Sharpen your pencils, sharpen your comic minds — and check back here in this space come Monday, May 10.

UPDATE: I asked Mr. Cavna if he could elaborate at all on the nature of the “cartoon project”. What he could say on record:

“Formally, it will be a project over several months to promote aspiring comic strip cartoonists. Informally, we’ll see what grows out of this project. Comic Riffs is always open to new ideas.”

UPDATE: Apologies to Kelly who submitted this story. I didn’t realize comments were turned off. Please discuss.

The only thing better would be for him to get a webcam and do a live/recorded session of him working his magic. I’d pay for that like it was a porn peep show.

Have you ever wanted to sit in the studio of a famous artist and watch them draw?

Now you can, for the first time with “The Masters Series” exclusively on Schoolism. Hear their stories, learn their techniques, watch them draw.

The Master’s series was created by Stephen Silver who was welcomed into the artist’s homes and spent two days with each of them, interviewing and filming them draw from start to finish. The series was created with three goals in mind- to appeal to the student, the professional and the fan.

You will learn how they got started, what helped them achieve their goals, stories of how there careers unfolded, the mediums they use and much more. Never before have they been filmed like this in their home studios with complete access to their process of drawing. These videos have been made in order to preserve the Legacy of the legends in our industry.

It is one thing to buy their books, and look at their marvelous art. But now for the first time you can see their hands in action, line by line. This is just the beginning, with many more legends to come. The first series will start in January 2010 with the legendary Mort Drucker. Followed up by Stan Goldberg (Archie) and John Reiner (the Lockhorns, Howard Huge).

While some alternate methods used by others have included adding motion and sound to single or multiple panels, his simple demonstrations have shown that keeping the narrtive flow of one panel after the other is all it really takes to tell the story, keep attention, and attract a growing audience .

The first is “About DIGITAL COMICS”, the second is “ABOUT about DIGITAL COMICS”.

At the time this article was written, the first of the displays has been up for two weeks, has gained over 50,000 visits, and the attention of established comic artists.

From his email he writes:

I don’t want anyone thinking this is a guarantee to anything. This is the first time either of us has done something like this but it should be very informative and hopefully a lot of fun. This will be a chance to meet face to face with other cartoonists & a syndicate big-wig and discuss ideas as well as show off your work and learn from each other. We will show what we have done to get Tundra into 200+ newspapers in two years (these include the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the St. Petersburg Times and the Vancouver Sun in case anyone is interested) as well as give folks the chance to hear how syndicated cartoonists got their strip syndicated. Everyone will have the chance to have their work reviewed by the syndication boss as well and we plan to have someone talk about how to be successful as a web comic. We will also talk about books, calendars and licensing, etc. We are open to other suggestions too.

The seminar would be held in Las Vegas with a preliminary pricing estimated to be about $500 which includes lunches. You’re responsible for other meals and booking your hotel room. The price is mainly to cover expenses of the hotel, lunches and travel accommodations for the speakers. The proposed dates are the last week of February 2009 (20th-27th). Based on the number interested, a second seminar may be added for the following two days. Cartoonists wanting to attend all four days would only have to pay for the food and the additional room dates.

If you are interested – email Bill at bill[at]tundracomics[dot]com (remove the [at] and [dot] and replace with real characters) and let him know if you’d be interested in a weekend or a weekday session.

If you have general questions, please post them in the comments so that they can be answered once.

Abel and Madden have been teaching comic art at New York’s School of Visual Arts for the past eight years. They realized they did not have a definitive, structured text to use in class, so they took on the task of creating a lesson-based textbook for use in college-level, studio-class settings.

They also had another reason for wanting Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. Both Abel and Madden are accomplished comic artists, but neither of them had received formal training. They learned on the job, channeling the little information that was available from various sources.

I’ve been working with young caricaturists at theme parks for over two decades now, and I’ve learned one very important lesson… it’s impossible to teach someone to draw caricatures. I can teach them to DRAW… that isn’t so hard. Learning how a face looks and works by learning anatomy, how expression changes the features, how the angle the face is at changes the perception of features, how hair grows and falls about the head… those are things that can be taught. Drawing caricatures, on the other hand, is a lot more about seeing what makes the person in front of you unique and personal interpretation than it is about making good, confident marks on the paper. I can explain to someone exactly how to draw a circle, but if I place a circle before them and ask them to draw it and they draw a square… well, that is all about seeing and not drawing. The ability to see, and after that the ability to exaggerate what you see for humorous effect in a caricature… that has to be developed. For most that means a lot of drawing and a lot of looking.

In addition to his work with MAD Magazine, Tom owned a small business doing caricatures at theme parks.