Category: art

A Messi, Barbie weekend

It’s a pink weekend. Between the new Barbie movie and Lionel Messi. the soccer superstar’s USA debut, it’s all pink. You can swipe back and forth for both cartoons here.

Pink is of course the theme of Barbie and Messi’s color is pink. Messi’s pink a little bit lighter in color, but still, I think this deep, bright pink makes the point (cartoonwise).

I first did the Barbie cartoon and at the last minute I thought of Messi. Here in Miami, it’s Messi all over the place. Murals are appearing on buildings, soccer tickets have zoomed up in price and that’s all you hear about – Messi, Messi, Messi.

On the national news, I’ve seen lots of reports on Messi, so I thought I would add it to today’s cartoon as a second option, to add to the pink theme of the weekend.

Barbie and Messi


The Oppenheimer movie is opening this weekend, too, and people are buying tickets for both Barbie and Oppenheimer and will do a double feature, sort of like the old days. The big debate there is which one to see first so as to set the tone for the next movie.

I couldn’t fit Oppenheimer into the pink theme. It’s anything but bright and pink.

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The Brooklyn Museum

I went to the Brooklyn Museum the other day. I visited the art and then just before I left, I stopped by the Ancient Egypt area. And you know what? I felt at home. I literally felt at home.

I was pleased to see objects from Ramesses II and so many others, including Akhenaten.

I’m always fascinated by ancient Egypt. The exhibits have inspired me to do more Egypt-based cartoons.

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Long wait for Starry Night

I went to the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in NYC to see Starry Night. It was on loan from MOMA for a special Van Gogh exhibit called Van Gogh’s Cypresses.

To be honest, if you’ve seen much of various Van Gogh works in different museums, it’s not worth the trip. The wait can be hours to get in.

Once you are in the museum, you need to get on a wait list for Van Gogh. You scan a QR code with your phone and wait and wait and wait and wait to be pinged for your arrival into the exhibit at your allotted time.

If you are willing to wait, you could be seeing everything else in the MET while waiting, but if you just intend to see Van Gogh, prepare for the wait.

Many people are crowded in and it’s more enjoyable to see his work, especially Starry Night, at it’s regular home at MOMA where it never is a madhouse.

I was in and out, but I did of course enjoy the rest of the museum.

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Starry Night, out on loan

I went to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC yesterday, only to not see my favorite piece of art – Starry Night. I had forgotten that it was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There’s some sort of Van Gogh exhibit going on up there and they loaned it out. Not a problem as I can easily get to the MET a few blocks uptown.

But I did find it uninteresting to see some of the new displays at MOMA. As you can see here, on display are soap boxes – no, not Warhols, something else – and there blocks of wood, a violin filled with corn, doors with bats. And some other weird things.

I did see so many of my other favorites by Picasso and Monet and so many others.

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Berry’s World

I saw some Berry’s World cartoons online the other day. It reminded me of Ralph Dunagan, who I wrote about here. Both of them seem to be big influences on my drawing style – on the way I draw comics. I love their styles, which are very similar.

When I was a kid I enjoyed both cartoonists’ work.

Jim Berry’s “Berry’s World” was a daily cartoon which ran from February 18, 1963, through March 1, 2003, with a Sunday color comic.

Jim received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1965, 1966, and 1972 for his work on the strip.

I see so much of my own work in both of these cartoonists and until recently I didn’t realize that they were a big influence on my work.

Here are a few images of Dunagin’s work.

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Jasper and Richard

A dog and cat are part of my new Ollie and Jacomo cartoon. They will start showing up in cartoons later this summer.

Jasper is the dog and Richard is the cat. I always liked the name Jasper for a dog and Richard seems quite funny as an animal or pet’s name to me.

Years ago, my parents had a next door neighbor who had a dog named Richard. She would often call out to the dog who was out lost in the neighborhood somewhere, “Richard! Richard!” The first time I heard the lady’s high pitched voice calling, I asked my mother, “Who is Richard, her son? Her husband?” And my mother replied, “Her dog.”

I never got over it, every time she called out to Richard over the years it always made me laugh. I don’t think I ever saw Richard or the lady. I guess I was too lazy to look out the window. I didn’t live there at the time, I had long moved out, so I was just over visiting and I guess I really didn’t want to spoil the image by seeing what Richard and the lady looked like.

That reminds me of that train trip I took where I listed to the old ladies the whole trip and didn’t want to know what they looked like, but did see them in the end and was disappointed. That story is blogged here.

Anyway, I hope you are enjoying Ollie And Jacomo. I know it’s started out slow, but I had to introduce the premise. It will pick up now. Here’s today cartoon. It sort of hits home because lately I’ve been noticing that everything seems to be half full or less these days – in cans, packages, whatever. You open the package and wonder where the food is? It’s worse with clear packaging, you really feel gipped.

You can see Ollie and Jacomo at these locations if you would care to keep up with their adventures in Coconut Cove:

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Many errors, many likes

I was going to put Tomversation toons on hiatus many times and start up Ollie and Jacomo again, which I did earlier this week finally and I hope you’ll check it out. But each time I was going to make the switch, a current Tomversation cartoon would get millions of views (one cartoon had over 2.5 million views just on Instagram) and it would egg me on to keep going. One day cartoons would get a few thousand views and then overnight, one cartoon would get millions. It happened more than once and so I kept putting Ollie and Jacomo off.

This cartoon about the one hour film processing ran last week. It was one of my most popular cartoons. It has been seen by almost 1.5 million people so far on Facebook alone, and shared by thousands and debated and commented no non-stop. You can see the stats below. There are over 1000 comments, and over 3000 shares.

It’s still being shared and commented on today, almost a week later. The odd thing is that I meant to say, “One Day Service,” not “One Hour.”

And originally when it was published, I spelled “whoa” wrong. I was corrected by readers, as they are so quick and gracious to point out one’s mistakes.

Many camera aficionados or people who simply worked in photo places at the time told me that One Hour Service started some time in the early 1980s. But it’s interesting either way how many memories this cartoon has brought people, mistakes and all.

I love when a cartoon hits a nerve in some way – in a good way, that is – jogging good memories is always a good thing.

My Ollie and Jacomo cartoon started Monday, June 12, hope to see you there for something new and different from me. You can see it here.

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Ollie and Jacomo premiered today

Ollie and Jacomo, my new cartoon, started publication this morning. It starts off slow, to introduce the characters and will get funnier by the end of the week. Promise. 🙂

Ollie And Jacomo will publish Monday thru Friday, and can be seen at these locations:
Website: OllieAndJacamo.com
Facebook: facebook.com/OllieAndJacomo
Instagram: instagram.com/ollieandjacomo

I hope you’ll follow along at one or all of these locations.

Ollie and Jacomo

I keep going back and forth in my head about starting up my “Paws” comic panel again.

Some of you may remember it, I first started posting it in 2013 – 10 years ago! I’m not quite sure why I stopped.

It stars a Rabbit and a Mole – Ollie the Rabbit and Jacomo the Mole. Ollie was called Tombo at one time, but he’s back to being Ollie, his original name.

Back 10 years, ago, in 2013, I saw a cute black and white cartoon daily on Instagram. A 19-year-old guy from Norway or that area of the world would post this great cartoon about a 5-year-old boy and a snowman. Each day it was sort of a full adventure in one comic panel and without any words! It was that good. It was quite amazing. And that’s what gave me the idea to start up “Paws” which I’m sure was called something else back then.

I was enthralled by the artwork and concept from the guy from Norway and I wish I had remembered his name. He started branching out, selling his work as greeting cards and things like that. The reason I may have stopped following him was that at the end of winter and these charming cartoons, he had the snowman melt! Yes, the snowman melted and that was the end of the adventures of him and the boy and he probably stopped posting things so his account just went dormant.

Anyway, I’ve played around with the characters and really like them. I now have things set up, I changed the whole thing from “Paws” to Ollie And Jacomo and got a new URL and set it all up, I reworked the characters and premise, renamed some and am ready to start publishing.

I don’t want to do two things at once – Ollie and Jacomo along with my Tomversation daily cartoon panel, so my Tomversation comic panel is going on hiatus for the summer, maybe shorter, maybe longer, I’ll see how I feel. I may publish Tomversation toons intermittently all summer, we’ll see.

I have this idea about cartoons having seasons, like tv shows, you know, one cartoon will run for a bit, then take a break, then another will run in its place and so on. And then the other will come back with new episodes and so on .

So now, starting Monday, June 12, Ollie And Jacomo will publish daily, you can see them online at these locations:
Website: OllieAndJacamo.com
Facebook: facebook.com/OllieAndJacomo
Instagram: instagram.com/ollieandjacomo

Hope to see you there!

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Some things never change

Recently this old west cartoon was published regarding the Pony Express. By the way, the pony express only lasted 18 months – from April 1860 to October 1861. It went bankrupt in that short time, and by then the telegraph was being used which made it obsolete.

I like to do these “living the dream” cartoons once in awhile – it’s usually regarding something that was ultra modern back in the day and we laugh about now. I’ve done old tv sets that were new at the time – getting a whole three channels on a big 12 inch screen; and I’ve done cavemen all confused about the new fangled tech device called fire.

I often think of those times – 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, whatever. Even today, we think we are living in the most modern of times, but think of 100 years from now, how so many of the things we think are the highest of tech will be laughed at as being primative.

I may have goofed with this old west cartoon because people are joking about that being post office is today, only they really aren’t joking.

I ordered a book not long ago which was shipped from California on the same day I purchased it. It got to Florida exactly one month later. One month to the day.

There was a time during election time where I was selling a bunch of election stuff on etsy – a lot was selling, but I had to discontinue because the items which normally take 3 days or less in shipping time, were taking a month or more!

Some of the comments I got from readers regarding the this “living the dream/pony express cartoon,” are:

“It’s still 12 days, with all our automation and computers, only 163 years later.”

“Looks like we need to go back to the pony express.”

“Takes that long to mail something from one house to the neighbors now.”

“Some things never change!”

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