In 2011 The Saturday Evening Post ran a series of profiles/mini-interviews with a baker’s dozen of their cartoonists with sample cartoons. For unknown reasons it popped up in today’s feed, so I’m passing it on to you.
all cartoons © Saturday Evening Post Society
After five years of study at the Cleveland Institute of art, Lachowski was an advertising art director for 33 years. “Lucky for me, my ad agency respected and excelled at humor…I started creating a cartoon character cast in 2006, and have been publishing ever since, especially for The Saturday Evening Post,”
“Cartooning had much more allure than becoming a geographer,” says Marty, “so upon graduation, I set about doing up a comic strip that was rejected by every syndicate in the free world. After going through a ‘Rejected Cartoonist 12 Step Program,’ I picked myself up and started doing single panel gag cartoons. My first sales (4 from one batch) went for $5 each to a publication called Glass Digest. The rest, as they say, is history.”
You’ll find Randy in The Wall Street Journal, Woman’s World, Harvard Business Review, Reader’s Digest, and almost every issue, I’m delighted to say, of The Saturday Evening Post.
After graduating from Tucson High School, Roy attended The Billy Hon Cartoon School in Los Angeles… “I was on my way to become a magazine cartoonist and nothing was going to stop me.” Roy sold his first cartoon to a farm trade journal for four dollars.
“I have drawn for as long as I can remember,” says Ken, “equally as long I’ve been interested in cartoons.”
Cartoonist Edouard “Ed” Blais (pronounced “blaze”) was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I actually started cartooning in 1963. But at that time, I was teaching full time, assistant coach in two varsity sports, and had three small children… So, my cartoon career had to be put on hold.”
Bob got a job for the local newspaper in high school “doing editorial cartoons and a comic strip called Tombstone—about a vampire. I also published my own ‘mini’ comics that I sold for a quarter or 50 cents each.
Once upon time two brothers were born in a quaint hamlet in northern Pennsylvania (Erie), where they discovered at an early age (10 and 12) the uncanny ability to draw their friends and neighbors as cartoons.
“Cartoonists don’t so much create humor as they detect it,” says cartoonist Rex May, who draws under the name “Baloo.” “There’s something funny about nearly everything, and it’s the job of the humorist, and specifically the cartoonist, to find it and show it to other people.”
You’ll see him in The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and Harvard Business Review—and very often in The Saturday Evening Post. “I started doing business cartoons because I was following the lure of the existing cartoon markets,” says Schwadron (pronounced “Sway-dron”).
Joe is a staff cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker. His work appears in many other venues such as Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.
Like many cartoonists we’ve met, Dave had to work a full-time job while trying out his craft. “In the early years I primarily sold cartoons to trade journals and eventually worked my way up to national publications.” His first sale was to Skin Diver magazine for $10.00.
“Many people have the mistaken notion that cartooning is about drawing,” says Post Cartoonist Pat Hardin. “The real meat of it is writing.”