How to Draw and Sell Cartoons

by Ross Thomson, Bill Hewison

How to create every type of cartoon -- from political to the simply funny -- with advice on developing a style and more.

Genres: Art

144 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1985

Reviews

[Daniel Stainback · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dated but still very useful. I loved the drawing style the authors used for their example characters and backgrounds.

[寿理 宮本 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a bit of a misnomer, as the bulk of the book focuses on drawing techniques, spending little or no time on the *selling* thereof (unless it's in the "sell the joke" sense, as in "making a joke that's funny"). My dad had given me this book, saying (joking), "Don't say I never gave you anything!" ...and yet after reading it, I learned nothing about actually SELLING what I drew.

That would be a valuable book, in my and possibly many artists' opinions, a book on the actual business end of selling oneself. The business dealings in THIS book mostly have to do with ensuring the editor likes a piece enough to buy it. It doesn't say anything about actually getting it into the editor's hands to begin with. Does one just solicit samples or a portfolio to newspapers* at random? What is a good sample size? What's a cover letter, and is it important? What's a good asking price** and when should discussion about this take place?

*"Newspaper? What's that lol!"
**Any specific currency value would be worthless to include in a book, since it would immediately be dated, but something like "Any piece taking X hours to finish should go for $Y or Z% of the current living wage value to be worth your time" (can be edited for accuracy, I'm just throwing out a general formula that would in theory be more useful as the book ages than any exact dollar amount would be).

The techniques listed are pretty good, although I've only tinkered with the ones I didn't already own, since being a "starving artist" amounts to not having the disposable income to just throw at new art supplies that may or may not be useful (especially given the price of some of these art supplies).

The section on computer art is also fairly dated, since it suggests that computer art "cannot achieve the character of line and infinite subtleties of the hand-drawn cartoon." This is decreasingly true as new advancements in digital technology continue, since many digital brushes at the time of this review can reasonably replicate physical media with greater accuracy of replication when going to print (scanning physical media is a whole other tutorial, since the average artist never gets the scan to accurately match the original). This book, by comparison, has only examined an extremely old, extremely low-resolution computer program that primarily uses clip art, from the screenshots provided.

As a general drawing guide, this book is decent, but most of the work seems focused on very simple line art or monochrome pieces. (Fair, cartoons are supposed to be simple!) There are likely better resources out there for budding cartoonists now, including peer groups of cartoonists on the internet, who will gladly post memes about what they've learned, which will be simpler than the lessons in this book (and free!).

[LEX · Rating 2 out of 5]

I give it a two because I do not want goodreads messing with my reccomendations because of this. I really only skimmed through, and read the parts about caricaturing. Those parts were not very informational, but this book did not say it would be. This book is alright for a very beginner in the comic world, not for someone hoping to hone their skills in a specefic subject.