Frank King: "There are loads of ideas everywhere, but you must be tuned to receive them."

Above nicked from Lines and Colors.



GASOLINE ALLEY cartoonist Frank King on his process:

My Skeezix is five years too old. He is nine years of age and I have to remember back for material from that source. I also must remember a lot of things which didn't happen but which might have happened. That is one of the fortunate things about human interest stuff. You are not limited to what has happened, but you must not do things which would never happen.

Many ideas are sent in, but very few of them are usable. Many come in in some form of propaganda, which have to be weeded out carefully. A few ideas come from friends' children.

Go read the entire 1926 interview at the Stripper's Guide.

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You guys know that I do career days in high schools. There is always a young cartoonist who loves to draw, but has a hard time coming up with ideas. Maybe in a perfect world, working artists could come in to classes and talk about how they find ideas, how they get excited about sharing them and the challenges in presenting these ideas visually.

Until then, there's this here blog.

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Oh, yes. Frank King came to mind today because of a new GASOLINE ALLEY collection. Looking forward to picking up Drawn and Quarterly's WALT BEFORE SKEEZIX this week.