no colour to help — heaviest along the contour on the shadow side, tapering to nothing where the form turns into light, with the pen lifted entirely where the eye can complete the shape on its own. Shading: cross-hatching and stipple only, no grey wash, density building where the form turns away from the light. Leave at least a third of the face as clean untouched paper. Paper: off-white cartridge paper with visible tooth, with visible tooth catching the ink. Accent: none — pure black ink on white. Composition: head and shoulders, three-quarter angle, generous white space, the drawing sitting slightly off-centre the way a printed caricature sits in a column. Quality: high-resolution ink illustration, every stroke crisp and individually resolved, real ink behaviour with slight bleed where strokes cross, confident and economical rather than laboured.