Drawing Simpsons Style

I was commissioned by a friend to draw her family in the style of the Simpsons for her husband’s Father’s Day gift. It was kind of nerve racking to do because they are people we see regularly and I didn’t want to do a bad job. I also didn’t want to draw them in an unflattering way. Drawing the Simpson’s style was also a challenge for a few reasons. Firstly, if I actually drew them the way most Simpsons characters appear, like huge round eyes and less detailed faces, it didn’t really look as recognizable as them. So I went back and forth with how much like the Simpsons I actually wanted them to look.

Another thing, I’ve been working pretty hard to draw things in my own style, so I had to back off that a little bit here since the whole point was to make them look like the cartoon. But I didn’t want to completely ignore my own style so I added some more shadow depth and detail, since those are things I usually focus on. Just not as much as I typically would. Overall I’m happy with the results and thinks I did a pretty good job. Will I go into the family portrait business and focus on drawing this for people? Probably not. I mean if people want to keep paying me to do it then I guess I wouldn’t turn down the work, but that’s not really why I draw. There are worse ways to make money.