February 3, 2021

"How to Draw Literary Cartoons."

Interview with the artist, Amy Kurzweil, here. Sample:
What’s your favorite New Yorker cartoon trope or cliché (e.g., desert island, grim reaper, Rapunzel tower)? 
I’ll go with the Moby Dick trope, because whales are easy to draw, and I like a good metaphor for the unattainable.

Ah, yes... I was just reading those pages in "The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons":

IMG_2356 

AND: Here's the video with the title that's in the post title. I've moved it below the fold because it's autoplaying. I hate that. But it's a nice video about the great subject of drawing. And they even talk about the "Seinfeld" episode with the confusion about New Yorker cartoons:

27 comments:

Greg Hlatky said...

Recaptioning everything with "I think I'm going to kill myself".

Lucid-Ideas said...

"...because whales are easy to draw..."

Way to go. You just insulted every whale on planet earth. Real whales aren't just curves.

mezzrow said...

Amy's dad might outlive me. He might outlive her, too.

Only the future knows.

Peter said...

Bob Mankoff analyses New Yorker cartoons
https://youtu.be/FKxaL8Iau8Q

Che Dolf said...

trope

Remember when people could talk about art without using that retarded term, the point of which is to signal condescending detachment from the dissected idea?

Wince said...

Nothing elicits open expression like being interviewed on camera by your neurotic boss/editor.

mockturtle said...

I collected hundreds of favorite cartoons from old New Yorker magazine but the one that stands out was the lurid Gahan Wilson drawing, We finally found out what's been clogging your chimney since last December, Miss Emmy. Maybe I'll haul out the box and look at them again. I could use a few laughs.

mockturtle said...

Not just cartoons but I clipped a lot of the 'Block that Metaphor' items.

tcrosse said...


Speaking of literary cartoons...

Churchy LaFemme: said...

collected hundreds of favorite cartoons from old New Yorker magazine but the one that stands out was the lurid Gahan Wilson drawing, We finally found out what's been clogging your chimney since last December, Miss Emmy. Maybe I'll haul out the box and look at them again. I could use a few laughs.

I think Wilson was the only Playboy cartoonist never to draw a naked woman. Which, considering: Wilson, was probably for the best.

This is still my favorite.

Whiskeybum said...

Um... I hate to go off topic this early in the thread, but did anyone notice that someone’s chopped off hand is laying there in the picture about the subject matter? It seems to have bled out all over the cloth on the tabletop...

Now, back to the real topic - whales and their ease of representation in pencil drawings!

Kay said...

Che Dolf said...
trope

Remember when people could talk about art without using that retarded term, the point of which is to signal condescending detachment from the dissected idea?
2/3/21, 8:31 AM


I remember those days. They used the word “cliche” instead.

Kay said...

Churchy LaFemme: said...
collected hundreds of favorite cartoons from old New Yorker magazine but the one that stands out was the lurid Gahan Wilson drawing, We finally found out what's been clogging your chimney since last December, Miss Emmy. Maybe I'll haul out the box and look at them again. I could use a few laughs.

I think Wilson was the only Playboy cartoonist never to draw a naked woman. Which, considering: Wilson, was probably for the best.

This is still my favorite.
2/3/21, 8:48 AM


Didn’t Dan Decarlo of Archie fame also draw some cartoons for Playboy back in the day?

Anonymous said...

She's Ray Kurzweil's daughter. Had to check; the name isn't that common. Ray is a well-known technologist who has done a lot of ground-breaking work in speech synthesis, among other things. One of his companies built a digital piano (I still own one) around his technique for sampling and digitally modeling musical instrument sounds, such as various expensive grand pianos.

MadisonMan said...

Hamilton was my favorite New Yorker cartoonist back in the day. (My parent subscribed)

Joe Smith said...

I prefer a good cabernet to the 'New Yorker.'

I am more of a fan of Moby Grape.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Didn’t Dan Decarlo of Archie fame also draw some cartoons for Playboy back in the day?

I don't see him in my on-hand copy of The Playboy Cartoons, but that's hardly all inclusive, being only 368 pages.

He definitely did do a lot of pinup art for the Humorama digest magazines, usualy signed "DSD". The faces are right out of the classic Archie era though the rest are a bit.. less draped.

Here are some.

(It is a characteristic of Humorama gags that they seem to have been translated from another language..)

James K said...

New Yorker cartoons went political under Trump, as did almost everything else in the magazine, so I cancelled my subscription. I always enjoyed Roz Chast and a few others, but it wasn't worth wading through the anti-Trump chaff. I hope it's another case of "Get woke, go broke."

tcrosse said...

My favorite literary cartoon was in Punch many years ago. It shows a dispatch rider reporting to Napoleon on the battlefield, giving a précis of a chapter of War and Peace. You had to be there.

Spiros said...

Look at this cartoon by Marc Murphy:

https://twitter.com/murphycartoons/status/1269265880204148738

Mr. Murphy is a full-time attorney, part-time cartoonist.

LakeLevel said...

My mother has loved The New Yorker for about 50 years. I used to like it a lot until they became irrational about 20 years ago. Anyway, I bought my mother "The New Yorker Cartoon Game". It was hilarious. A picture of a cartoon is on a card chosen at random. Everyone writes their own caption. You get points if you pick the real caption or if someone thinks yours is the real caption. I had no idea my family was so funny.

PM said...

Animal cartoons.
e.g. Two hippos staring across lake at gazelle.
Hippo 1: I hate her.

PM said...

Ok, animal cartoons aren't literary, but the animals are literate.

Kay said...

Churchy LaFemme: said...
Didn’t Dan Decarlo of Archie fame also draw some cartoons for Playboy back in the day?

I don't see him in my on-hand copy of The Playboy Cartoons, but that's hardly all inclusive, being only 368 pages.

He definitely did do a lot of pinup art for the Humorama digest magazines, usualy signed "DSD". The faces are right out of the classic Archie era though the rest are a bit.. less draped.

Here are some.

(It is a characteristic of Humorama gags that they seem to have been translated from another language..)
2/3/21, 9:28 AM


Thank you for sharing. I love his style, and I like seeing this other side to his work.

mockturtle said...

We subscribed to The New Yorker from the early 1970's to around 1990, when they went awry. We even got a phone call asking why we had not renewed our subscription and I wasn't hesitant about my reply. The caller was sympathetic and blamed the changes on the new editor, a British woman.

Does anyone else remember the indestructible Christmas tune gizmo attached to a Vodka ad one year? It wouldn't stop playing, even from the garbage can.

Rabel said...

Keep hope alive!

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