Long story, but I got a notion into my head to start taking a stab (ha!) at “clownification” this week: picking a normal reference photo, sketching it “straight” for 5 to 10 minutes, and then taking the next 5 to 10 minutes to “clownify” it. This is an admittedly weird as hell thing to do, but I’m gonna suggest it as an exercise: There is something about drawing what you see, and then adding to it things that you don’t see but know how they would look applied to that form, which really helps you improve your sense of the contours of the underlying model and how it all pieces together.
BONUS CLOWN: My son really liked the “vibes” on this sketch:
I sorta felt like it was cheating, as the initial reference pic was of Willem Dafoe and was already hella creepy with no further effort from me:
