Caricatures of Actors: Ernest Borgnine
AMERICAN ITALIAN actor, Ernest Borgnine changed his name from Ermes Effron Borgnino enjoyed a Hollywood career that lasted nearly seventy years. As well as being well known for films such China Corsair (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953), Vera Cruz (1954) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) he provided the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants from 1999 until his death in 2012. He won the Best Actor Oscar for his part in Marty. (This intro, predictably, has been cobbled together from the ever-reliable Wikipedia where you can read the complete entry on Ernest Borgnine.)
Gift to a Caricaturist
His extremely distinctive face is an instant attraction to a caricaturist. It’s often dangerous to describe a face as being a ‘gift to a caricaturist‘ as they sometimes prove to be completely the opposite. I sometimes spend my evenings in front of the television with a sketchpad and pencil looking on the iPad for someone I’d like to draw. If it’s not caricatures of actors, it’ll be other famous people. This time, I arrived at Ernest via a circuitous stream of consciousness. I’d started out thinking about drawing Ethan Hawke, having just seen him in the slightly interesting film Good Kill but the photos on offer were rather bland with uninteresting expressions. We had also dipped into an old Gregory Peck film, left unfinished, Behold a Pale Horse which also featured Anthony Quinn. I’d always liked Anthony Quinn’s face but, again, couldn’t find any pics inspiring enough to work from. Maybe it was his eyebrows or the width of his face that made me think of Ernest Borgnine. But having done so, I found a number of useable photos and plumped for the publicity shot of him for the film McHale’s Navy.
Working in pencil gives me a lot of freedom to make mistakes and to make them seem to work as part of the finished drawing. Pencil sketches are great practice and they can be returned to to turn into ink drawings or even paintings. You can see more Pencil Sketch Caricatures HERE , including many caricatures of actors.
Do you have any favourite actors you would like to see caricatures of?
