SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 16

A few cartoons about television from late 1950s SATURDAY EVENING POST magazines.








My thanks to Kristin Cawood for giving me this large scrapbook of 1950s gag cartoons to share! Thanks, Kristin!

The SATURDAY EVENING POST 1950s gag cartoons blog entries:

• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 1
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 2
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 3
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 4
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 5
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 6
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 7
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 8
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 9
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 10
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 11
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 12
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 13
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 14
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 15
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 16
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 17
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 18
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 19
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 20
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 21
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 22

Stephanie Piro: Bad Pen Day

We all know what Bad Pen Day is -- it's the day when your pen doesn't like you and refuses to give you the wonderful line that you want. It's a terrible time of anguish and frustration. You anthropomorphize your pen, believing it has betrayed you.

My friend and fellow cartoonist Stephanie Piro describes her own battle with BPN today.

PS - Thanks to Steph & John for a grand dinner and great conversation. I'm sorry about your pen.

Blizzard

Ed Emshwiller's GALAXY Magazine Christmas Covers

Above: detail of Ed Emschwiller's cover for the December 1957 GALAXY Magazine. Note wife Carol Emshwiller holding daughter Eve Emshwiller in the background.

Bhob Stewart's Potrzebie blog showcases some of annual Christmas themed covers by artist Ed Emshwiller's work for GALAXY Magazine during the 1950s.

SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 15

Some more great SATURDAY EVENING POST gag cartoons from the 1950s. Mostly maternity and telephone gag cartoons today by greats like Chon Day, Jerry Marcus, Dick Ericson, Irwin Caplan, Al Ross, Don Tobin, Ned Hilton, Bob Barnes and others.




























My thanks to Kristin Cawood for giving me this large scrapbook of 1950s gag cartoons to share! Thanks, Kristin!

The SATURDAY EVENING POST 1950s gag cartoons blog entries:

• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 1
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 2
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 3
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 4
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 5
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 6
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 7
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 8
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 9
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 10
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 11
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 12
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 13
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 14
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 15
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 16
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 17
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 18
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 19
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 20
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 21
• SATURDAY EVENING POST Scrapbook Part 22

The Great Ham Caper

My wife, Stacy, wrote a poem way back in Christmas 2006. The poem is about us and our cats, Rufus and Sam.

Stacy's poem got a lot of very nice emails, and I've rerun annually it since then. Hard to believe that since then we've moved and found a stray kitten at the milk farm up the road (or, rather, SHE adopted US) and then we rescued another stray just last month.

For auld lang syne, here is the poem again:


The Great Ham Caper
Words by Stacy Lynch
Pictures by Mike Lynch

’Twas the week before Christmas
When Rufus and Sam
Hatched a devious scheme
To make off with the ham!

The ham that would grace
The holiday table!
Roo was the brains.
Sam, wiry and able.


They devised a plan
Of Goldbergian proportions
With pulleys and weights
And kitty contortions.

And on Christmas day
They’d eat until stuffed
(The very idea
Made their tails slightly puffed!)

’Til then, they’d lay low,
Little angels to see.
But that made us suspicious –
Wouldn’t you be?


So we snooped and we sleuthed
And uncovered their caper -
“The Ham-Stealing Plan”
Diagrammed on a paper!

“No silly cat’s gonna
Steal my roast beast,”
Exclaimed Mike. “Just watch,
I’ll ruin their feast!”So he countered their scheming
With mad plans all his own
And all I could do
Was inwardly groan!

Who’d win this contest
Of wits they were planning?
Would Mike, Roo or Sam -
Be last man or cat standing?

As Christmas day dawned
The four of us waited
For the ham to be served
With breaths that were bated.

But before the main course
Could even be plated
Their plans took a turn.
Some say it was fated...

What happened to stop them
So cold in their tracks?
Why, cat-nip and husb-nip
(in big canvas sacks)Was all that it took
To stop their foul warring.
And they rolled and purred
And drooled on the flooring.And as long as I kept
My fingers and toes
Away from a hubby and two cats
In nip’s throes -
My own Christmas day
Turned out merry and calm;
The ham moist and succulent,
The champagne, a balm.

When they “awoke”,
hostilities abated,
We all ate some ham
And went to bed sated.

And such peace we wish
To you and to yours:
An end to fighting;
An end to wars.

Happy Holidays!

Mike and Stacy and Rufus and Sam


UPDATE: and Trout and Dexter.

Creating my 2010 Holiday Card

Above: finished art for the 2010 Holiday card.

Since I was a kid, I've been drawing. Some people think that drawing comes easy. Like water coming out of the faucet, the drawings just flow out of the hand.

Some drawings do come easy, but other drawings do not. I don't know why.

For this Holiday card that I drew: drawing a house, people, some cats -- it sure sounded easy. But I fussed over the thing for a while. Below is a portion of the roughs.

The idea: the cats are inside and warm, and the people are outside, working in the cold. The problem was I always wanted more room than I had. The cards were not to exceed postcard size, this way they could be mailed like postcards, resulting in postage savings.




So, we'll go back in time before the color finished drawing at the very top. Here are some roughs from my sketchbook. The above illustration is OK, but the cats are too dinky.



A little better.


I drew some grid lines to help lay it out. There are still problems: hard to make out what people are doing, black woodstove inside dominating interior. Didn't bother drawing the cats in this one. Hmm.


A very rough thumbnail sketch and, well, everything is too small.



One of the problems is showing that snowblower. It just takes too much attention away from the cats, which should be the focal point.




Trying to squeeze it all in in a portrait-sized format. You cxan see just quick and sketchy the thumbnail drawing is.


So, there you have the last of the sketches. And that's not even all of the sketches I made. In the end, I realized that I could use color to help guide the eye.

Sometimes the drawings come easy, but this one sure didn't.