Wednesday, June 21, 2006

New Yorker Cartoonist Donald Reilly 1933-2006



Donald Reilly, a stalwart cartoonist known for his New Yorker contributions, passed away at the age of 72 this past Sunday. Comics Reporter has good links.



I'm fortunate enough to get up the NYer mag offices and even more fortunate to get invited to the cartoonists' lunch afterwards. I did not know Don Reilly that well. I mean, we knew each other well enough to say hi and he knew I was some other (upstart) cartoonist vying for a space in The Magazine. I admire Reilly's work. It has a lot of breadth and is very pointed. And, according to the NY Times, Reilly did the writing himself.

I loved this quote from the obit by former NYer mag cartoon editor Lee Lorenz:

"Most artists sketch things out, make preliminary drawings," Mr. Lorenz said in a telephone interview yesterday. "Don liked his work to be as spontaneous as possible, and he was one of the few artists who would sit down and just do a drawing."

That is so cool. No pencil sketch. So free. So scary!

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