How To Draw A Cartoon Pilgrim

Thanksgiving is almost here, and this year I thought I’d show you how to draw your very own cartoon Pilgrim!

When you’re finished, feel free to tweet, pin, email or otherwise share a pic of your Pilgrim with me and I’ll post it over at Pinterest! And if you’d like to grab the tutorial to post on your own blog or website, you’re more than welcome to. (A link back would be appreciated.) Enjoy:

How to draw a cartoon pilgrim

Easy, right? You should try out my other how-to-draw tutorials too! Here’s just a few:

Feel free to check out my Thanksgiving cartoons too!

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art – 2013

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013

This weekend was the Festival of Cartoon Art at Ohio State University. It was also the grand opening of the new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. It was a tremendous weekend, and I thought I’d share a bit of the experience.

I arrived Friday evening, so I missed both the academic presentations and the ribbon cutting, but my flight was good and I had copious legroom, so I can’t complain.

I stayed at the Blackwell Inn which is where I believe the event was held when my wife and I first attended 12 years ago. Three years ago I found the shuttle buses were often late, and the Blackwell is just a short walk so I could come and go as I pleased. If you can get a room for the next festival I’d highly recommend it.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast at McDonald’s, I checked in and almost immediately ran into Rich Diesslin and we chatted for a bit. Then I found Stacy Curtis and his wife and we caught up over coffee. After that it was time to get things rolling with the presentation of the until recently dormant Elzie Segar Award to Lucy Shelton Caswell. And not only did she get a lovely statuette, but a standing ovation from the appreciative audience. Congrats, Lucy!

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Lucy Shelton Caswell
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Elzie Segar Award

After that it was on to hear the first speaker of the day, editorial cartoonist Matt Bors. While I’ve certainly become more aware of Bors’ work in recent years, I haven’t made the time to really dig into it, so I was glad to get the opportunity. I very much enjoyed how Bors is, as he put it, “inspired but the urge to call bullshit.” And I especially appreciated how he strives to avoid the standard low hanging fruit type gags.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Matt Bors

Between speakers I got to say hello to old friend Tom Stemmle and his wife who was snapping pictures. It’s always so nice to see them, and the Mrs. usually mails out photos. I can’t wait to see them!

Next up was Eddie Campbell, another artist whose work I’m not familiar with, but, again, he was an entertaining speaker. His comic and video about his encounter with the possibly fictitious insect, the Snooter, was a highlight. Well, except for the rectal exam part. (I really hope that bug is fictitious.)

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Eddie Campbell

After Campbell I had a reasonable lunch and then gorged myself at the new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. There’s so much incredible material on display that I was overwhelmed. Honestly, I teared up a bit while taking in a Watterson watercolor. This beautiful new facility and its contents has to been seen to be believed. Enjoy this small sampling:

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum 1
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum 2
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Art Glass
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Reading Room
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum 3
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Bill Watterson 1
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Peter Arno
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Ernie Bushmiller
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Walt Kelly
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Will Eisner
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum George Booth
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Lynn Johnston
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Hulk
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Sergio Aragones
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum John Byrne
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Jack Davis
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Carl Barks
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Bill Watterson 2
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Winsor McCay

It was at the museum that I ran into Chris Sparks, editor of the Team Cul de Sac book. He and I chatted about the exhibit and I signed a few Team Cul de Sac books for him, immediately lowering their values. I was so happy to be able to be part of that book, and I’m certainly feeling Richard Thompson‘s absence at the festival this year. I’ve heard there’s going to be a combined show of Watterson and Thompson here next year. I’m going to have to figure out a way to come see it.

I headed back over to the Wexner center to hear Stephan Pastis speak when I ran into cartoony pal Maria Scrivan. While her very patient husband read nearby, Maria and I talked business, success, failures, editor/spouses and more. It was so much fun that I ended up being late to Pastis’ talk. My apologies to the people I stepped on while finding my seat. I’m an oaf.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stephan Pastis

I don’t know if it was coming after similarly structured chats from Bors and Campbell, but I was hoping for less of a general audience aimed talk from Pastis and something meatier for the largely cartoonist audience. Still, it was entertaining, the hate mail stories are amazing, and the Cathy Guisewite naked Twister story is a real gem. (I’m not making that up.)

Following a short break we got to see the first real screening of the new documentary, Stripped, by Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder. It’s really a love letter to the craft of cartooning and its creators. There are plenty of laughs, a lot of head-nodding-in-agreement moments, and even some very rare audio of Watterson himself talking cartoons.

The end of the film dealt more with the future of traditional comic strips and the promise of webcomics and their business model, which I found interesting, but I admit I would’ve liked to hear more than this one possible way forward.

They answered questions afterward, many of which dealt with the print to web transition. It got me thinking, are there any ‘old school’ comic strips that are in the process of or have successfully transitioned/embraced the web-centered paradigm? It feels to me like there’s a very sharp line between traditional print comics and web comics. Am I missing someone? I wonder what will happen to current print cartoonists when the newspaper model finally hits bottom.

One more thing about the film – I know the focus is on the comic strip genre, but I would’ve liked to have seen at least a small representation of gag cartoonists and editorial cartoonists as well. But, there are lots of things I’d like that don’t necessarily happen, and I can understand their need to target just the one discipline.

After that it was back to the Blackwell where I ordered pizza from a small local pizzeria (I’m in a college town after all!) and took time to type up the first day. I opted out of the Hernandez brothers presentation that evening as I ran out of steam and just wanted to enjoy my pizza in my Tabasco pajamas while watching the last half of Blade 2. It’s not pretty, but, hey, it’s honest.

The next day I got up, had breakfast and headed over to the Billy Ireland Museum for a behind the scenes tour of the stacks. It did not disappoint. The amount of material carefully and loving archived here is unbelievable. I joked with another tour attendee that I might try to hide so I could stay behind and bask in all the cartoony goodness, but I was only half joking.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stacks 1
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stacks 2
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stacks 3
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stacks 4
OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Stacks 5

I think when Andertoons is all said and done, this would probably be the place the send all my originals and stuff. They can use them as coasters or scratch paper or something.

After some writing and a quick lunch, it was on to Brian Basset’s talk. An OSU grad, he talked about his early career as an editorial cartoonist, his first strip, Adam@Home, and his other strip Red and Rover. He detailed his love of drawing body language, how he portrays his older brother in the strip, and how difficult it is to maintain Rover as a real dog.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Brian Basset

Up next was Amulet‘s Kazu Kibuishi. I was quite excited to hear his talk and was very impressed. Both the boy and I adore his Amulet series, and Kibuishi had lots of art and process to share. He also shared a hilarious story about his near-death encounter with a Murphy bed, talked about how he sees himself more as a teachers aid encouraging kids to read, and then wowed the audience by taking questions while creating a painting on his laptop in real time. Amazing.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Kazu Kibuishi

Finishing things up was Bone’s Jeff Smith who shared six of his favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons. It was so great to see them in 35mm with an audience. A true joy and what a perfect “That’s all, folks!” for the weekend.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Jeff Smith

Then it was a ride to the airport to see if I could get a flight home. My original flight was cancelled, but Chance at the United desk worked hard to get me reserved on two possible flights. I had dinner, grabbed some candy, found a seat where I could plug in my phone, and finished up this blog. Thankfully, I was able to get home safe, sound, and reasonably on time.

OSU Festival of Cartoon Art 2013 - Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog & Beer

A big thanks to everyone involved at the Billy Ireland for putting together another fantastic event, a big thanks to the good folks at United for getting me home (eventually), and the biggest thanks to the Mrs. for taking the full brunt of the kids for the weekend. I’m looking forward to the next Festival of Cartoon Art in 2016.

If you’re interested, here’s my 2010 and  2007 (part 12 & 3) blogs on the festival.

Cartoons Make Your Content Powerful

Cartoon 1

We all like cartoons. But did you know they also provide a powerful punch to any social media or content strategy?  In fact, according to many expert social media blogs, they are an easy to use but  surprisingly powerful force in engaging audiences of all types across any industry.

Cartoons are one of our oldest forms of visual storytelling. The first comic book was introduced in the early 1800’s, and it didn’t take long for advertisers to begin using them in their marketing and learning how effective cartoons are in getting customers’ attention.

Cartoon 2

In fact, a University of California Santa Barbara study found that cartoons are 51% more effective than text in conveying a concept. By representing complex ideas in a fun, visual, and memorable way, cartoons are incredibly effective tools. (Fun fact – Did you know Dr. Seuss got his start in advertising?)

Ilya Spitalnik in a B2C blog, Why Cartoons Have Power in Businesssuggests one reason why cartoons work so well:

“Because our childhood conditioned us to accept cartoons as a non-threatening form of communication, we absorb their messages in adulthood in a very different way compared to the jaded “keep your guard up” attitude we typically adopt… By eliminating the critical thinking for even a split second, we are suddenly open to new messages.”

And before you insert that next unremarkable picture into your blog or on your Facebook page, consider this; research shows that 64% of people, when given the option, would rather share social media containing a cartoon than a standard stock photo.

Cartoon 3

At Andertoons, we offer cartoon subscriptions that provide ongoing access to both timeless and trending cartoons. You and your company will have access to a constantly growing library of thousands of cartoons to complement your content. And you can use them in all sorts of ways including social media, email, and more.

Have a cartoon success story? We’d love to hear it! Leave a comment and let us know.

Thanksgiving Cartoons – 2013 Feast

Thanksgiving cartoons are usually not my favorite to write because there’s not a lot of material to mine. But for whatever reason, this year they came relatively quickly (September!) and I squirrelled them away to draw up on a busy and/or bad writing week. Boy was I glad I did!

A few weeks back we had to travel for a family wedding and 3/4 of the Anderson family unit was sick (including me), so having these Thanksgiving cartoons at the ready came in handy. Anyway, I thought I’d share a little info on each of them to get us all in the mood for Turkey Day! Enjoy:

Thanksgiving Cartoons 1

I’m not normally a purely visual gag kind of cartoonist. There are people that do that well, but I’ve found myself to be more interested in playing with language. This is also a fairly difficult scene to pull off, so you’d think I’d save it for last, right? Nope! I dug right in and spent most of a day on this one Thanksgiving cartoon. (Normally I can create 3 cartoons start to finish in about two hours.) I think it was worth it, but because it had me a little out of my element I’m still not sure. What do you think?

Thanksgiving Cartoons 2

This cartoon went through all kinds of changes to the caption. At various points the turkey had ordered night vision goggles, a hot air balloon, a taxi, a trampoline and more. The trickiest part was the airline portion. I wanted to get across that the turkey was headed someplace exotic, but people calling to check on credit card charges don’t tell you what was purchased so I couldn’t write anything like “two tickets to the Bahamas.” Thankfully there’s an actual Hawaiian Airlines which solved my problem.

Thanksgiving Cartoons 3

This Thanksgiving cartoon came to me by working backwards. “It’s a little dry” is something probably everyone has heard connected to a turkey, but I wanted to take it a show just how dry this particular bird ended up being. I was also considering putting in one of those cow skulls and some heat lines, but thought it might complicate what I was hoping to make more of a subtle joke.

Thanksgiving Cartoons 4

This caption got completely reworked after showing it  my wife. The original was “I thought Halloween was last month.” Now, my wife being the good cartoon editor she is said “Why would the pig dress up?”

“It’s not the pig, the turkey is tricking him and dressing him up so he gets eaten instead,” I explained.

“OK, but that’s not clear with that caption,” she said. And she was totally right.

It took me about an hour of deep thought (OK, 20 minutes of deep thought, some BuzzFeed browsing and a short nap) but I think adding “Thanks for the help” and the “Turkee” sign got this one working. Actually now I that I look at it I think it might be my favorite of the Thanksgiving cartoons this year. WOO!

Thanksgiving Cartoons 5

I did a bit of research for this cartoon because stuff is always funnier if it’s accurate. (See the gourd cartoon from Halloween.) The idea here is that the therapist, while working with his client, takes a moment to get a little expert Thanksgiving advice. I’d considered giving the guy more of a hungry look, but thought that was a little easy.

Thanksgiving Cartoons 6

This is not only the last of the new Thanksgiving cartoons, but the wordiest by far. But you know what? It was even wordier right up until I was typing in the caption. The original caption was:

“OK, last thing. It’s come to my attention that some people in the office are hanging up those little hand turkey drawings their kids made and some employees, and I’m not saying who, find those quite offensive and have complained to HR. So, if you could do me a favor and just take them down…”

Whew! Pant pant…  That’s a mouthful isn’t it?! So a little pruning later it’s certainly more readable, but I have to admit it lost just a little zip.

So that’s it for this year. Feel free to head on over to the main site and check out all of my Thanksgiving cartoons. And have a great Thanksgiving!

Wanna see more blogs about Thanksgiving Cartoons? Here you go:

 

4 Tools Thor Has Used Besides A Hammer

It’s only a few more days until Thor: The Dark World comes out and I cannot wait to see him put the hammer down again. But did you know that over the years the God of Thunder has associated himself with all kinds of different tools? Prepare to journey into mystery:

Thor’s Telephone (1914)

1914 Thor Telephone Ad

A hammer is a great way to drive your point home. But there are times to hammer, and there are times to yammer. So when you need to talk out your differences with your mischievous half-brother, give him a call on your Bell telephone. (And don’t forget Frigga on All-Mother’s day.)

Thor’s Clothes/Dish Washer (1945)

1945 Thor Authomatic Washer Ad

I’m betting with all that fighting and gallivanting around that Thor’s cape gets dirty and stinky pretty quickly. Not to mention all the mugs and dishes from those Asgardian feasts! But who’s got room for two washers?! Thankfully Thor’s Automagic (that’s right, auto-magic) Washer makes short work of both tasks! I wonder if it has a Mjölnir setting.

Thor’s Electrical Inverter (1951)

1951 Thor Inverter Ad

We all know Thor can bring the lightning, but that’s a lot of power to control. It’s a good thing he’s got his electronically controlled inverter! Whether he needs to zap an alien army, or just recharge his cell phone, he can be sure his lightning is always just right.

Thor’s Satellite Launching Rocket (1961)

1961 Thor Rocket Ad

If you’re Heimdall you can see and hear just about everything. But if you’re like the rest of us, you can’t watch the game, check tomorrow’s weather, or text your Earth girlfriend without a few satellites orbiting overhead. But how do you get them up there? Why your Thor rocket of course. That’s right, Thor’s got rocketry covered too.

And if that’s not enough to tide you over, check out this PDF catalog of Thor tools! There’s drills, grinders, sanders, saws, and, of course hammers.