Way back in 1950 Richard Taylor wrote an article advising would-be cartoonists to show a little respect for the profession:
“The woods are full of pseudo-cartoonists,” wrote Taylor, “grinding out things that are not much better than the average high-school student’s masterpieces, doomed forever to a sub-world of third-rate pictorial humor, and without the ghost of a hope of ever climbing higher.”
* And by the way, is it just me or does our friendly cartooning instructor in the ad above not bear a bit of a resemblance to Drawn!’s own Johnny Martz? Hhmmmm…
When I set eyes on the work of my newest Flickr contact, AllaKinda, it was love at first sight!
AllaKinda is “an online shop hosted at Etsy. There you could find different graphic stuff like bookmarks, pinback buttons, illustrations or flipbooks.”
The art that graces these items is the creation of Yuyuka and Txesco, a couple from Barcelona who say, “We like drawings, illustration, animation and other -ations. We would like to move our experience in these fields to the creation of daily objects.”
“For some reason or other,” wrote Richard Taylor in the October 1950 issue of American Artist magazine, “the general public seems to have the erroneous notion that the drawing of funny pictures is not a serious business.”
All this week on my blog I’ll be showcasing the work of some exceptional mid-20th century cartoonists – and accompanying their work with excerpts from Taylor’s 1950 article.
(Above, a Hank Ketcham illustration that predates Dennis the Menace by one year).
Steffi Schütze, AKA “Miss Matzenbatzen” is a vector artist with a passion for fashion. On her blog she takes designs by Moschino, Versace and many others and dresses ladies of her own creation in them.
Steffi is one half of the Berlin art studio “nusillu!”, where she and partner Christian Nauck work both alone or together as a team to provide clients with a wide range of styles.
I love Steffi’s fun illustrations in cheerful colour schemes – especially her images of women in all shapes and sizes. Be sure to take a long, loving look at her (mostly) plus-size “ladies of burlesque” series on Flickr — they’re absolutely delightful!
Alex Chechik only recently graduated from art school and he’s already doing work this sophisticated. Gorgeous!
He currently works in Toronto as a freelance illustrator and designer for animation and says his influences include Nicolas Marlet, Tadahiro Uesugi, and vintage children’s books.
As well, Alex tells me, “Music is a huge influence for me. It’s greatly inspiring, and helps you put more emotion into a piece. I love putting on a video of a great live performance and painting along to it – that’s where the jazz illustrations come from.
Jazz is incredibly influential, but I do enjoy a fair amount of rock, electronic stuff and definitely some good hip-hop as well.”
For proof, Alex laid down some phat beats on his terrific demo reel that really sets the tone!
Alex says, “Since July of this year I’ve been trying to get into the freelance thing, while slowly applying for work. Making contacts and marketing yourself is definitely the biggest challenge in the freelance route; it’s a skill I still have to learn much about. But I enjoy the studio environment and collaborative work, so I’d love to get a full-time gig in visual development or design for animation. That’s a goal and I’m just beginning to seek out that type of work more aggressively.”
To which I have to say, “Hello animation industry? Why haven’t you snapped this guy up?!”
Taiwan-born artist Flora Chang studied graphic design in San Francisco before moving to Kansas City to begin work as a greeting card artist for Hallmark. A lot of famous doodlers got their start designing greeting cards (Robert Crumb and Tom Wilson come to mind), and I’ll bet my wooden teeth that Flora Chang is also destined for similar stardom!
From the moment I first discovered her Happy Doodle Land flickr stream, I became immediately enamored with the entire collection of cute and colorful characters, her adorable alphabet animals and her picturesque painted people. Deceptively simple and intricately innocent, it takes a deft hand to create such seemingly childish art. Flora makes it all look so effortless and carefree; which combined with her kaleidoscopic color palette and delightfully charming subjects, makes for a pretty joyful combination. I’d like to live in this Happy Doodle Land one day, but for now it’s quite a nice place to visit.
With trick or treaters about to converge on my front porch I thought I’d better get in one last Hallowe’en related post! Every night this week my bedtime stories have come from this handsome hardcover collection of John Stanley’s Melvin Monster.
Frankly ( or should I say “Frankensteinly” ) I totally missed this Melvin character when I was a kid. But I’m glad the folks at Drawn & Quarterly had the good sense to give these old Dell Comics the first class treatment they deserve. Stanley’s sense of humour is … odd. Very engaging and slightly disconcerting – just twisted enough to make the Melvin Monster experience interesting, even for adult readers (tho’ these stories are fun for all ages).
The John Stanley Library is trickling out from D&Q – Raincoast Books just sent me the first volume of Stanley’s Nancy comics. These books are designed by Sethwith many beautiful touches that make it quite clear he has genuine affection for the material. For example, the end papers pattern from the Melvin volume which I’ve used here as a backdrop, the embossed foil type treatments on the covers and no attempt made to hide the fact that these pages were shot from yellowing old comic books (giving them a nice warmth and a sense of nostalgia) . Great stuff!
Only two more sleeps ’til Hallowe’en, kiddies! If you youngsters need a little help drawing monsters, then Monsterman ‘Scary’ Harry Borgman can help.
Way back in 1974 Harry drew a little booklet called “How to Draw Monsters”. By then, Harry had been drawing cars, people, landscapes and just about anything else you can think of for more than three decades. Harry began his commercial art career in Detroit in 1946.
Harry’s varied career has given him a wealth of esoteric experiences. For instance, though he was never one of “Mad’s maddest artists” he was one of Sick’s sickest artists. The cartoon creeps below are a great example of his ’sick skills’.
Harry is now 81 and still going strong. In fact, he’s just celebrated the first anniversary of his blog. Drop by Harry Borgman’s Art Blog and you’ll see for yourself that this amazing illustrator can teach you how to draw monsters… and a whole lot more!
* I’ll be featuring a dozen scans from “How to Draw Monsters” on my own blog on Saturday October 31st, but you can preview them all ( and tons of other amazing Harry Borgman art) in my Harry Borgman Flickr set.
Err… “frightening females”? … “gruesome gals”? I’m running out of alliterative descriptions for the titillating topic of petrifying pin-ups!
Anyway, Matt Dixon’s wonderful women are hardly horrific, gruesome or frightening… if anything they’re delightfully creepy ( in a cute and playful kinda way ). On his website Matt tells us, “I’ve been an enthusiastic waver of pens and pencils for as long as I can remember.”
“Digital art first captured my imagination when I began to assemble images from ASCII characters on a Commodore VIC-20 way back in 1980,” says Matt. “Happily, things have moved along a little and Adobe Photoshop allows me to achieve slightly more sophistacted results than I got back then.”
No kidding! I found Matt’s work featured yesterday on the front page of CGHub, but the gaming industry found Matt long before that. He’s been creating artwork there since 1988 and says, “I was privileged to be involved with numerous high profile game and movie licenses, including Harry Potter, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Matt, who includes Norman Rockwell and Robert McGinnis among his inspirational influences, now works freelance providing illustration and concept design for print and digital media. On top of his busy workload he somehow still finds the time to dish up deliciously deadly damsels for us to adore. Now that’s what I call a Hallowe’en treat! Matt Dixon’s website
Taiwan-born artist 
