TED GEISEL DRAWS HANDS

Geisel is, of course, the real name of the kids book author, Dr. Seuss. I love the way he used to draw hands. I've blogged about this subject before, but I thought it might be worth revisiting if I added photos of my own hands to help make my points.

Geez, this hand (above) is brilliant. It would belong in a cartoon museum if there was such a thing. What would you call it? A caricature of a hand?

Hmmm...well, not exactly.  Real hands (above) don't look at all like the kind Geisel drew. Geisel's hand has long, breadstick fingers and elegant sweeping lines. It's so different than a real hand that "caricature" doesn't seem to describe it.   

Here's (above) another Geisel hand. It looks gnarly and boney and...I'm searching for the word...deep-fried. It's less a caricature of a hand than a rethinking of what a hand is. 

A real hand (above) is a multi-purpose tool that can be used for pointing and a hundred other things. That's all fine and good but Geisel favors the hand that's tailor-made for a task, and so do I. Geisel's deep-fried hand is a specialty tool. It's meant for pointing and nothing else.  It would be no good for holding a spoon and sipping soup. 

In the course of a funny cartoon a character's hand design may change many times....yet, paradoxically, it still must recognizably be the same character's hand. Interesting, huh?

 Here (above) I'm guessing that Geisel just wanted to show how gnarly and ginger root-like a hand could be. Look at the joints and spots and wrinkles and hairs. Look at the weird bend in the thumb. Whatever the hand is pointing to is probably less interesting than the hand itself.

For comparison, here's (above) a real hand. How boring! In order to make interesting hands the Geisel way it might help to ask, "What is a cartoon hand for?" The answer is, it's for spilling and dropping, for scratching an itch, for insulting others with gestures, and for quirky, independent behavior that embarrasses its owner.

SHOULD CARTOONS END WITH A MESSAGE?

I'm always amazed when Saturday Morning cartoons end with an ethical lesson. I mean the cartoon itself is often incredibly unimaginative and intellectually deadening. It's pretty clear that this celebration of mediocrity is the real message of the show, regardless of what's tacked on at the end.

TV producers aren't the bad bad guys. They're just putting on what they think the public wants. It's the public that needs to be educated about cartoons and I think I'll take a shot at that right now. Sorry if I appear to be preaching to the choir.

  

Good, funny cartoons don't need a message at the end. The whole cartoon is a positive message.

First and foremost, a good cartoon always stimulates the intellect of the viewer, even when the subject matter is stupidity.  In the cartoon above Rube Goldberg makes everybody look hilariously awkward but he manages to convey real sentiment as well. The two friends at the top and the married couple below are genuinely touching. This is the power real cartooning has. It can convey deep meaning at the same time it clowns around. 

Even the color in a good cartoon is educational. I look at this creek BG above and I'm filled with wonder about the beauty of nature, and of shadow and silhouettes and hidden places. I'm reminded that spots of color in relative darkness can be awesomely mysterious and satisfying. Backgrounds like this remind us of the ability of subtle things to amaze.

Good cartoon color is immensely stimulating, all by itself. An artist will deliberately take two colors that clash and make them work together by adding a third color that relates them. When you first see them you rebel and want to say, "Hey, you can't do that!" but before you can get the thought out, you realize that the color does work. Improbable as it is, the darn thing works. That means the picture has educated you, made you more graphically sophisticated.

It's silly to take a cartoon (above) that never even attempts to do anything like that and praise it to the skies because it has a single positive message tacked on to the end. The cartoon itself is the message. By the time the fake message comes at the end, the real message has found its mark, and that message is sometimes: "Kids, never try to achieve. Do the easy thing. Let your mind go to sleep." 

Funny cartoon drawings are often the most stimulating.  The dog above is silly and hilarious for sure, but the hilarity forces you to pay more attention to the animal, and when you do you realize that the dog is the very essence of playful good will, energy and loyalty. The drawing exudes life force and seems to say, "Isn't it great to be alive?" It makes you want to be happy and make others happy. It may take a writer a whole book to achieve that, but a cartoonist can do it in a few strokes. 

Cartoon drawings often get their effect by innovating or calling our attention to something we'd overlooked before. Here (above) the artist reminds us of the graphic nature of our own bodies, how we ourselves are designs which can be manipulated. Just thinking about this makes me want to draw. Good cartoons create artists, and people who appreciate art.

Can good cartoon drawings make kids think? You bet they can! The two hand drawings above certainly make me think. They increase my awareness of hands as an expressive instrument and fill me with awe to think that the human mind can find such a wealth of possibility in such a commonplace thing as a hand.

This drawing (above) isn't just lampooning one individual. It asks questions about the nature of femininity and beauty. It applies sophisticated design to a joke, and because the drawing is funny the questions it brings up stick in our minds.

There's something about this picture (above) that's...I don't know what to call it...mischievous.  It makes me want to acquire skill so I can play jokes on people too. The skill of the humorous artist makes me want to hone my own skill, even if it's not related to art. 

It's the job of artists to raise the bar in society. Our achievement in a public forum like TV should inspire others to be good at the things they do. But you can't inspire people if the cartoon is bland, even with a message tacked on to the end.

This (above) is a complex drawing disguised as a simple one. Here two worlds collide. It says a lot about the gulf between different types of people, and encourages us to see the clash of worlds in a humorous light, which is not a bad lesson to teach a kid. The little guy is made to seem rigid and ridiculous for disdaining the offer of friendship. No lengthy lecture. It's accomplished painlessly, in one funny drawing. 

Should cartoons have messages tacked on? I can't imagine why. Good cartoons by their nature are already full of messages, even before the end comes along, and they're more nuanced and sophisticated than the phony, tacked-on kind.

THREE MILT GROSS HANDS

Milt Gross does terrific hands. Usually they're not as detailed as this ginger root with finger nails (above) but this is a close-up so it gets the royal treatment.

Here's (above) a knobby, pointy hand that manages to be more interesting than whatever it's pointing at. With funny hands like this to learn from why are we wasting our time drawing normal, boring hands? We're cartoonists! We're supposed to be inventive!

Here's a dandy's hand. Maybe it's a deaf dandy's hand because it looks like it's executing sign language. I wonder if sign language poses could be helpful for drawing funny hands?

I love this hand because it suggests a whole set of mannerisms and a character to go with it.

Sometimes interesting hands require interesting, quirky arms like the ones on this Ted Geisel drawing (above). It's great how a single hand can suggest the way a whole character should be drawn. That's because the hand was non-standard. Drawing standard body parts dulls the imagination.