I am back to illustrating the next volume of Two Young Captains. This fun children’s book explores the lives of two young men who stowed away and then commandeered a ship in order to search for their father and sister who were lost at sea.

The two young captains are modeled after two real brothers with different ethnic backgrounds. This gives them some very distinct differences when it domes to drawing their faces.

I spent some time today trying to distill the characteristics of each. In order to draw them consistently through the book and the series, I need to make sure they have a few defining strokes so that each is easily recognized by young readers.

This is a new challenge for me. I usually spend my time trying to generate a faithful likeness of my subjects in just one position. Instead, I am now trying only the essence of each person, not an exact likeness. And, as if that weren’t enough, I need the shapes to be simple enough that I can show the character in many positions and still have them recognizable as being the same character.

With Walter (above) I enlarged his eyes and captured their basic oval shape. He has a sloping nose without much of a bridge and large lips with a rounded, but basically rectanular face.

 

Walter’s brother, Sam, on the other hand, has a very angular face and tends to narrow his eyes more. His nose is more pointed and his ears stick out more. His lips are smaller than Walter’s and not as wide.

This first picture was my second attempt to capture Sam’s features. The eyes and nose ended up being too angular.

I took another stab at it, number three, below. I’m still not sold on the nose, but I do like the eyes, mouth and ears better in this bottom one:

Hopefully this whole exercise will get me closer to a consistent character in all the drawings I do of both of them.