Here's a drawing I did for an ad advertising a show I used to work on. I had to cut and paste with real Scotch Tape and scissors because I didn't know how to use Photoshop. Anyway, this is the way I and a lot of other artists (I think we all took our cue from ace girl artist Lynne Naylor in those days) used to draw girls. I went on like this for years then one day it occured to me that I wasn't drawing them right. They just weren't funny enough. After thinking about it I decided to simplify things by starting with a fundamental question: 
In the light of this revelation I further realized that the greatest girl artist ever was Don Martin. His girls pass with highest honors because they look just like men. And funny? They're as funny as a girl could possibly be!
Then it occurred to me to ask, "Why are we always drawing beautiful girls?" Beautiful girls aren't funny (except for Katie Rice's girls)! Funny girls are always too skinny or too fat, too old or too young. They include old bitties and battle-axes, gossipy teens and mean girl scouts. Blogger won't let me type in the font I need and it's screwing up my sentense spacing so I think I'll end this. BTW, these last 2 drawings are by by Milt Gross
These are two pictures by Gary Panter, a modern painter who showed lots of promise early on but who seems to have lost interest in color and, so far as I know, is now doing black & white, punk-style comic books. 
Ok, it's not fine art but it's fun art. I'd love to have a big canvas of "Elvis Zombie" hanging in my living room.
Here's two by Phillip Burke who used to paint rock stars for Rolling Stone. He insisted that the subjects pose live, in his studo. He'd set them up near a sunny window and paint from natural light using oils . The original portrait of Mailer (above) was six feet high. 
Agove, another one by Burke. He seems to have been influenced by Matisse portraits. Once again, it's not fine art but it's kinda fun to look at.
For comparison here's a couple of Rubens sketches which are indisputably fine art. I love these drawings but seeing them doesn't make me want to give up on Elvis Zombie.
What do you think?
Here's two pictures of me. The top one was drawn by Mike Fontanelli and is influenced a bit by John K's caricature style. The bottom one was drawn 100% by John and was used in a Ren & Stimpy episode called "Onward and Upward."
What this demonstrates is that a caricaturist is not confined to exaggerating what he sees. We only have to do that for the most significant parts. We can make up other parts. We can put something in just because its funny, as long as in some sense it still feels like the person we're drawing.
The holiday weekend's starting and I don't think too many people will be reading this blog over the next three days. Good! Now's the time to sneak in a couple of serious posts! Brace yourself because here comes...
WHY SUICIDE SUCKS!
In case you don't know, Vincent is an ace Spumco director and a heck of a nice guy to boot. "So what?", you're saying to yourself, "The world is full of talented, nice guys!" No it's not, not like this. Vincent, in addition to everything else, is... a CHICK MAGNET!
I don't mean he's attractive to women. Nothing as common as that. I mean women go nuts when he's around. Crazy! They can't keep their hands off him! If Vincent is in a restaurant the women in the room will, one by one, make excuses to leave their boyfriends and discreetly drop their phone numbers onto Vincent's table. He picks up his waterglass and there's a phone number on the bottom. Checks from the waitress have a number. Girls' foreheads have numbers. Knuckles and eyelids have numbers. The mind boggles to think what else might have numbers!
OK, here it is! The future of prime-time TV animation lies with dramatic, over-the-top, fully animated, 2D, series programs! Here's the way they might look:
Lots of intense acting. Cartoony styles are great for this.
Cartoon drawings are more forgiving of mistakes. They make it possible to animate faster.
No, the guy below isn't grabbing her breast. It looks like that because I had to draw fast from the TV screen and didn't have time to correct it.
Cartoony drawings allow for a lot of distortion. Never the same drawing twice.
It's a chance to bring real cartooning back to TV.
How do you put text inbetween pictures? It looks like I just did it but I don't know how I did it. And how do you change the order of pictures? I tried cutting and pasting and clicking and dragging but nothing worked. Grrrrrr!
Both of these pictures of me were drawn by John K...well, sort of. The color picture, which is gigantic in the original, is my redrawing of a tiny black and white caricature that John did of me. The inscription sounds like I'm taking credit for it but John wrote that on the original so I dutifully inscribed it. I kinda like it, even with the misspelling. It's as if the subject of the picture was giving a gift to his own psyche. I'll bet psyches don't get many gifts! 
