House; Let's try Cartooning

So okay, 'House' as we'll call him here is a Senior. He's had Drawing and Painting and was interested in Drawing II but we didn't offer it this year, so we set up an independent-study "Advanced Drawing" for him. But he's not loving it. He's really disappointed that we haven't had a cartooning class for a few years. Alrighty then. Since House isn't planing on majoring in visual arts in college, and his drawing style is really expressive anyway, we'll throw something together here for the second quarter. Some of it will still be Drawing II stuff because it will apply to cartooning skills, but mostly, we're gonna switch gears and focus on the cartooning.

Here's the order I'm gonna go in for ya, House;

1. We'll start off with the grandaddy of all tooning, editorial cartooning. This is my forte' anyway.
2. Then we'll move into "Gag" or single-panel cartoons, this is the stuff of magazines and greeting cards. It's not near as easy as it looks
3. Next, we'll kick it up a notch and move on to the comic strip, the greatest American art form
4. Ultimately we'll gear up for comics and graphic novels. The may just be the most important form of literature and art of the 21st century.
5. Now, I'm not promising anything, but if there's time and you have a gift for things like Microsoft/Windows Movie Maker and/or Macromedia Flash- you might even have a chance to dip your toe into animation.

Now, to get you started, let's do a little bit of research shall we?

Read this introduction to Editorial cartooning from an Arizona State University course
Art Works- Political Cartooning

Lesson 1. Cartoons in Context

• A Historical Perspective of Cartooning
  
• The Purpose for Political Cartooning
  
• The Cartoon as Art
  
• Cartoons Then and Now

skip a couple of links and go on to

• Caricature: The Visual Foundation for Political Cartoons

Then do the exercises on the next link in your sketchbook.

• Caricature Exercise

It may seem like a lot for the first day or so, but I have some more challenging (and more fun) stuff for you to do once you get these done. Let me know if you think you need both Tues & Wed to get this all read and done. Otherwise I'll hit you with some new stuff on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, keep reading "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud.
If you think he does a pretty good job of explaining things, you may want to check out www.scottmccloud.com