A few days later I got calls from the highway department AND The Famous Artists Schools both saying that I was hired. What a dilemma. H-m-m-m, sweat all day in the broiling sun in a road gang … OR … sit at a drawing board all day and draw cartoons?
Randy Enos‘ latest Caledonian Record column has him remembering his days, early in his career, as an instructor for the Famous Artists Schools. It’s an entertaining read with him reminiscing about being in the FAS bullpen with Bud Sagendorf, Bud Thompson, Pete Wells, Bill Feeny, Warren Sattler, and Frank Ridgeway.
Related is this Jim Sizemore post from years ago when, as a FAS student, he had Randy “correcting” some of his cartoons.
The Bristol Board presents a gallery of Gaar Williams originals.
“The first day I walked into the Saturday Evening Post, they told me the cartooning business was dying. That was 1962, and it’s been dying ever since.”
Gil Roth conducts a fascinating 90-minute audio interview with cartoonist Mort Gerberg. Mort recalls the heydays of magazine cartooning in the 1960s and 1970s and describes the comparatively barren wasteland in that profession these days. Mort discusses friends and associates over a nearly 60 year cartooning career.
In the April 1999 issue of The Rotarian cartoon editor Charles W. Pratt profiled some of the magazines then current cartoonists. Glenn Bernhardt, Frans de Boer, Harvey A. Bosch, Randy Glasbergen, David W. Harbaugh, Lo Linkert, Henry Martin, Scott Arthur Masear, Molly Sadler, and Vahan Shirvanian,
I have to admit, I’m a lefty and I have certain thoughts about the way things should be but… Really I’m just going for the jokes. I’m just going for laughs — and physical gags, for me, are the purest form of laughter.
Magazine cartoonist and illustrator, with a definite political tinge, Barry Blitt was interviewed last December.
In this illustration the simple line under the Father’s eye gives a sense that he’s tired. Now look at the Mom’s eyes, they’re uneven, which conveys a feeling that she’s worried. Additionally, the abstract painting on the wall feels like her. Then take a look at the lines that make her nightgown, they’re a few simple marks, but are just enough to let you know what she’s wearing.
Daniel Zalkus dissects a few Hank Ketcham Dennis panels, then gives us another dozen to ponder.
I wanted to comment on D.D. Degg’s article concerning my story about the Famous Artists Cartoon Course.Those heads he shows there in the article were done by Barney Thompson. The cartoon critique of mine that he shows of Sizemore’s cartoon happened like this. I chanced upon Jim Sizemore’s site a while back and saw that he talked about being critiqued by me at FAS Cartoon Course. He ventured the opinion that the reason I gave him “A”s was because we were probably told to give the students high marks. I told Jim that this was absolutely wrong. We were never told how to grade. It was totally up to us. Then I proposed to Jim that for ol’ times sake, he should send me a cartoon and I’d do a crit on it just like the old days. AND… I promised not to give him an A. So, he sent me the cartoon and I did the crit… and gave him a “C”… or a “C+” (I’ve forgotten which).
Below the article on my story, was a piece on Mort Gerberg. I illustrated a book by him once.
Randall, thanks for the note and the correction.
For some reason (I’m an idiot) I grabbed the top of the page instead of the bottom when I went for a screengrab at Jim’s https://doodlemeister.com/2009/07/29/cartooning-lessons/ post. I’m hoping the NEW top of this page illustration is correct.
No no, I didn’t mean it as a correction, I was just proud of myself for remembering that Barney did those heads for our course book. Now I see that you’ve replaced them with some heads that I drew. I don’t know how you (or Sizemore) knew that those were drawn by me.
Anyway, thanks for re-printing my column. Many more to come.
Oh, I just looked at Jim’s blog again and I see that I had identified those drawings as mine. Mystery solved. Yu see we didn’t sign any of those textbook drawings.