Proportion was never a cage. It's an instrument, and now you've tuned it you get to play. This is the rung where you stop merely obeying the grid and start using it — which is exactly what the rest of this portraiture unit will ask of you.
Caricature: the Deviations, Turned Up Loud
Rung three taught you that likeness lives in how a face differs from the average. Caricature is simply that idea with the volume cranked. The caricaturist finds a person's biggest deviations — the wide-set eyes, the long chin, the high forehead — and exaggerates exactly those, leaving everything else near normal. That's the magic trick: a good caricature can look more like someone than a photo, because it amplifies the very features your brain uses to recognise them. Slide the dial in the toy and watch which traits the cartoon grabs hold of: they're the same ones that made the face individual in the first place.
Why You Learned the Rules So Carefully
Here's the grown-up part: you study proportion precisely so you can break it precisely. A surrealist might stretch a face into a dream; a comic artist flattens it to a few bold strokes; a portrait painter nudges one third a millimetre to catch a mood. None of that is guessing — it's a controlled departure from a grid the artist owns completely. The amateur breaks proportion by accident and the face looks wrong. The master breaks it on purpose and the face comes alive.
Why This Is the Real Finish Line
Spotting the halfway eye line was the "aha". Blocking in the grid made it solid. Reading the deviations made it a likeness. Bending the grid knowingly — accurate when you want truth, exaggerated when you want feeling — that's mastery, and it's exactly what the rest of Framing portraiture, right through to your finished portrait, is going to ask you to do.