No Wonder Ken Digs Her

Bild-LilliThis from Australia’s Herald Sun:

A 1959 Barbie doll dressed in a zebra-print swimming costume and sunglasses sold for nearly £3000 ($7585) today at a British auction of about 4000 of the toys.

What does this have to with cartoons, you ask?

Barbie’s looks were inspired by Bild Lilli, a 1950s comic strip prostitute created for German newspaper Bild.

Oh my…

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Things I Hate To Draw

Horse 2A

I like to draw cartoons. And it’s a good thing, because it’s my bread and butter.

But even someone who loves to draw, and does a fair amount of it, finds some subjects they just hate.

So here’s the stuff I hate drawing in cartoons:

  1. Horses – Mine always look like sausages with stick legs. Seriously. If I ever get a horse I’m going to name it bratwurst.
  2. Orchestras – I used to be a musician, so I get lost in the details. Plus there’s a crapload to draw. If I did these more often I’d really have to do some research to see how other cartoons have done it.
  3. Cars – I always have to go out to the driveway, take a picture of the car, and work from that. And it still looks awful. Cars today are just so roundy. Oh for the days when cars were either boxy or jet-inspired.
  4. Wolves – It’s had to find the right balance between a dog, and Wile E. Coyote.
  5. Bananas – You have to get the curves and straight lines just right, or it looks like one of my horses without the stick legs. And that little stem portion is a bugger too.
  6. Skeletons – I can do it, and make it look pretty good, but it’s gotta be a really killer skeleton joke to justify the time. I guess you could say they’re the bone of my existence. (But you shouldn’t.)
  7. Cell phones – It used to be you could show that little nub of an antenna, or the open flip phone, but now it’s difficult to tell if your character is talking into an iPhone or a bar of soap.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s some of the worst.

There’s plenty of artists that read this blog. What about you guys? What do you hate to draw?

Chocolate Cartoon – Part 2

You might remember that last week I was working on a chocolate bar themed cartoon.

Here’s the final art for it:

Chocolate-Cartoon

Normally I do my standard gray wash, but this one just needed to be line art.

I think the biggest issue for me on this one was the face on the chocolate bar. How much of the lettering to remove?

After about a half hour of playing with it, I think it came out OK. It”s there for anthropomorphic purposes, but the lettering is still clear.

I also normally crop a little closer to the characters, but there’s a reason for that too.

Anyway, I’ll have more to tell you about this cartoon later… Stay tuned!

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Welcome!

TypepadToday I’m proud to be Typepad’s featured blog. I’m on their homepage with a nice little write-up, and I’m assuming some new folks are stopping by to check me out. (Regular readers please make them feel welcome and be on your best behavior. I’m looking at you, Lynch.)

Anyway, for those of you just joining us, my name is Mark Anderson and I’m a gag cartoonist in the Chicago area.

Right now my work is in your local magazine rack in Forbes, Good Housekeeping, and Reader’s Digest. I also work with a number of greeting card companies.

I’ll keep this short and get back to more substantive blogging, but before I go, please also check out my website, Andertoons.com. There’s a ton of cartoons, as well as several different daily cartoon RSS feeds.

(Bonus for TypePad users – Add a daily cartoon to your blog sidebar with a few clicks. It’s easy!)

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