Willard Mullin and Sports Cartooning

In the 20th century, sporting events were often covered by cartoonists, who captured the action in exaggerated poses. 

This series shows what happened when featherweight
Willie Pep's dislocated shoulder stopped the match.

One of the greatest was Willard Mullin (1902-1978), who worked for the New York World-Telegram. He is best known for creating the "Brooklyn Bum" character, a reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mullin often attend the games, sketched key poses, and worked up the drawings for publication in his studio. 

His cartoons are fast, loose, and relaxed, often created under intense deadline pressure. But beneath the surface was a solid understanding of drawing and anatomy.

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More
Flickr set by Leif Peng on Willard Mullin
Animation Resources: Willard Mullen on Animals
Cartoon Snap: Willard Mullin Goes to the Races
Website for Willard Mullin

Milton Caniff's Advice on Inking with a Brush

Milton Caniff (1907-1988), the cartoonist behind Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, was also an instructor for the Famous Artists Cartoon Course. 

He noted that the brush had become a very popular tool for drawing in the 1940s and '50s in magazine gag panel cartooning.

Here are some of his tips:

1. When dipping your brush in the ink, always press it gently against the inside edge of the bottle neck to remove excess ink.


2. Before touching your brush to the paper try it first on a paper palette (a strip of paper thumbtacked to the top or side of your drawing board).

3. Never let ink dry on the brush.



4. Always wash it by rubbing the brush lightly and gently on a cake of soap, then rinse it in clear water when you are ready to put the brush away.
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You can still get the original instructional binders: Famous Artists Cartoon Course (3 Volume Set)
And there are also reprints of The Complete Terry and the Pirates
Modern brush pen that takes cartridges and is very portable: Pentel brush pen

Doré's Caricatures of Communards

Gustave Doré (1831-1883) is best known for his illustrations of the Bible and Dante's Inferno, but he was also a caricaturist. 

In this 1871 sketch of a Communard prisoner, He emphasizes the wild hair and beard by downplaying the eyes and making them mere smudges.

He pushes the sweeping curve under the chin and the aquiline nose. 

This guy has dots for pupils and a triangular face.

After their failed uprising, many of the Communards were executed or exiled. Doré portrayed them as the pitiful souls that they must have been. The sketches were done under intense conditions: "In the evening, among his friends, to the repeated sound of the cannon at Mont-Valérian and the heights of Montretout, thundering incessantly against Paris; at the striking memory of those long processions of Communard prisoners brought back from Paris to the avenues of Versailles, at the sight of those wretches, their brutish faces contracted with hatred, rage and the suffering of a long march, under a burning sun he took pleasure … in making these sketches.

Dig Deeper
Book: The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy
Flickr set with more of these Gustave Doré caricatures
Images: from Versailles et Paris en 1871, which also includes magistrates and members of the National Assembly
Previously on GurneyJourney: The other side of Gustave Doré
Wikipedia on Communards and Doré
Thanks, John Holbo and Mme. Bruyére

Classic Chicago Cartoonists, 1931

Here's a little video with glimpses of the cartoonists of Chicago in 1931, who worked under the same roof in the Tribune building. (Link to video) 

The video, which was a promotional film for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, gives the sense of the impact the funnies (and newspapers generally) had on people during the Depression. 

A few of the artists are filmed drawing their characters, such as Andy Gump, Little Orphan Annie, and Gasoline Alley. Walt Disney appears with them as just one of the cartoonist guys, even though he didn't do the cartoons (Floyd Gottfredson did).

Many of those cartoons appear in the gang page above, from Mel Birnkrant's collection.

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Link to YouTube Classic Chicago Tribune Cartoonists - 1931

Mel Birnkrant's webpage with the cartoon art

Painting in a Cow Pasture

Arthur Burdett Frost (American, 1851-1928).
Mulvaney's Muley Cow, Harper's Weekly

An artist sets up his canvas in a cow pasture. What could possibly go wrong?

While the artist takes a nap under a tree, the cow sweeps her tail over the canvas and spreads the paint around.

Then she gives the canvas a few juicy licks.

The resulting painting wins the admiration from his friends—is it a victory for modern art?

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Frost's sly commentary is just one out of more than 300 lots in the upcoming Heritage Illustration Art auction in Dallas, which includes Gibson, Flagg, Elvgren, Loomis, Nagel, and Von Schmidt.

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Illustration Art auction at Heritage, Oct. 13, Dallas

The A.B. Frost Book

Previously: A Stymied Artist by E.H. Shepard

Charles Keene's Cartoons about Artists

Todd McFarlane Interview

Over the last two decades, Todd McFarlane has made a name for himself as both an artist and a businessman, creating the comic character Spawn, the artist-controlled publisher Image, and a popular line of detailed action figures. In this interview he shares the keys to his success. (Link to YouTube)

Mort Drucker: "No Shortcuts"

Illustrators Quarterly is a UK magazine that focuses on historical and contemporary illustration worldwide, kind of a European equivalent of Illustration magazine here.

The current issue spotlights Mort Drucker (born 1929), the movie satirist who worked for Mad Magazine for more than 50 years.

Correction: Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy
Robin Williams as Popeye by Mort Drucker

Drucker's movie satires had to capture the look of all the stars from various angles and in various expressions. Even more remarkably, he had to recall the faces from memory, because in the years before the Internet, it was virtually impossible to find movie stills, especially of a movie that was in the theaters.

The article includes about 50 large images of Drucker's work, mostly reproduced from the original, so that you can see the pasted-up text as if it is on the page in front of you.

The article is written by David Apatoff, author of the popular blog Illustration Art. David is a close friend of Drucker and was with him recently at the Society of Illustrators in New York, where Drucker received a coveted Hall of Fame award.

Drucker was self taught in art: "School didn't do much for me," he recalls. "I had no schooling. I didn't know the first thing about drawing and had to learn it all by myself."

He continues: "I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be. No shortcuts. If you had a problem with something, attack it. Like hands, for instance.... Some artists drew hands in pockets or behind their backs and you knew those artists didn't want to have any part of drawing hands. But I always thought that if something's difficult, don't hide, don't run away from it. Learn to master it. That was my philosophy. And so I'd draw hands as if my life depended on it. If you can't draw hands don't look at how somebody else draws hands, study your own hand, do things so that you personally get to know and appreciate hands."
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You can get this issue of Illustrator's Quarterly at Bud's Art Books.
Books on Drucker: MAD's Greatest Artists: Mort Drucker: Five Decades of His Finest Works
Familiar Faces: The Art of Mort Drucker
David Apatoff is also the author if the recent book The Life and Art of Bernie Fuchs.

Malcolm at the Art Museum

I always bring my friend Malcolm to the art museum. People stare at him at first, but then he charms them with his stories.

Collection of Animation Reference Stills

A treasure trove of animation images is available at the Flickr Sets of Animation Resources. The sets are comprised of screen grabs from the Golden Age of Animation, primarily from the 1930s and '40s.

There are sets of walk and run cycles, such as this one from the Disney's 1933 Silly Symphony "Three Little Pigs." 

Special effects sequences are broken down frame by frame so that you can study them in detail.

You'll find well known characters such as Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, and also lesser known characters.

The sets also include cartoon-head-turn sequences, Muybridge photos, pencil tests, dance reference, lip synch reference, animation backgrounds, and exposure sheets. Many of the sets are identified by the name of the animator who did them. These would be inspiring not only for animators, but also for character designers, illustrators, and lowbrow surrealists.

Animation Resources Flickr Sets of Stills
Animation Resources also has an Instagram feed where they show a short animation clip and then play it slowed way down so that you can analyze it.

How Mel Birnkrant Saved Classic Mickey

The Disney Company would have gladly dumped the classic Mickey Mouse, after Fred Moore redesigned him in the late 1930s. The original animated shorts were hard to come by if you were a kid growing up in the 1940s and '50s. But toy collector Mel Birnkrant discovered Classic Mickey and made it his life work to rescue him.

"In 1939, Mickey Mouse, as Ub Iwerks and Disney first created him, turned pink, lost his tummy, tail, and pie-cut eyes, and this once exquisite masterpiece of graphic imagery began his descent into oblivion. That was the year in which this once perfect exercise in geometric symmetry was pushed aside, to be replaced by an artlessly updated shadow of the mouse he used to be. Therefore, it was a new more realistic Mickey that appeared in what was intended to be the pinnacle of his career, Fantasia."

Mel tells his story of Saving Classic Mickey.

Caricature Iterations

It often takes four or five tries at a caricature to before a theme emerges. Then it's a matter of simplifying. 

Tony DeMarco, fiddler in the Irish tradition from NYC

Tony was talking and moving as he played a concert, so I had a chance to observe him in a variety of angles and expressions. 

If you want a reality check, you can watch Tony talk and fiddle on this YouTube video.

Caricature Game

Jeanette and I played the Caricature Game during the banquet of the SKB Workshop. The goal is to sketch someone far away in the room and see if the other person can recognize them instantly.

Sargent and Caricature

When John Singer Sargent painted a portrait, he exaggerated the proportions and features to make his subject look more elegant and distinctive.

At left is a detail of Sargent's 1902 portrait of Lord Ribblesdale (Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribblesdale) alongside some photos of the subject in similar poses.

Sargent made many subtle accentuations. The head is smaller relative to the figure, making the figure look taller and more regal. Within the face, he made the outer folds over the eyes turn downward more dramatically. 

Some of the differences in the folds and lines of the face may be explained by the aging of the subject, but Sargent changed the bone structure and proportions, too. He narrowed the jaw and lengthened the nose. These are all deviations away from the normal, standard face. 

To be clear, the painting was done from life, not from photos, but the photo at center, taken in 1884, may have provided a starting point for Sargent's interpretation.

A contemporary cartoonist in Punch emphasized the absurd aspects of Sargent's interpretation. The note says "Regrets...Or Why did I Speculate on Such a Neck Tie? —J.S. Sargent."

Sargent was as much a caricaturist as a copyist, and that's what makes his portraits so memorable. 

At the links below, you can see other painting-to-photo comparisons.

How Sargent Interpreted Carolus-Duran

Caricature and Likeness: Coventry Patmore

Origins of Bugs Bunny

This video takes examines Bugs Bunny—his origins and what makes him so enduring. (Link to YouTube). Thanks, Mel.

Revisiting the Cartoon Guy

Remember the Cartoon Guy? His name is Mark Mains, and he was one of the caricaturists at the county fair. I stopped in again to see him again and sketch his portrait.
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Previous posts:
Cartoon Guy (2008)
Sketching the Cartoon Guy (2011)

Lucas Museum Hoping For a Home in S.F.

The proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art may be coming to the San Francisco area after all.

If you haven't heard of it, the LMNA promises to be a public museum collection featuring illustration art, comics, animation, and movie related artwork, topics usually overlooked in most art museums. 

N.C. Wyeth, The Storybook

The collection is based on the original paintings by the likes of Rockwell, Parrish, Wyeth, Rackham, Crumb, and Moebius assembled by George Lucas over the last 40 years. According to the Museum's president, Don Bacigalupi:

“The most popular arena for storytelling in visual form has been things like film and illustration and comics and animation. ... Instead of us getting into that debate about what is art and what isn’t art, the museum really doesn’t pay attention to that capital “A” Art, and instead looks for this through line, this continuity in whatever form, whatever context, whatever medium ... for this very basic human impulse: to tell stories.”

Despite the false starts in locating the museum in the Presidio in San Francisco, or in Chicago's lakeside, the latest proposal centers on Treasure Island, which is located in the San Francisco Bay. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, they're also in talks with officials in Los Angeles.
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Read more: "The Art of Storytelling: An exclusive first look at the collection of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art" by Charles Desmarais. Thanks, Chuck Pyle!

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Previously: American Museums with Collections of Illustration and Academic Art

Cartoon Tips from the 1930s

Cartoonist Bill Nolan (1896-1954) helped to create the classic rubber hose style of animation when he worked along with Otto Messmer on the Felix the Cat cartoons. 

In 1936, he wrote a little book called Cartooning Self-Taught, which presents the 1930s style.  The heads, hands, and body shapes are based on circles—or really spheres. The pupils are tall pie-cut ovals.

Men's feet are big and clown-like, with a low instep and a balloon toe. Each type of character should have a distinctive shoe: "A tramp needs tattered footwear; a dude requires shoes with spats; a farmer, boots."

Arms and legs get thicker as they go away from the body. Darks are shaded with parallel curving strokes. Poses are extreme and dynamic. Nolan says, "Comics are much more interesting if they seem to be doing something rather than remaining stationary." 

Characters can be created by using circles of different sizes. I like the angry cook with the elbows forward, the fat tycoon, and the cop swinging his billy club.

The dog, bear, and cat are doing a gait called a rack or pace, where both right legs move in tandem and both left legs move in tandem.

An assortment of animals "are all made from combinations of circles," he says. "There is no end to what you can do if you get firmly fixed in your mind the idea of building comics from the basic circles."

You can see the influence not only on the early Disney animators, but also on illustrators like R. Crumb and Dr. Seuss.

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Free download from Archive.org: Cartooning Self-Taught

More about this book at CartoonSnap

Essay by Mel Birnkrant about the Art and Imagery of Comic Characters

Caricature Tip

Caricature tip: Don't worry about which features to make bigger. Instead think about which ones to make smaller.

Louis Philippe as a pear by Honoré Daumier after Charles Philipon, 1831

If one part of the face must be big, make it bigger. Simplify, minimize, or reduce everything else. What you're left with after all this reduction are the essential shapes, the simple forms of the head and the hair. The most important thing about the features is their relative placement.

Caricature is not the art of accentuation. It's the art of reduction—reduction to essentials. 

Al Jaffee, Mad's 95 Year Old Cartoonist

Al Jaffee invented "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" for Mad Magazine

He also came up with the popular "Fold-In" feature. He's is 95 years old and still going strong. In fact he was recently honored as having the longest working career of any cartoonist ever. Here's a video profile from the Gothamist. (Link to YouTube video)

Abstract Mickey in a Real World

Mickey and Minnie were three-foot-tall mice with circles for ears living in a human world.

As long as the animation style was abstract enough, the absurdity of that idea worked. But as Disney animation became more realistic, it became more and more untenable.

Over the years, Mickey underwent a design evolution, including a major redesign by Fred Moore for Sorcerer's Apprentice. The effort to make him and Minnie more dimensional and emotionally complex came with a price, however, because they became less believable. There was always the problem of those abstract circular ears, which did bizarre things on head turns. 

Audiences eventually lost interest in the character, despite efforts to make him the official mascot for the Disney Studios.   

Toy designer and Mickey collector Mel Birnkrant puts it this way:

"Mickey disappeared because of Disney's push towards reality, which wrecked a lot of things in my opinion. As [veteran animator] Ward Kimball explained to me—and this is the inside story—all of Disney was steering a course towards reality. And it got to a point where the story men, as well, could no longer swallow the existence of a three foot mouse. They could believe in Donald Duck as he was just large enough to exist in the human world (think Three Caballeros). But Mickey no longer made sense to them."

"The absurdity of the situation is no better illustrated than in the post-Pinocchio cartoon when the kitten Figaro was developed to a new level of realism. There is a scene in which Minnie is giving Figaro a bath that is utterly surreal."

("Bath Day," 1946) Link to YouTube

"Mickey and Minnie interacting with small kittens was a recurring theme in the early days, but there was no such thing as reality back then. All the characters were abstract."

Disney Studios has recently attempted to revive Mickey as a more abstract (and sarcastic) character in short films for the internet.
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Previous Post: How Tall is Mickey? (With the weird live action clip of a monkey in a Mickey suit)
Deja View Blog: Fred Moore's Mickey Sketches
Mel Birnkrant's Cartoon Character Collection
All art ©Disney Studios