AMERICAN MASTERS "Good Ol' Charles Schulz"

Chris, I know you're on vacation, so you may not even get this-

or ANYONE really interested in cartoning, this would be an awesome show that you would want to watch (or record). I will have parent/teacher conferences tonight so I will have to miss it.

Monday, October 29, 2007
9:00-10:30 p.m. ET

– From Charlie Brown to the Little Red-Haired Girl, Documentary Explores the Universal Appeal of the Artist Who Redefined the Comic Strip; Life and Work Intertwine in Cartoons, Home Movies, Original Animations and Interviews With Family Members, Real-Life Inspirations for Cartoon Characters and Cartoonists Jules Feiffer and Lynn Johnston –

Linus never sees the Great Pumpkin. The nefarious Red Baron always gets away. Good ol’ Charlie Brown never, ever kicks that football. Armed only with security blankets and vivid imaginations, the “Peanuts” gang endured unrequited love, loneliness, resentment and despair for almost 50 years — just like their creator, Charles M. Schulz. Every day for decades, Schulz poured out his heart on the comics page and helped us all laugh at life’s toughest struggles. Although characters like Snoopy and phrases like “Happiness is a warm puppy” became part of a billion-dollar global phenomenon, success failed to quell Schulz’s own doubts. “I can’t believe they think I’m that good,” Schulz said tearfully at the end of his last on-camera interview. “I just did the best I could.”

In “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz,” AMERICAN MASTERS presents an unexpected portrait of the man behind the most popular comic strip in history. The feature-length documentary premieres Monday, October 29, 2007, 9:00-10:30 p.m. ET on PBS.

Read more here

Cartooning Reading List

Anyone who's seriously interested in cartooning might want to get their hands on one or some of these books. I keep copies of them in my classroom if anyone would like to borrow one. Chris H (House) has the McCloud one checked out from me right now. Both of the Eisner books are actually used as college textbooks.

Understanding Comics
by Scott McCloud
1994 Harper
ISBN# 978-0060976255

Cartooning
by Mort Gerberg
1989 William Morrow and Company Inc. NYC, New York
ISBN# 1-55710-017-9

Comics and Sequential Art
by Will Eisner
1985 Poorhouse Press Tamarac, Florida
ISBN# 0-9614728-1-2

Graphic Storytelling and the Visual Narrative
by Will Eisner
1996 Poorhouse Press Tamarac, Florida
ISBN# 0-9614728-2-0

The Everything Cartooning Book
by Brad J. Guigar
2005 Adams Media Avon, Massatchussetts
ISBN# 1-59337-145-4

House: Caricature

A caricature is either a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness, or in literature, a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others. Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines. (Read more about caricatures on Wikipedia)

When you think of caricature, you probably think of those people at the fair or in malls or tourist traps who sit there with an easel and draw funny pictures of people with small bodies and huge heads. But did you know there is actually a National Caricaturist's Network with their own trade magazine and conventions and everything? There's even an online museum of some of the greatest caricaturists of the 19th and early 20th centuries at www.greatcaricatures.com.

If you're REALLY serious about learning to caricature and improving your drawing and especially caricaturing skills, I highly recommend that you take a look at Kirk Bjorndahl's website and he'll walk you through several exercises and steps designed to help.

Before you get started drawing your own caricatures, you might want to take a look at a few of the better caricaturists out there.

• John S. Pritchett - a cartoonist first from New York and now Hawaii
• Al Hirschfeld - was one of the all time greatest caricaturists, he is best known for Broadway and Hollywood stars.
• Julia Suits - boasts a number of nationally prominent newspapers as subscribers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle

Caricature Assignment #1 (Due Friday 10/26)
Google Image Search a decent portrait of each of the following;
Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel
Then, in your sketch book draw draw a caricature of each of them.

Caricature Assignment #2 (Due Tuesday 11/6)
Google Image Search a decent portrait of each of the following;
Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain
Then, in your sketch book draw draw a caricature of each of them.

Caricature Assignment #3 (Due Thursday 11/8)
Google Image Search a decent portrait of each of the following;
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson
Then, in your sketch book draw draw a caricature of each of them.

Caricature Assignment #4 (Due Monday 11/12)
Google Image Search a decent portrait of each of the following;
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Brittney Spears, OJ Simpson
Then, in your sketch book draw draw a caricature of each of them.

Caricature Assignment #5 -Last one, I promise! (Due Wednesday 11/14)
In your sketch book draw draw a caricature of each of the following;
A classmate, a teacher, an administrator, yourself

Whew! That ought to keep you busy for a while. Sometime between now and then I will post another "web-quest" for you on actual editorial cartooning- but the practice you'll be getting from this will make sure you're ready for drawing those.

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