Cartoon Character Yourself

In learning the art of cartooning, one of the things that is very important is that of style and technique. Read on! However, if you want to upload an image and convert it to a cartoon, Cartoony.Me would be the best!

Those who admire the drawings of the late James Thurber, I notice, do not draw much. I suspect that if they drew pictures their pictures would look like Thurber’s. When they praise Thurber they strike a blow for non-artists everywhere. Or maybe it’s another case of praising the idea while not noticing the drawing.

Thurber was as surprised as anyone when his drawings began to appear in The New Yorker, where he worked as an editor and writer. For a good part of his later sub-career as a cartoonist, Thurber, nearly blind, had to draw in broad sweeps with a thick crayon pressed against a large sheet pinned to a wall. For all editor-in-chief Harold Ross knew, the staff was putting him on by insisting that he publish the Thurber drawings.

Nor did Thurber have any illusions about his drawing ability. One of his most famous cartoons showed a woman on all fours on top of a bookcase, with a man and his wife nearby talking to a visitor. Says the man: “That’s my first wife up there, and this is the present Mrs. Harris.” Thurber had tried to show the first wife on a staircase, but he had had trouble with the perspective. Ross, ever cautious, asked Thurber if the crouching woman were alive or dead.

Oh, alive, Thurber assured Ross, because “my doctor says a dead woman couldn’t support herself on all fours and my taxidermist says you can’t stuff a woman.”

Despite the sorry draftsmanship in the Thurber drawings there was a quality in them that made them unique. Call it style. Nobody was able to duplicate the Thurber look, although there were plenty of cartoonists who drew badly enough to try.

Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie) was another cartoonist not likely to win any prizes for his drawing ability, but there was a strength of style there, too, that gave his work charm and made it instantly recognizable. When he died, his syndicate tried desperately to find someone to keep Orphan Annie alive. Several artists tried. All failed. “Horrible things have been happening to Little Orphan Annie,” wrote Paul Richard in the Washington Post. “Leapin’ Lizards, shoe looks awful!” Finally the syndicate had to begin reissuing the early strips to satisfy Annie’s dedicated, super-Republican fans.

Another comic-strip artist whose drawing might be called into question but whose style made him a giant in the field is Chester Gould, who created Dick Tracy.

From these examples, we can see how establishing your own style is really important.