WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY %$#&@ EYES?

Well, I sure am looking older lately!

I was shocked the other day when I saw how ancient I looked in the steak post. In particular, I was amazed to see that I had dead eyes in a couple of pictures (above). You know what dead eyes are...they're blank, lifeless eyes that indicate the person behind them has no significant mental life at all. You see them on older people. Geez!

Actually it's not the age indication that has me worrying. I'm paniced because the the dead eyes make me look stupid and half asleep! Is that what lies ahead for me?

Even Rembrandt (above) developed dead eyes. The gods can be cruel.

What's the difference between young, vibrant eyes (above), and the dead eyes that older people get? Well. young people have smooth, colorful skin, and less pronounced brows. They have wide-open eyes, and brighter pigment in the corneas and irises.

They also have more highlights. I guess that means their eyes are more moist.

Add highlights to Rembrandt's eyes (above) and they come alive. They look kind of evil here, but we'll overlook that. Hmmmm. Now this is interesting!

If highlights are all it takes to get more youthful eyes then we can all rejoice, because those are easy to acquire. All you need is untreated contact lenses. Maybe even ordinary glasses will do the trick.

I'm not worried about bags under the eyes or wrinkles. John Huston had plenty of both and still succeeded in looking good. What matters is vibrancy. It's all about your eyes hinting that you have some kind of mental life.

Hmmmmm. I see that Huston had squinty eyes. That seems to work as well as highlights. Alright, that gives me my agenda! Expect to see me squinting and wearing glasses more often!

PABLO PICASSO: CARTOONIST

What do you think of Picasso? A lot of animation cartoonists don't like him because he was the inspiration for U.P.A., which indirectly wrecked traditional full animation.  He certainly planted the idea in the public's mind that anything representational, even cartooning, was obsolete and old-fashioned.

I like him because he was a cartoonist at heart, even though he tried to refashion cartooning into a purely graphic art.

He colored his pictures (above) the way newspaper comic artists colored theirs.....well, somewhat. It was more of a caricature of the way newspaper cartoons were colored.

I wonder if the picture above influenced the way Dedini used color?

Without Picasso we wouldn't have had Virgil Parch, Cliff Sterrett, and Steinberg. We wouldn't even have had Searle.

Thanks to Amid Amidi and The Modesto Kid for the Steinberg-type picture above.

This (above) is a better example of what I meant when I said Picasso was influenced by newspaper comic color. He even added the dot pattern that newspapers used.

Picasso had a great sense of humor.  The figure above is magnificently ignorant (I mean that as a compliment).  It's really goofy and funny.

Sometimes I can't believe that he managed to get critics to accept stuff as overtly cartoony as this (above).

Really, is it so hard to see the influence of cartooning on his work (above)?  The man was a cartoonist. He was one of us, though you could argue that he undermined cartoon art by abstracting it and removing it from acting and storytelling.

Picasso's mission seemed to be to liberate cartoon technique from cartoons. He seemed to think we cartoonists had a bag of tricks that was too valuable to be entrusted to us only. 

The man obviously read newspaper comics. It could be that he was influenced by Herriman and Sterrett, Opper and Fenninger, maybe even funny animal comics, and simply didn't admit it.  He may have had closets full of comic pages that were thrown out after his death by custodians who didn't think they were important. 

BTW, I'm aware that some readers are saying, "Wait a minute! Herriman was influenced by Picasso, not the other way around!" To that I say don't be so hasty.  My guess is that Herriman and Picasso influenced each other. 

So what do ya think?

VINTAGE CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM THE "STRIPPER'S GUIDE" BLOG

I'm having difficulty using the computer because it's in my kid's old room and my kid is staying with us for the holiday.  He's pacing up and down in the living room right now, waiting for me to finish typing.  Aaaargh! I can't think when I have to write this fast!

Anyway, here's some vintage comic strip Christmas pages from a hundred years ago. Many thanks to Allan Holtz of Stripper's Guide (link in the sidebar) for the swipes. Click to enlarge.

About the strip above, I like the way this artist lays out the page. It's an ignorant style but there's something funny about it.  Sort of Hugh Lofting (Dr. Dolittle) meets Opper.

Above, The Katzenjammer Kids. I didn't used to like this strip but it's growing on me.

I like the simple, linear layout showing stupid characters sitting at a dinner table (detail above).

Very nice (above)! If I were an editor I'd run a strip like this regardless of whether the character had appeal. Reading this makes me want to draw.

Here's (above) the final panels in a two week long series where Santa develops a military plan to bomb a town with toys. Oops...I have to surrender the room to my kid. 'Hope you guys had a good Christmas!