Original Shadow Comic Strip

This is the first Shadow comic strip by pulp writer Walter Gibson and cartoonist Vernon Greene from 1938. Greene drew Bringing Up Father after the death of George McManus in 1954.
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Supergirl

I'm not sure if it's still permissible to draw a female superhero who doesn't look like she's posing for a men's magazine, but here's a drawing of Supergirl.

Iron Man Poster in USA Weekend

I saw a promo at the newsstand today which said there will be an Iron Man poster in the April 24 25 edition of USA Today Weekend, if I remember correctly. While it's surely promoting Iron Man 2, it's a cartoonist-drawn comic book-style poster, not a movie star poster.

Edit: Finally found a note about the poster on the USA Weekend website, so it won't be in USA Today but their Sunday newspaper supplement. Edit 2: Had to remove the image. That drawing of Tony Stark disturbs me. It is awful.

And speaking of Marvel Comics, on their website they're touting a faux long-lost 1940's comic strip of Captain America. Spoiler: It doesn't look anything like an old comic strip, unless the 1990s count.

Warm-up Drawing

A little Old School Spidey. Lots of misplaced blacks, but what they hey. If I ever want to get those brush strokes right, I'll just have to find some old John Romita comics and sit down and copy 'em.

Cartoonist Survey Compilations

Over at the David-Wasting-Paper blog, you'll find over 100 Cartoonist Surveys, and David has been compiling the answers to questions such as What kind of paper do you use? What do you hate to draw? Do you do your coloring by hand or with computer? and How often has Rick Stromoski told you to shut your piehole? If you feel like wandering on over there, you can read the totally unexpected results to these and other questions.

What things do you hate to draw?
What type of paper do you use?
What is your favorite pen to use?

A few of the cartoonists interviewed:

Ann Telnaes
Rick Stromoski
Tom Richmond
Chris Browne
Sandra Bell-Lundy

Gladys Parker Sunday Mopsy Original

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Cooking Award.

For mackerel I'd suppose.

Original Batman Comic Strip

The early Batman newspaper strips seem to be kind of scarce. This dates from 1944, the second year of the strip. Practically everything signed by creator Bob Kane was ghosted, and this was probably drawn by either Dick Sprang, Jack Burnley, Charles Paris or Alvin Schwartz.

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Creating a Scene with Photoshop

When I was working on my picture book dummy last summer, I took tons of photos of my kids and they were very patient. Most of the illustrations were of impossible scenes, so I would create a mock-up in Photoshop as a guide for my drawing and painting.

I'm still trying to find a publisher or a literary agent. I wanted to find an agent and avoid the slush pile, but I'll be sending out a new wave of submissions to publishers this spring.

Frank Frazetta Original Comic Art

Frazetta original art from Heroic Comics #72, (Famous Funnies) 1952.

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Today's Warm-up Drawing

Monster Parade

My eleven-year-old son has been devoting more time to his blog, The Drawing Dragon. This is one of his recent posts, Monster Parade.

Dick Giordano

Dick Giordano died recently. He was best-known as a penciler, inker and editor-in-chief of DC Comics. Nobody has never not seen something that he drew, whether it was a postage stamp, a comic book cover or any kind of DC merchandising.

In his memory, here's a day in the life of Dick Giordano in 1983. (From an old issue of Camelot 3000.)

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For over thirty years, Chic Young drew this "topper" for his Sunday Blondie comic strip. It's hard to imagine the day when cartoonists had so much room on the comics pages that they actually had to draw an extra comic strip to fill up the space. If you're young enough to not know, or old enough to have forgotten, a page of the Sunday comics used to be about as wide as a computer keyboard, and each comic had the entire width of the page.

By the way, early in his career, Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon) assisted Chic Young on Blondie.

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Stacy's

Stacy Curtis has been posting some fun drawings over at his new blog.

Alex Raymond Original Art

Alex Raymond is probably most famous for co-creating and drawing Flash Gordon, but before that he illustrated the Dashiell Hammett-scripted Secret Agent X-9. This original strip dates from 1934, when Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and Secret Agent X-9 were all launched.

Apparently Blogger won't display the image full size due to the width of the comic. I've cut it in half so it's viewable full-size.

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Archie With a Twist

My eight-year-old daughter developed a new cartooning style for herself last week. She decided to draw the Archie characters in this new style and posted the results here on her art blog. I think Archie Comics should give her a holler and put her to work.

Tiny Tim Original Art

An original Sunday Tiny Tim by Stan Link, from 1938.

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Little Wolvie

Chris Casciano

Calvin and Hobbes are re-envisioned at illustrator Chris Casciano's website.

New Elephant in Tree Tattoo

Anonymous was nice enough to send this photo so I could see how the tattoo turned out. (See this original post.) I think it turned out great. I can't think of higher praise for one's art than when someone chooses to make it a permanent part of their body.

Here's my original sketch:

The Fox and The Wolf Page

You can paint in green, purple and orange, but try telling the scanner that.

Lou Fine Spirit Page

Another Tshirt.

I think this will be the last tshirt I do for this event. It's given me an appreciation for what graphic designers do and how hard it is to "boil things down".

Dr. Seuss Life Cover

Life magazine cover by Dr. Seuss. May, 1934.

Watercolor Illustrations

A couple of watercolor illustrations. I'd intended to color these in Photoshop, like this conceptual drawing, but decided to go with watercolors instead. Even with tons of screw-ups, the watercolor still looks better. Watercolor is always a little unpredictable, which is both frustrating and rewarding.

Regardless of everything I've learned and studied, I almost always work wet-in-wet. I'm too impatient to wait for an illustration to dry and add that nice, clean shadow effect. But, it is what it is.

Hank Ketcham Roughs

Peanuts Ad