Cartoon Characters Have to Stay in Shape

I'm trying to re-learn such drawing skills as I once possessed.

I'll tell you how to learn to draw cartoons. It's surprisingly simple.

First, learn to draw. You may think you can't draw. You're probably wrong. Get yourself a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or The Natural Way to Draw and spend a couple of weeks doing the exercises, which are very easy. You may amaze yourself. Almost everyone has the ability to draw well. Once you find out how to access it, you'll do things you never would have thought possible.

Second, learn how to use cartooning materials. I learned from a book by a syndicated cartoonist named Ken Muse. It's in a box here somewhere, so I don't feel like digging it out and giving you the title, but I'm sure you can find it on Amazon.

Third, buy books of other people's cartoons and learn to copy them. Then learn to draw their characters in new poses, in their styles. Then learn to draw your own characters imitating poses found in the other cartoonist's work.

By copying other cartoonists, you'll learn how they solved problems every cartoonist faces. How to shade. How much detail to show. How to compose frames so you get all the important stuff into the picture.

Unfortunately, I've forgotten all that stuff.

I've been working on it anew. I got out some of my old books of cartoons, and I am copying the ones I admire. Chic Young. Cliff Sterrett. Walt Kelly. Harold Gray. I'm avoiding the more photorealistic cartoonists, like Hal Foster and Burne Hogarth, because I prefer to do work that is more stylized. I don't want my cartoons to be realistic.

While working on my skills, I resurrected a creepy ability I possess. I had forgotten all about it. If you put a cartoon character in front of me and hand me a pencil, I can draw a near-perfect copy, like a photostat. It gives me the willies, watching it appear on the paper, but I think it's a good thing to practice.

Here comes my latest Weems strip. I did freehand copies of Albert the Alligator from Walt Kelly's Pogo, and then I did copies of the copies, into my comic strip. I tried inking Albert with a brush, but it was impossible, so I went back to a pen. Kelly and his assistant used brushes, but they were way more talented than I am.

Anyhow, here are Weems and Otis (click for popup):

By the way, if you're a cartoon buff, you may have heard of a great strip called Little Joe. It's not entirely clear who produced the strip. Harold Gray (creator of L'il Orphan Annie) had an assistant named Ed Leffingwell, and Little Joe appeared under Leffingwell's name. But it is known that Gray drew the strip for at least part of its run. Anyway, it was beautifully drawn, and it was considered a connoisseur's strip.

You can't find it in print, except for little bits here and there, but somebody put together a CD of old strips. I ordered one, just for the hell of it. If you click this link, you'll go to a site where you can find information on ordering the CD.