Raymond de la Nézière, Animal Artist

Raymond de la Nézière (1865-1953) was a French illustrator and comic artist with a gift for capturing expressive poses in animal caricature.

He began drawing and painting from a young age, encouraged by his mother, who was a painter and potter. 

In his early years he painted in oil and then began using more gouache and watercolor.

 

He illustrated many books and sketched all sorts of animals, sometimes in naturalistic poses, and sometimes anthroporphized as human types.

He also participated as a hunter and a horseback rider.

How Phil May Built a Drawing

Victorian caricaturist Phil May (1864-1903) described his method of building a drawing:

"First of all I get the general idea, of which I sketch a rough outline, and from this general idea I never depart. Then I make several studies from the model in the poses which the drawing requires, and redraw my figures from these studies." 

"The next step is to draw the picture completely, carefully putting in every line necessary to fulness of detail: and the last to select the particular lines that are essential to the effect I want to produce, and take the others out."

Sometimes, according to David Cuppleditch, "he transferred his figures from sketchbook to working page with tracing paper. He nearly always worked with a very sharp pencil or crayon edge so as to achieve simple, strong lines."

George Hacklett said, "The one important lesson learned from his Bulletin work was the value of a longer and heavier line, made imperative by the large scale of his cartoons."

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Previous post on Phil May  

Wikipedia on Phil May (caricaturist)

Quotes are from the book: Phil May: The Artist and His Wit

Sentient Insect Spaceships

Here are some sentient insect vehicles for a 1980s video game.

I looked through lots of photos of insects, trying to dream up different ways to use the body plan of a beetle or a fly as a starting point.



A vehicle has a lot of the same features as a natural creature—optical sensors, landing gear, external armor, wings and wing covers, fuel intake tubes, and weapons systems.



The goal was to give them a personality. I comparing them to a dog with wagging tail or a pesky housefly.

  More on creating concept art in my book Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.

H.M. Bateman's "The Man Who..." Illustrations

Henry Mayo Bateman (British 1887-1980) created a popular series of comic illustrations that show a man doing something socially inept and suffering the consequences.

Here's the reaction that happened to "The man who threw a snowball at St. Moritz."

Or to "The man who asked for a second helping at a city company dinner."

Or "The man who lit his cigar before the royal toast."

And finally "The man who stole the prize marrow." (What we in America would call a gourd.)

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Henry Mayo Bateman on Wikipedia

The Mad Maestro

The 1930s was a time of economic depression, but it was also the decade when cartoon animation went through its greatest period of creative experimentation and audience enthusiasm.



(Link to video on YouTube) Today we read a lot about Disney and Warner Bros (Looney Tunes), but not as much about other studios, such as Fleischer, Screen Gems, Walter Lantz, Terry Toons, and MGM.

For example here's a short MGM film about a conductor trying to work with an uncooperative orchestra. Director Friz Freleng, started at Disney and Warner and left for a period to work at MGM, later returning to Warner Bros. He was always fond of tackling musical comedy, with unerring timing and an understanding of stage performance. His friend, animator Hugh Harman, gives the animation some fun character moments and over-the-top action.

The "rubber hose" style of animation makes the character feel fluid and dynamic. 

These drawings come from a 1941 book How to Make Animated Films by Nate Falk, which summarizes the state of the art and the business at the end of the decade. It's available as a free download on Archive.org or as a physical book from Amazon.

Edit: The music is an overture written by Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) called "Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien," (A morning, a noon and an evening in Vienna). Here's fiery version conducted by Zubin Mehta. 

Hultgren Cartoons

Ken Hultgren (1915 - 1968) was an animator and a comic artist for Walt Disney and went on to write instructional books about cartoon-inspired drawing.

His construction method emphasizes the three-dimensional solidity, based on ball-shaped forms connected by a line of action.

His anthropomorphic animals adapt the animal types to bipedal poses. 

Underneath cartoon caricatures are simple designs that he lays out as 2D shapes and builds out as 3D forms, complete with centerlines. 

He often shows a drawing in two stages of construction, so that you can see how he carries the gesture into the whole pose, and how he alternates straight and curved lines.

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 Books by Ken Hultgren: 

The Art of Animal Drawing Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature

The Know-How of Cartooning

Happy New Year from Little Nemo

In the world of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, the world gets smaller and smaller.

Little Nemo, 1908

Nemo is confronted by the bearded old man representing the previous year, but the old man can't hold on. As he falls away, the baby new year makes his appearance.

I'm impressed with how McCay was able to communicate the idea that the world was shrinking in the top panels, and the way he gradated the color in the background of the bottom panels.
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Book: Winsor McCay. The Complete Little Nemo 1905–1909

Cubies: A 1913 Satire on Cubism

The 1913 Armory Show introduced Cubism and other modern ideas to the New York art world. In the wake of the confusion and chaos that ensued, Mary Mills and Earl Harvey Lyall wrote and illustrated an alphabet book called "The Cubies."

"F's for the future for which Cubies hanker;—
To Hals, Perugino and all that old crew
They give up the Past without envy or rancor,
While saying in tones than which naught could be franker:
'Come, move on,—it's our turn! They have finished with you.'
—F's for the Future with Cubies hanker."
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Read the rest at Public Domain Review

Cartoons of Bernard Partridge

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin check up on the state of the world.

Bernard Partridge (English, 1861-1945) was a book illustrator and a cartoonist for the humor magazine Punch.

His illustrations were admired by Adolph Menzel. Many of his cartoons dealt with themes of war and peace during the era of the Great Wars.
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Bernard Partridge on Wikipedia.

How They Made "Big Heads"

"Big Heads" was a game show for British TV where ordinary contestants wore giant celebrity heads while trying to accomplish slapstick challenges.

Adrian Teal, designs for Prince Harry for "Big Heads"

To make the big head masks, producers began by commissioning drawings of each celebrity from multiple angles.  

This making-of video (Link to YouTube) shows how the drawings were interpreted in 3D clay sculpts. They cast the sculpts into lightweight shells that were a base for flocking, felt, paint, and wiggly eyes.

Sculpt in process by Plunge Creations. 

The heads had to be strong, light, and safe because contestants routinely had to fall on them.



Here are some highlights from the show, which aired on the ITV network. (Link to YouTube) Unfortunately after all this work, the show proved a disappointment, and was canceled after its first season.
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Caricaturist Adrian Teal's website
Lots more pictures and info at Plunge Creations website.

Eduard Thöny's Caricatures

I always encourage young caricaturists to study the masters of the past, rather than looking too much at the contemporary scene.

Eduard Thöny (1866-1950) was a German caricaturist best known for producing as many as 3400 drawings for the political satire magazine Simplicissimus. 

He was the son of a woodcarver. Many of his silhouettes seem carved in wood.  He studied in Munich and Paris. He traveled with his artist friends to Marseilles, Algiers, Tunis, Naples and Rome.

The graphic impact comes from simplified shapes and well organized tones. He liked to contrast two different characters: young vs. old, rich vs. poor, man vs. woman. According to Kunkel Fine Art:

"In his illustrations for Simplicissimus he depicted figures from all walks of life – members of the aristocracy and the proletariat, military figures and the bourgeoisie, bohemians and the elite. Themes like social vanity, intellectual blindness and moral neglect abound in his work but his drawings were never designed to injure or harm the characters depicted. His intention was that of an anthropologist, using ink, pen and brush to capture the character type behind each individual."

Look at the long toes on this guy and the repeating round forms on the woman.

The cropping of the man's pose makes him seem bigger and closer. He experimented with novel techniques in drawing, combining India ink with opaque white gouache, and laying down tones with a spray technique lends many of the caricatures a painterly quality.

Drunken ladies surround a rich old man, and they have playfully switched hats. Who is in charge of this situation?

The printed work of the day encouraged a limited palette of flat colors defined by a few selected lines.

Eduard Thöny, Munich Largesse, 1911
Mixed media on paper laid down on cardboard, 33.5 : 27 cm

For most of its run, Simplicissimus was tolerated by the government, but over the years, artists, writers, and editors were occasionally fined or jailed for mocking the clergy or the Kaiser. News of these sanctions increased circulation, and the magazine flourished until it began to reinforce the official party line. It went into hiatus in 1944.

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Eduard Thöny on Wikipedia
Bio on Karicatur Museum

Are Comics Respectable?

Micheal, a community college student in Idaho, asks:

Jack Kirby (1917-1994) at his drawing table

a) Do you consider comics and graphic novels to be an art form? Is it a respectable one?

Yes, comics are an art form. Like movies, they are a form that can communicate stories, characters, emotions, and ideas. They can be a showcase for a variety of styles of drawing and writing, and an infinite range of moods. There's nothing about the form that makes them respectable or not respectable. Quality work in any art form is always worthy of respect. But you'll also find uninspired, mannered, and derivative work in any art form, too.

Lynd Ward, illustration God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts

b) Do you feel that a book with illustrations has less literary merit than one without?

It's a circular question, because the term "literary" usually refers to the world of writing, not that of pictures. So an illustrated book isn't strictly "literary." But if you're talking about artistic merit, my answer would be yes, an illustrated book is entitled to be regarded as a work of art. The merit has nothing to do with the form, but rather with how well the work is executed and how successfully it communicates to its audience.

Conventional critics and professional associations coalesce around art forms that are familiar and popular. Literary critics often don't know how to respond to illustrated books for adults because there isn't much illustrated fiction outside of graphic novels. It's rare to find a critic who can respond intelligently to the unique synergy between art and writing.

Superman comic from 1938
10 cent investment; $3.2 million auction record

c) As a person who has studied the masters and been heavily involved with art education, do you feel that comics and graphic novels are fairly represented in the professional art world?

Are comics fairly represented? I don't know, but they certainly have made a splash in the professional art world. A single printed comic book has sold at auction for millions of dollars. Important galleries specialize in comic art. Cartoon art has been featured in museum shows everywhere from Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art to the Norman Rockwell Museum. Art schools offer classes in sequential art. Professors in leading universities have specialized in dissecting the the language of comics. There are books recounting the history of comics. And there are professional awards, professional associations, and popular conventions.

So, yes, comics have earned a place in the professional art world. That doesn't mean it's easy to make a living in comics. And I'm not sure all that gold-plated respectability is always a good thing for any art form. Have the Oscars® encouraged people to make better movies? I'm doubtful about that.

As we think about honors, awards, and auction prices, let's not forget the silly fun of comics, the flashlight-under-the-covers thrill of comic books that your parents don't want you to read, the over-the-top craziness of experimental comics that authorities frown upon, the guilty pleasure of comic books rescued from the dumpster, thrown there by someone who told you to read something more educational.

Being in the Hall of Fame is fine, but the most vital art forms always have one foot in the back alley. Shakespeare wrote for the Globe Theater, which was a raucous, bawdy place for commoners. Mozart's operas were written for low-class working folks. Bob Dylan wasn't thinking about the Nobel Prize for Literature when he wrote his guitar lyrics. He was just trying to channel something deep and ancient, doing it first and foremost for the crazy love of it.

Book: Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Simplification in Cartooning

The Famous Artists Cartoon Course uses a lawn mower to demonstrate the importance of simplification.

"Here is a photo of a power mower, straight from your morgue [photo reference file]."

"Here it is drawn in pencil and ink line. It has been simplified a bit, but it's still not as simple as it could be."

"Ah! This is what we have been working for—your reader will have no doubt as to what this is, even though we have cut out about seventy percent of the detail — and it will reproduce better."

"Of course you could spend hours copying every detail, putting in every nut and bolt. This would be great if you were selling lawn mowers — but you are not. All you want is to let your reader know that it is a lawn mower. Maybe you're the type that's just nuts about drawing lawn mowers — don't get carried away. Simplify, simplify and let your reader's imagination fill in the details. If you draw the lawn mower in complete detail, and the other props in the panel are simplified, your lawn mower will be out of key with the rest of the drawing."

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The Famous Artists Cartoon Course is available as downloadable PDFs for free. Thanks to Mike O'Brien of Random Nerds