Submitting B&W Magazine Gag Cartoons to a Magazine That Publishes Only Color Cartoons

I got a good question from a reader about submitting cartoons to magazines.

"I'm wondering, when you send cartoons to a market that publishes colour cartoons, do you submit full-colour cartoons or do you send black/whites and colour them if one is chosen? It's just that sending colour copies is a bit expensive and, frankly, I don't really know how to colour. However, if I ever make a sale, I'd figure something out."

It reminded me that when I started, I made the decision to only send finished cartoons. Nothing rough. All inked and toned, black and white finishes.

But not color.

Even adding some gray tone takes time. I developed an "assembly line" method, lining up all of my inked cartoons in a row on the kitchen counter (space was hard to come by in Brooklyn, NY), and applying a gray tone to each:

Above from Raconteur #1; my true story "The Petty Indignities That Ruin My Life."  You can read the whole thing at the link.

But ... if you KNOW that the publication ONLY publishes color cartoons, the question is: should you labor over your batch of ten or twenty cartoons, adding color to each and every one?

And since you know that you will only sell a fraction of the batch, you also are aware, as you push the watercolor brush or push the pixels to add the color, that a lot of this time will be wasted. 

One cartoonist that I know and admire INSISTS on coloring all of his cartoons. He told me that they just don't look finished to him unless they are in full color. I am in awe of his work and his energy to do this. 

Do I color all of the cartoons that I submit? No.

Should I color all of the cartoons that I submit? No. And the editors do not expect it.

If I did, I wouldn't have time to brush my teeth, mow the lawn and do this here blog, y'know?

If and when you get a sale, the editor will email you, asking for the kind of file they want. Usually, it's:

"300dpi, CMYK color. By Friday."

Now what is that you said about not really knowing how to color? Yipes!

Well ... that's another blog entry.

Doing the Work

I close my door, take out my sketchbook and whatever pen is closest (I really don't care what pen I use), and then I stare at the wall. It's quiet, and I let my mind wander and try to think of ideas for cartoons. 

There is not a clear path to success in comics. But one of the demands that you, the cartoonist, should make on himself, is the commitment to do the work. 

And it's hard to do the work if you are tired from working full-time doing something else. 

Rob Tornoe wrote a piece about former Commercial Appeal Editorial Cartoonist Bill Day in Editor & Publisher titled Unemployed Cartoonist’s Fundraising Drive Marred by Plagiarism Allegations.

Rob gives us the background and the controversy:

In the wake of his successful Indiegogo fundraising campaign, cartoonist Bill Day has landed in the middle of a controversy that has bubbled up among political cartoonists about plagiarism and where to draw the journalistic line when it comes to reworking old cartoons and making them new.   

As reported earlier this month, Day had taken to Indiegogo with the goal of raising $35,000 so that he could quit his day job at a bike shop and commit to cartooning full-time. Day has been juggling odd jobs and syndicated cartoon work ever since he was laid off by the Memphis Commercial Appeal three years ago.   

There are two minds about this, as you can read at the link: some editorial cartoonist colleagues said that it's okay to repurpose an previously published cartoon (particularly if you are working full time and are only cartooning part-time, as Day had to do after being let go by The Commercial Appeal) and others said, no, it's a cheat. I guess the thing that bothers me about people who say it's okay is that that's not doing the work. That's lazy.

And, yeah, thinking up something new is not easy. Like Hirschfeld said in the documentary of his life, THE LINE KING, some drawings come easy and some don't.   

I'll still try to come up with new ideas this week. Going forward while looking in the rear view mirror is never a good idea. 

 

Number of Submissions/Cartoon Style

I'm on the road today, meeting with my fellow RACONTEUR cartoonist contributors. Here's an entry from 2009:


---


Time to open the email letter bag of cartooning questions. One email is about the number of gag cartoon submissions to send to an editor, another has questions about cartoon styles and, lastly, a question about selling to Playboy. My thanks in advance to those who have written in, asking me to answer them.

# of SUBMISSIONS

Here's a recent email about magazine cartooning:

How many cartoons do you really have to send to a magazine. I have read your blog's 'How to Submit to Magazines' and you mention between 10 and 20.

I've also read Randy Glasbergen's how-to-cartoons book and he says no fewer than six. Another book says between five and ten.

Now, I'm not submitting to any big magazines, like the Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post or anything like that--just little $25 ones.

And basically, I want to know how few cartoons can I get away with. I know I'm going to be rejected first off, and I hate the idea of doing up 10, 12, 15 cartoons for nothing. And I'm still practicing my art and it takes me forever to actually finish a complete drawing.

Will a magazine really dismiss a submission if they open it up and find only six or eight cartoons? Do I really look bad to editors if I send only that many?

You must be one of the few people out there who have recently decided to draw magazine gag cartoons. Congratulations and much good luck.

Please consider speeding up production. Taking forever to finish a cartoon is not going to make you a professional. You need to be able to come up with a lot of ideas regularly. I come up with 20-40 ideas a week, toss out about half of the weak cartoons, and draw up the rest. There is no magic, just the work of sitting down and drawing and drawing, until you can draw faster and faster.

I urge you not to limit your submissions. Consider all of the potential markets you want to cover. Make a list. The places that pay the most go on the top of the list; you send them the cartoons first. If there are no buys, then 30 days later you send the cartoons to the next lower-paying market, and so on, down the list.

I would not count on rejection. Yeah, it's likely, but you never know. A friend of mine got a sale the very first time he submitted to The New Yorker. So far as wanting "to know how few cartoons can I get away with" sending; gee whiz, you are working against your own interests. Editors want to see regular, quality material that's appropriate to their readership. If you can only get 6 or 8 out there every couple of months, that may not be a good sampling of your potential. An editor would look at it, but when you compete with someone like me or my pal Mark Anderson, you would have your 6 chances against our 10 or 20 chances.

Okay, here's some technique questions:

STYLE

How do/did you decide on what style, medium and/or technique to use for rendering your cartoons? I ask because I have cartoon ideas but have trouble choosing what style I want to use. My style is always changing. It seems to depend upon what happens to be influencing my creativity that day. On some days my drawings are loose and free. On other days they are crisp and tight. Sometimes the lines are smooth and bold. At other times my lines are fun and artsy and sketchy. I've tried working with micron pens (crosshatch for shading), brush pens (grey scales for shading), pencils, china markers, ball point pens, and so on. I just can't decide which I like best. And the feedback I get from others doesn't help me narrow down my options much either because responses are split pretty evenly.

So, none of this is problematic until it comes time for me to submit a cartoon to a publisher. It is clear that at this rate -- until I can decide upon a style -- I'll never submit anything. That's no good.

If you are in art school or drawing as a hobby, it's fun to talk about technique and try new materials.

You're right: it's no good to NOT begin presenting your work commercially because you are too unsettled about your technique to get on with it. If you want to draw for a living, you need to create work to submit.

I think it's okay to be unsettled. The work that you create changes through the years regardless. Mine did. Two examples:

• Cartoonist Al Ross changed his technique from a lush illustrative style to his very sketch pen style within 20 years.
  
• And scroll down at the Seminal Cartoons at Eli Stein Cartoons to see the early published work by greats like Mischa Richter,Chon Day, Charles Schulz, Charles Saxon and Johnny Hart.

I use Pigma Micron Pens on 24 lb. laser printer typing paper because the pens are permanent and the paper is decent and inexpensive. I usually do not pencil. This saves me time and makes my lines look like drawing lines, not lines that art statically tracing pencil lines.




Above: "The Pens on My Desk"

So, just as it's never the right time to move, to marry, to have a child -- it may never be the right time to pick a style. But, as you can see from the above links, a style can and will change.

One of my favorite quotes about style is from the late gag cartoonist Lo Linkert, who scoffed about style and advised to simply "draw fast" and the style will emerge naturally. I wrote more about Lo Linkert (1923-2002) during a guest blogging-stint at the Andertoons blog here.

Here's a quote from Mr. Linkert:

“So if you want to be a cartoonist, be sure that there is nothing else in the world that you want to be, work hard and practice self-criticism to the utmost. Make sure every new cartoon you draw is better than the last one. Be sure that it will seem funny to most people. You can’t please them all. Work fast because speed gives you a distinct style. Slow lines look stiff.”

Do we have time for one more? I think so.

Here's another:

Selling to Playboy Magazine

I would like to know if you could offer any advise on my work or how to get my foot in the door with Playboy Cartoon Dept.

It took me years and many cartoon submissions before my first sale to Playboy, which is a coveted gag cartoon market.

Consider what the editor wants and imagine what they have seen already. Beware of cartoon ideas that are tired, or too easy. See what they are buying, read the magazine. Playboy publishes a variety of cartoons -- not just the sexy ones (as you know if you have read the mag). Persist.

Thanks to those of you who have written in. I don't know if these are the answers you are looking for, but I hope that they may have helped somebody.

Serendipitiously related: My pal graphic novelist Brian Fies gives Newbie Advice.

--

The above is a bloggy rerun from August 12, 2009.

Interview: Cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn

Above: a cartoon by Wilbur Dawbarn from Private Eye.

UK cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn talks to The Bucks Free Press' Rebecca Cain about his career.

“You have got to persevere- you have really got to come to terms with rejection as a cartoonist.

“When you become more established you still get rejected on a regular basis. There are so many people producing cartoons for so few slots.”

The rest is here.

Mark Anderson's Cartoon Process

 

Today's required reading: How my inky pal Mark Anderson creates a cartoon.

Video: The Landon Cartooning Course

Via Potrzebie: John Garvin has posted his short, very informative documentary about the Landon Course, the most influential of the learn-at-home cartooning course.



The Landon Course had a stunning list of graduates spanning a couple of decades. Some of the names:

• Roger Armstrong
• Carl Barks
• Martin Branner
• Gene Byrnes
• George Clark
• Sid Couchey
• Milton Caniff
• Jack Cole
• Roy Crane
• William Donahey
• Edwina Dumm
• Ric Estrada
• Gil Fox
• Paul Fung Sr
• Floyd Gottfredson
• Vince Hamlin 
• Ethel Hays 
• Bill Holman
• Jud Hurd 
• Ed Kuekes 
• Stanley Link
• Fred Locher
• Bill Mauldin
• Ken Muse 
• Fred Neher
• Gladys Parker 
• Allen Saunders 
• Frederick Siebel 
• Dorman H. Smith 
• J.R. Williams 
• Chic Young

Take a look at John Garvin's site Enchanted iMages here.

And consider buying his book on the Landon Course.

200 Characters from Dick Tracy 1931-1977

Here's one of the most popular blog entries I ever did. It appeared June 23, 2009.

Last month, I mailed the original DICK TRACY commemorative book to the new TRACY artist, Joe Staton.



"Dick Tracy The Art of Chester Gould" was an exhibition at the Museum of Cartoon Art from October 4 through November 30, 1978. Coordinated by Bill Crouch, Jr., the exhibit at the Museum in Port Chester, NY encompassed not just the newspaper comic strip, but the popular phenomenon, the artistic style of the strip, controversial violence, and Chester Gould himself.


Above: 3 of the 200 DICK TRACY characters.

It's the gallery of 200 characters from DICK TRACY 1931-1977, put together by Matt Masterson in the back of the exhibition catalog, that's a standout. Here is his introduction, followed by the scans of his amazing compilation:

"I completed this compilation of 200 DICK TRACY characters [in] October 1977 as a tribute to Chester Gould when he reached his 46th anniversary of drawing the strip. The original paste-up hangs in Chet's conference room at home and he tells me he refers to it quite often. His first reaction to it was that he had no idea he had created that many!

"To make this paste-up of 200 characters, I went through every strip in my TRACY collection from Oct. 1931 thru Oct. 1977, approximately 17,000 daily and Sunday strips, and picked out the one panel I thought best represented that character. A reduced stat was then made of each one, and then mounted on a large piece of gray matte board along with each character's name and year each appeared. It was a labor of love.

"Some of Chet's early characters from the 30's are easily recognized as popular movie stars of that era; James Cagney (Jimmy White), Claudette Colbert (Jean Penfield), Marlene Dietrich (Marro), Wallace Beery (Stud Bronzen). In the late 90's, some characters names were invented by spelling words backwards, such as Nuremoh, Kroywen, Natnus, Wolley, and Prof. Emirc.

"In the 1940's, characters were to spill from Gould's prolific imagination an an unparalleled rate. Characters such as the Mole, B-B Eyes, Pruneface, Flattop, Brow, Shaky, Gravel Gertie, B.O. Plenty, Vitamin Flintheart and Mumbles were to be household names and are remembered vividly by all who read DICK TRACY in those years. If a poll were taken, Flattop would probably garner the most votes as the most famous villain. At a time when most villains expired from the strip in 12 weeks, Flattop ran TRACY ragged for 5 months.

"... When I asked Chet Gould where he got the names for some of his characters, he told me he used to ride the train from his home in Woodstock, Illinois to his studio in Chicago and sketch various people he observed on the train. He would exaggerate upon certain features or characteristics. The name would follow, with he one exception being Flattop, whose name came from the popular aircraft carrier of World War II. Imagine an hour train ride with the likes of Itchy, Flyface or B.O. Plenty!

"In 1975, Max Allan Collins, current writer of the DICK TRACY strip, was to become the inspiration for the villain, Bulky, and in 1977, I popped up as Leyden Aigg. In answer to the question, 'Has Chet Gould ever put himself in the strip?' Yes! He IS DICK TRACY."

Video: Bill Gallo

Long time Daily News cartoonist Bill Gallo talks about his life, why America will work ("I think it'll go on forever ... with some large bumps on the road."), Joe DiMaggio (".. not an interesting guy.") Muhammad Ali, and Frank Sinatra in this lovely portrait of a true gentleman. It's produced by Lindsay Meeks and Nathaniel Vinton.

Gahan Wilson Interview

Cartoonist Gahan Wilson is interviewed for TCJ.com by Richard Gehr.

RICHARD GEHR: What sparked your interest in cartooning?

GAHAN WILSON: When I was eight or nine, I was browsing through the books section of a second-hand store and I saw this set of bound volumes of Punch. I bought one of the volumes for fifteen cents and took it home. After pleading with my father, he very sweetly drove me back to the place and plopped down for the entire set, bless his heart. I can’t say how important that was.

This is a wonderful, career-spanning interview, with one of the great gag cartoonists.

Video: Anton Emdin Inks

Here's award winning illustrator Anton Emdin warming up with his brush and ink:



Here's Anton inking a drawing:

Selling Cartoons to Magazines

I've been getting questions about what I do. Questions like:

What's your process?

Or, how does something I draw at home, on a board, get into a magazine like Harvard Business Review?

Here's the process:

I send cartoons to HBR maybe once a month. I send a batch of 10-20 cartoons. I mail hard copies, with my contact information on the back of each one. I enclose a SASE. Yeah, I mail paper to them.

Paper is better.

The editor doesn't have to disable a firewall, click to see the cartoon, and then print the cartoon if he's interested in it. You mail an envelope full of hard copy cartoons, and all the editor has to to do is open it and there they are; tangible, and ready to go to a meeting.

Editors have meetings throughout the year. I'm not sure how many, but it's probably between 5-7 meetings a year. I've never attended any of these meetings, but I know from descriptions that a number of editors are involved and decisions on cartoons are group decisions. Maybe the cartoon editor does an initial sort, but the final batches are picked by a group.

I try not to edit myself too much. I try to send cartoons that I feel are appropriate. And I also throw in odd things here and there. Harvard bought a cat cartoon from me, for instance. Who knew that a business mag would buy a cat cartoon?

I got a question a while back asking about a batch of cartoons I mailed to the Wall Street Journal. I can't find the comment (It's lost somewhere on another thread in this blog.), but the fellow had a good question: he wanted to know if I requested a set price from WSJ for the batch, or if they just bought a couple, and they decided on the price to pay me. It's the latter.

When WSJ (or any other publication in the business of buying cartoons) is going to buy from you, they have a set rate. All the established publications do. You can't negotiate a different rate.

Once, during a Q&A panel discussion on cartooning, someone asked how I chose where to send my cartoons. I said I started with the markets that paid the most, and worked my way down.

Anything can happen during this process: you can not be able to sell to a market despite your best efforts, you may run out of good gags, a publication will suddenly go from buying your great cartoons to not buying them, etc.

The people who give up are the norm. The rest -- the ones who slog through the not-selling, the no-idea, the collapse of markets times -- those are cartoonists.

-- The above was a rerun from September 28, 2007.

The Cartooning Business

Quitting my day job -- which was years back now -- required a leap of faith. I didn't know a soul in the pro cartoonists "industry" when I started out.

My routine was I'd draw up 20-30 cartoons a week, throw half of them away and then mail out the good stuff to the art director listed in the masthead of the magazine or newspaper I had targeted. Every week I would do the same. It was not that "creative," it was not "fun," but it was something that I thought I had a knack for.

And it was hard work. It took many months before I got my first sale.

"Did you ever think you'd get to your hundredth cartoon?" asked Bob Mankoff, leaning back in his chair. He was holding one of my cartoons, staring at a small, penciled 3-digit number in the corner. I was in his office, on one of those "look days," when invited cartoonists are allowed past the Conde Nast security phalanx, and get to have a sit down with the New Yorker's cartoon editor. I think I had drawn under a thousand cartoons at that point. Anyway, that penciled number was probably in the 500-700 range.

"Well, I knew I had ideas for maybe a dozen cartoons the first week I started drawing single panel gag cartoons, but that second week ... well, that was harder. And it's not gotten necessarily easier." I had been submitting for maybe 3 years when we had this conversation. And my visit with him ended like so many other visits to the New Yorker; with him holding some of my cartoons and inviting me to, "Come back next week."

And so I do. But so far, no sales at the New Yorker.

But my work sells to other markets, and so that's good.

I've always thought that my stuff sells because it's funny. I think that because there is no other reason to buy, right? That's what the editors want. Why would an editor buy without an eye to content?

Then again, I just got 15 cartoons rejected today -- 15 real good, rejected, homeless, non-money-making cartoons. Heck, one of them should have sold. At least one!!!

"How do you know for sure," asked a student cartoonist,"that they're even looking at your submissions?"

Well, you don't know. You just have to depend on the kindness of strangers, and have faith that your good work -- like the fizz of a Guinness -- will float to the top.

(Above: Our Sam the cat poses next to a couple of submissions packages to be mailed this day.)

-- The above was a rerun from February 2, 2007.

VILLAGE VOICE Comics Issue: If Cartoons Are So Big, Why Don't They Pay?

Roy Edroso, a freelance writer, pens the article If Cartoons Are So Big, Why Don't They Pay? for this week's comics issue of the VILLAGE VOICE.

This article has quotes from cartoonists about how there's no money for most creators.

Roy also admits (bravely) that

" ... many of the artists in this issue aren't getting paid, but have contributed work for the exposure."

Roy has a "Donate" button on his blog, with the headline "PATRONIZE ME!" so now I worry that the VOICE editors got him to agree to do the same that the cartoonists did.

And there's the rub.

Ted Rall and Dan Perkins (Tom Tomorrow) are doing OK, we are told, because they have diversified. Ditto Molly Crabapple.

It's a mistake to not consider all of the markets for your talent.

The VOICE, obviously, is not one of them.

Related:

Tom Spurgeon's take
Comics Alliance

Sam Gross: 27,592 Cartoons and Counting

In this age of hype, maybe a hyperbolic phrase like "if you read only one cartoonist interview, then read THIS one" would come as ho hum and cliched.

But, really, this is one of the best interviews with one of the greatest cartoonists and well worth the time to take in.



Above: Matt Diffee, Sam Gross and Ken Krimstein at the June 24, 2010 Bunny Bash.

Veteran cartoonist Sam Gross gives a career-spanning interview to Richard Gehr at TCJ.com.

Below are just 2 of the many informative questions and answers from the piece:



Above: an early wordless Sam Gross cartoon.

RICHARD GEHR You seem very organized. What’s your working process? How many cartoons do you generate per week?
SAM GROSS Every Wednesday I just clear everything, sit down, and trip. I don’t draw for markets like The New Yorker at all. I just trip. I’m still doing stuff as if National Lampoon still existed. This week I got sixteen or seventeen drawings. I number and date all my drawings. First they get photocopied on forty-four-pound stock paper. Then I punch three holes and they go into loose-leaf books like the black books back there and in the kitchen. And I think I got 27,592 cartoons now.

Above: Another early Gross cartoon.

GEHR: What’s your equipment?
GROSS: Number 1 and 2 ½ Rapidograph pens. That’s it. And a pad of cheap-shit paper. This is twenty-four-pound stock scratch and for finishes I have two-ply vellum.



Related:

1987 S. Gross Interview

Sam's famous "frog legs" cartoon on eBay

Some of Sam's early cartoons from the book TABOO edited by Charles Preston (1966): Parts one and two.

And it's true what Sam says: Bill Woodman is one great cartoonist.

1970: More of Roy Crane's Scrapbook

From the dusty pages of Cartoonist PROfiles #6, May 1970, comes "More of Roy Crane's Scrapbook."



Mr. Crane shows and tells about panel composition and, the above case, dramatic angles.


Above: "the Value of Black" in the composition.



The scrapbook was originally put together for Crane's assistant.



A big hat tip to Don Orehek for this issue of Cartoonist PROfiles!

Related:

Cartoonist PROfiles #3 Roy Crane Scrapbook "How to Draw Buz Sawyer"
Cartoonist PROfiles #38 Roy Crane Scrapbook "How to Draw Women"
1968 Visit with Frank King and Roy Crane
Roy Crane" The Rise and Fall of the Comic Strip"

Roy Crane "The Rise and Fall of the Comic Strip!!"

America has been going to hell in a handbasket since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

There is no shortage of yellowing, old diary entries, newspaper editorials and books bemoaning that this age will be, once and for all, mark my words, the ever lovin' blue eyed end. OK? Right now. It's all over. The "good old days" are lost.


With this thought in mind, here is master cartoonist Roy Crane, writing "The Rise and Fall of the Comic Strip!!" The comic strip, you see, died in the 1970s; specifically, the December 1973 issue of Cartoonist PROfiles.



Here's the text of "The Rise and Fall of the Comic Strip!!" including a peek into the future of 1983:



1895

• First Daily Strip

1905-20

• Joke Era ... daily strips 15" wide (7 Cols.)
• Full Sunday Page

1920-30

• Development of continuities into story strips, adventure strips.

1930-40

• DEPRESSION ... Golden Age of the adventure strip ... ALL THAT SPACE ... wonderful fights, action, BACKGROUNDS!
• Publishers amazed that circulations doesn't stop. Publishers find readers want to know what will happen next in adventure strips.
• Throw out the joke strips!
• Buy MORE adventure strips!
• Gratitude ... papers kill goose that lays the golden egg, cut dailies to 6 columns.
• Cut Sundays to 1/2 page and tabloid!

1940-45

• THE WAR! Comics play a big part. Price of newsprint soars.
• Cut dailies to 5 columns.
• Cut Sundays to 1/3 page!

1945-65

• U.S. Comics in the Louvre ... called ART!
• Cut dailies to 4 columns.
• HELP! HELP! They're after the old goose again!
• Cartoonists in serious trouble! Not enough space for adventure and story strip lads to get characters' feet into pictures.
• Not enough room for action shots.
• All strip artists go from 4-picture strip to 3-picture strip!
• Adventure and story strip guys have 72 fewer pictures to tell 12 week story.
• Readers squawk!
• Stories drag!
• Lose wallop!
• Gag strips take over market.
• TV Competition.
• 1965-73
• More troubles!
• Newspaper reduce size of he column which takes another chop out of comics.
• OFF WITH THE LEGS!
• Fewer action shots!

1973

• STRIKES! Shortage of newsprint.
• They're going after the old goose again!
• PAPERS GOING TO 3-COLUMN STRIPS!!
• Yes ... THREE!! And demanding larger lettering!
• Gag strip fellows draw strip in only one Picture.

1974

• Papers cut strips to 11/2" deep.
• NO MORE BREASTS. Only heads are left.
• Last story strip folds! Last adventure strip!

1975

• Papers chop comics to 2-columns.

1977

• Papers chop heads off: leaving only the balloons.

1978

• Polls show no one is reading bare balloons any longer. Editors wonder why. Last comic disappears.

1983

• NEW ERA in American Journalism!
• Editors drop the news!
• TV blamed!
• Issues appear twice weekly ... the supermarket special on Thursday, want ads on Sunday.
• Let us thank God we can still get the news on TV. Also sports, weather, recipes. In fact, EVERYTHING the newspapers carried except the COMICS!

A big hat tip to Don Orehek for this issue of Cartoonist PROfiles!

Video: Comic Book Artist Peter Gross and MIX

For a short video (about 3 minutes, plus a damn 30 second advertisement in the beginning), this Star Tribune profile of Peter Gross (LUCIFER, CHOSEN, BOOKS OF MAGIC) packs a lot of information about who he is, what he does, and how he draws.



The article then focuses on the cartoonists in the Twin Cities area, with the prediction that most will be female in the coming years. Well worth a read, and it makes me consider dropping in for the next Minneapolis Indie Xpo.

Below: a fun & informative short video from the gang behind MIX about the 2011 Xpo, to be held November 5-6, 2011 at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, MN:

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

"Where do you get your ideas?" is one of those ubiquitous questions that cartoonists get asked.

I wish I could cite one source.

After you've been cartooning for a while, you're always on scanning mode; looking for ideas wherever you are.

It's rare that I am able to overhear something that's a punchline. Thinking about buzzwords can help, but I think that the last panel of the comic below, staring at a wall, is what a lot of cartoonists do, and it's probably the most productive!

Here are 4 panels on the topic of ideas that I originally drew for an interview. The piece was not used. It's published here for the first time.

Gag Cartooning Questions

Some questions I've gotten recently ....

When you're drawing a new character or something you haven't drawn before -- is it difficult?

Yes. I'll draw it the wrong way a couple of times before I can get something that's good. Cows, for instance, are a problem, despite my having lived on a farm when I was little. Obviously, there are a lot of good Web search engines to use for reference, so it's easy now to draw, for instance, a WW1 infantry soldier or a specific car or something.

What is the format for magazine gag cartoons?

I draw on a piece of typing paper. I place it horizontally in front of me, so most of my cartoons are kinda horizontal. I use good quality typing paper. Right now, I'm using a 24 lb., 92 bright, 30% recycled paper. It's cheap and easy to store. Don Orehek turned me on to Micron pens, which will take a wash immediately. No smearing!

Back to the format. Most magazines just don't care. They can shrink the cartoons and make them fit, no problem. A couple of magazines may ask for a change. Playboy will tell you how many columns wide they want the cartoon. The editor will help you translate picas (the measurement for magazine columns) to inches. As mentioned before, Wall Street Journal publishes cartoons in a teeny weeny petite square, so the cartoons must fit that format.




Above: my approved rough for the Wall Street Journal, along with an editor's note asking for a redraw.

Do you draw all your cartoons in black and white? Do the publications color the cartoons or does the cartoonist? If the cartoonist colors them, then how? By hand? Computer?

I draw my submissions in B&W. I don't mail penciled roughs, which was the habit a generation ago. Now I tend to mail out finished cartoons, with wash tones. A big reason for this is that some magazines tend to change cartoon editors and I'd rather have something that looks like the finished art in front of them.

When an editor buys a cartoon, then he or she may ask for it to be colored. In general, magazines pay more for color.

The cartoonist does the coloring. I use PhotoShop, but that's not the rule.

I was talking with a cartoonist -- a cartoonist whose been in the industry since the 1950s -- and he was bemoaning that he didn't have ANY computer knowledge and how everything is all done on computers now. I told him that I thought he was mistaken. I still draw on paper and scan it in to the computer. So he counters with, "Yeah, but all the coloring -- it's all being done on computer." I happened to have a copy of Reader's Digest with me. Paging thru it, I found one cartoon that was colored on the computer (mine). The rest of them -- 5 cartoons -- sure looked like they were colored by hand. I know Dan Reynolds does all his coloring by hand.

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This has been a rerun of a July, 2007 Mike Lynch Cartoons blog entry.

Cartoonist Dedication

I just got an email from a young, just-starting-out cartoonist who lives in the UK, and is having a hard time finding markets. He asks for advice. I thought I'd respond here.








(Above: a cartoon of mine from the Harvard Business Review. Yes, a cat cartoon in a business mag! A refreshing change of pace from the "people in meetings" cartoons and the "boss at his/her desk" cartoons.)

The great thing about cartoons is that EVERYONE loves cartoons. Whether it's cartoons on TV or Mad Magazine or Marvel or gag cartoons -- people love their cartoons. And every time you see a cartoon, there's a real person, somewhere, who drew the cartoon, designed the character, designed the toy, wrote the story, etc.

You all ready know it's a lot of dedicated work to get to be a pro. That's good! Only the most persistent and dedicated cartoonists make it. The real pros out there have seen a lot of rejection. It's normal.

When Joe Kubert is asked what does he look for in a new student for his Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art (which is in its 34th year in 2010), he replies, "Dedication."

Not someone who is in it for the money, the "the most talented," not the one with all the art credentials, not the one from the city, not the rich one, not the one with the connections.

I draw magazine cartoons. I did not go to school to learn to cartoon. When I was a kid, growing up in the Midwest, there were no schools for cartoonists. I just was dedicated and persistent.

At a 2006 Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art exhibit of the very successful comic artist Todd MacFarlane, there was a case full of Todd's rejection slips; hundreds of them!

Every successful person I know (a) worked at their craft and (b) got rejected. There are no secrets. The good stuff floats to the top and gets noticed.


This is an edited version of a June 27, 2008 blog entry.