Caricature/Cartoon of Galileo Galilei – The Scientist who was Persecuted for Speaking the Truth.

Does the earth go around the sun or does the sun go around the earth?

You know the answer and I know it – but 500 years ago, neither of us would’ve known it, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have the nerve to say it; and if at all we had the conviction and the nerve, we would be Galileo Galilei!

The caricaturist humbly presents the caricature of one of the most important men in astronomy and science.

Galileo in Heaven: So, where are those who had imprisoned me? Never mind - I'm just glad they aren't here!

So who was this man? And what did he do to go down in history as the man who defied the authority of the Roman Catholic Church?

Here’s Galileo’s tiniest biography on the web.

Biography of Galileo Galilei

Galileo was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564. His dad was a musician who decided that his son Galileo must become a Doctor (possibly as Doctors are never out of work, the way musicians are – and because even then they earned rather well.) As it happens with most sons, Galileo didn’t want to a Doctor, so despite his dad sending him to the University of Pisa to study medicine, he became a Professor of Mathematics.

Galileo’s first important invention was the telescope, which made faraway objects appear closer…and Galileo got hooked into using it to spy on the moon. To the chagrin of lovers world-wide, Galileo discovered and made it known that the surface of the moon was pimply, wrinkly, and not at all smooth and beautiful – thus, he robbed many romantic relationships of their lunar poetry.

He also discovered a myriad other things, but what literally made his world go round n round, was the discovery that Earth indeed revolved around the Sun. This obviously didn’t go down well with the church who’d been preaching otherwise for hundreds of years. So Galileo was accused of being a heretic (a non-believer in the teachings of the Church,) but Galileo managed to get himself cleared of the charges. Yet, he was barred from stating the truth, because the Church didn’t want to be proved wrong in front of the whole world!

Galileo however became more and more convinced of the fact, and then he published a book “Dialogues concerning the Two Great World Systems” that re-affirmed the Copernican Heliocentric Theory. The Church could take his blatant disregard for their authority anymore and they incarcerated him in his own house. He stayed imprisoned for 9 years, until he died in 1642, at the age of 88.

Galileo’s “Pardon”

In 1992, Galileo was finally “pardoned” by the Roman Catholic Church. Unbelievable but true. After taking away 9 years of a man’s life for their own error, they “pardon” him! I would think that an organization that committed such a mistake should seek a pardon instead. (I really can’t comprehend it – but then I am not the smartest person in this world – there must be some reason why the entire world accepts this…and I bow to the opinion of the majority.)

What else did Galileo do?

Among other things, he discovered that there are other planets that have their personal moons, and that gravity isn’t partial to heavier objects.

I know that this is merely tip of the iceberg of Galileo’s accomplishments, so click here to read more.

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Where is the Antimatter from the Big Bang? I know and I fear for my Life! – A Tiny Verbal Caricature.

I have been invited to speak at a seminar called “Psychological Matters” in a parallel world made of Antimatter. They have couriered an antimatter suit that I should get into at that exact point in time when I step over the threshold of the portal.

The problem is, the CERN scientists got a whiff of it (what with NSA breaking all humanitarian laws to go snooping and sniffing into the emails of innocent people like me) and they traded the information with CERN for their share of Antimatter when its isolated in a reasonable quantity. The grapevine says that as a down payment they are demanding half of the Million Antiprotons that have been isolated.  So there’s this flock of CERN scientists running after me. They want me to lead them to the Antimatter, and because despite all their theories they haven’t been able to find out where all that antimatter of the matter-ial universe landed after the Big Bang!

I was to return in two days – but now I am scared. I expect those scientists to be lurking near the portal, hoping to get into the portal as I get out of it…and there’s going to be a stampede, I assume because when in a crowd, even the scientists don’t think – so they’d be climbing over one another to snatch the antimatter suit from me and get to the other side!

All this is too scary to be posted in your favorite Caricature blog – isn’t it? I’d even classify it as mature matter! So please stay away – expect explosions in a couple of days from now – when I return!

How to Draw the Caricature of Dr. Albert Einstein – the Greatest Scientist of the Twentieth Century

Dr. Albert Einstein’s caricature is among the easiest to draw. He has features that hanker for the caricaturist’s eyeballs. His hair, his nose, and his quirked-up eyebrows that push the skin of his forehead into those innumerable furrows and lines – all demand your attention. They leap out of his face and grab hold of your hand to make you draw them!

Why? I wonder.

Excellent. So his face isn’t like Jack Nicholson’s (with a signboard that says, “everything you see, you can caricature for 99 cents”,) nor is it like George Clooney’s (a treasure hunt in a Martian desert.) Einstein’s face is somewhere between that of these two. It tempts you to fetch your pencil and your drawing pad as the three prominent features in his face are really, madly prominent!

I discussed the folly of trying to caricature “everything” in the previous tutorial, “How to Draw the Caricature of Jack Nicholson – The Wolf.” Listening to my own advice (yes, unlike many, I trust my own advice,) I decided to exaggerate the following features.

• The Hair
• The forehead with one brow quirked-up
• The Nose

The first step in creating any drawing is to…begin, and so I began. When I draw faces, I draw the eyes first, and those eyes watch me draw. This can be an especially unnerving experience when the person watching you draw is Dr. Albert Einstein! I kept my cool, avoided his assessing glare, and continued to sketch. After drawing in the eyes, I moved to the nose, and then to the lips…his eyes continued to follow my pencil, everywhere.

After a while, I gave up, and looked straight into his eyes, and then I realized that there was more to Einstein than his face. I began to remember what I had read of his life. Einstein was known for his brain. He was thought to have been born with a bigger brain.

Lo and Behold! If the expression sounds archaic, please excuse me – for I am (archaic) too.

So…once again…

Lo and Behold! I decided to exaggerate the size of his forehead!

Here is how the caricature was created.

Caricaturing Einstein’s Eyes and Brows

Check out any picture of Einstein, he’s got a bemused look on his face. He seems to be looking at world and saying, “It can all be explained through the General Principle of Relativity.” So I pushed up his quirky eyebrow a tad more to exaggerate the look.

Caricaturing Einstein’s Nose

Einstein’s nose isn’t one of those razor-sharp, slice-n-dice kind of nose. It’s a soft, round, and bulbous nose – a little longer than the normal. All this makes the nose-bulb(?) look like it’s experiencing the full force of gravity!

(Dear Sir Isaac Newton, I hope that you and Dr. Einstein get along well in heaven, and both of you along with Dr. John Wheeler, use the quantum foam to stay in touch with the scientists of our time. I assure you, they need your help to clean up the BP Oil Spill Mess!)

Oh, the nose! As you can surmise, I wanted the nose to become longer, and its bulb to become more bulbous; so I pulled the lower anchor points out of the feature frame, until the nose overshot the lips. (To understand anchor points and feature frame, read “The Evolution of a Caricaturist“.)

Caricaturing Einstein’s Hair

Einstein’s hair is magnificent. It’s white, long, and fluffy (he used a shampoo that he invented himself – right?) I added the effect of the electric hair blower on the white, long, and fluffy, to make them more prominent.

I also fluffed up Einstein’s mustache and tweaked it a little at the ends:)

Caricaturing Einstein’s Forehead

Inspired by Dr. Einstein’s supervising eyes, I made his forehead and also his head, bigger. Remember that the head is almost hemispherical. I decided to exaggerate not the size of the hemisphere, but its shape! Look at the forehead closely and try to visualize the head – you’ll “see” that the shape tends to be a sphere more than a hemisphere.

Einstein’s forehead has a lot of prominent lines. I exaggerated the lines. Look at the right edge of the forehead – you can even see the folds. When your exaggeration moves out of the facial space (at the edges) it becomes stronger.

That was all I did – and Einstein’s caricature winked at me:) My job was done!

If you are interested in exploring the techniques involved in drawing caricatures further, I recommend the following:

• “How to Draw Caricatures – The Evolution of a Caricaturist”, a Free Online Book on Google Knol.
• “Tuto-tweets by @theCaricaturist

Have fun caricaturing:-) Spread the Smile!

Cool Caricaturist – Don Pinsent

Don Pinsent’s self-caricature inspired me to explore his work in detail…and when I did, his sketches had me stumped! The boldness of his lines and his ability to maintain the characteristic expression of his subjects despite applying extreme exaggerations, is awesome.

To the learners and the admirers of the quirky art of caricature, I recommend:

• Don Pinsent’s Blog
• Don Pinsent’s Website and Gallery

Do view his following finished works:

• Rolling Stones
• Albert Einstein
• Elvis Presley
• Shakespeare
• Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson)

…and the following visualization sketches:

• Larry King (Note the shoulders, the eye-glasses, and the nose.)
• Paris Hilton (Note the eyes and the lips)
• Brad Pitt
• Madonna

Cartoon/Caricature – Albert Einstein – The Greatest Scientist of the Twentieth Century.

Can you trace Einstein’s thoughts?
My take?!
“Why did I get the Nobel for the discovery of Photoelectric effect and not for the Theory of Relativity?”

Why? I wonder.

Albert Einstein is probably the most caricatured scientist. His appearance has helped artists create the stereotype of the absent-minded genius yet somewhat crazy scientist of our science-fiction stories and movies.

Biographical Information – Albert Einstein

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, in the German Empire. His father was an engineer and a salesman, who started his own electrical goods company in 1880. This company manufactured equipment that used direct current, and it went out of business 14 years later, when alternating current became the order of the day. Einstein was born in an affluent family (check out his childhood pictures – photographs don’t lie,) and so he received home-tutoring from Max Talmud, who ate with the Einsteins every Thursday, and in exchange (apparently,) he tutored Einstein in Science, Math, and Philosophy.

In his early years, Einstein had speech difficulties (really?), but otherwise he was a bright student, and so he obviously was also a rebel. Though Einstein lived and worked in Berlin for a long time, in 1933, the persecution of Jews led to Einstein moving out of Berlin and emigrating to the US. (This tells us that Einstein wasn’t just an average nerdy genius, he was a smart genius!)

Read Albert Einstein’s biography here.

Einstein’s Head & Brain:

• Einstein’s head, according to his mother, was extremely large and angular at the back.
• Einstein’s brain was removed without his family’s permission (stolen?) when he died. His brain was then sliced into pieces by Mr. Harvey, the pathologist who had removed the brain from his body, “in the interest of science.” He concluded that his brain had developed differently from that of others. (How else could he justify his nefarious deed?)

Einstein’s Love Life:

There were at least three serious relationships in Einstein’s life. The first happened when he was a mere lad of seventeen – he fell in love with his landlord’s daughter. Next, he fell in love with Milveca Maric at the University and married her. Finally, he divorced Milveca after 11 years of marriage, and married Elsa Lowenthal – who he had been romantically involved with, even while he was married to Milveca. (Being the genius he was, I guess problematic relationships are expected of him – if nothing else, they enhance his aura.)

Facts:

• 1905 has been called Einstein’s Miracle Year or Annus Mirabilis. In 1905, he published his papers on Relativity, Brownian Motion, Photoelectric Effect, and Equivalence of Matter & Energy. These papers changed his life.
• Between 1908 and 1914, he taught at University of Berne, University of Zurich, Karl-Ferdinand University, and also University of Berlin! How he managed it all is a mystery to me – guess the answer lies in his unique brain.
• In 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the Photoelectric effect.
• The 99th element is named Einsteinium after him.

Einstein’s Thoughts / Quotes:

Upon Death: “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

Upon Religion: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

Upon being Recognized on the Streets: “Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein.”

Here are some more interesting quotes from Einstein:

• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. (It’s only responsible for people falling –  people are themselves responsible for selecting the location of the fall.)
• The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. (Yes, of course…and the equations of the Brownian Motion are the easiest!)
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. (Ah well! Dear Mr. Da Vinci,  please reveal your sources.)
• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. (I guess this is what you called Relativity?)
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. (The fact that we quote this, proves something about human stupidity – doesn’t it?)
• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. (Thanks for the prophecy, Dr. Einstein! We’ll march straight into World War IV!)

Source: (http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html)

Read more about Einstein at: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life/index.php