posted: February 5, 2010

posted: February 4, 2010

Between 1956 and 1964 I worked at The Famous Artists Schools the
correspondence art school. I worked on the Cartoon Course. We would get a
student's assignment and put overlays on it and point out various "trouble"
spots and sometimes re-draw the whole situation and then send a letter to
accompany the crit. The letters were standard form letters (after all
everybody would make the same "mistakes") but we would "personalize" the
letter by inserting certain words that applied specifically to the student's
particular picture. We had lessons on inking, heads, action etc.. There were
4 or 5 of us doing the lessons and we would bounce the student around
between us so he or she would have the advantage of more than one point of
view. I was the youngest being hired at the ripeness of twenty years. The
others were pretty much retired guys in their 60's having had careers in the
field. One of them had and continued to draw Popeye, another had worked on
the Lone Ranger, another on Katzenjammer Kids, another on Captain Marvel Jr.
and Captain Billy's Whiz Bang and Playboy girlie cartoons etc..

So...the other day I'm surfing the web and I come across a blog called
"Doodlemeister". The fellow that runs it named Jim Sizemore had a post where
he, in great detail, described critiques of mine he had received when he was
an FAS student. It was a trip down memory lane alright. He complained that I
had always given him high grades and flattery when he really wanted tough
criticism. He pointed out that my overlay comments were a little more to the
point than my letters (form letters). I made a comment on his blog post and
invited him, if he wished, to send me an assignment NOW and I would give him
a free crit. He was 25 then and is in his 70's now as I am. I promised him,
in addition, that this time I definitely would not give him a good grade.
Here then is my crit of his "assignment" because he took me up on it.

Y'know the more I look at it...the more I like his cartoon better than mine.
 

posted: January 29, 2010

Over the years I have done a number of large pictures having to do with whaling history just for my own amusement and I haven't shown them around much (except on my web-site and some SI members' shows [I've never been able to get them accepted into the Annual show]). I recently got some new scans of them done by Don Sigovich so now I have some handy jpegs to show. So...here they are.

posted: January 28, 2010

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