The next time I’m at the MET Museum, or any museum for that matter, I’ll check out the sculptures more carefully for ancient paint. According to this report on CBS Sunday Morning, those bright white ancient sculptures were not originally white. They were painted in bright colors! Check it out.
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The above cartoon seemed to be quite popular. Over 800 people shared it on Facebook as of Sunday.
I wasn’t sure people would get it. But apparently they did. I love when that happens. I’ve been publishing work I like in hopes that the readers will like it, and get it, too. When that happens, it’s a big bonus.
This comic about the “hood/hoodie” wasn’t as popular, yet, many people did get it.
It’s featured on the Comics I Don’t Understand blog, and some people have something to say about it. Whether they like it or not, I think they all get it.
I wasn’t sure how that would go over either. But I thought it was funny. And I do think that “hood” is used as a shortcut for “neighborhood” by many people now. It’s just a change in the English language. How many of us write “u” for “you” when texting?
I have a red hoodie that I love. I left it in NY one time – in the Hamptons, at my cousins house, and it was there for maybe three years. I missed it. I was embarrassed to ask for it more than once, because it’s a $20 hoodie, but I love it so much. It’s a perfect color red and it feels so soft and comfortable. I’ve bought others, in red and other colors, but none are the same.
I use it in Miami when it’s chilly and in the fall when I travel up north I wear it in the plane, I put it over my head and close myself off from the rest of the travelers, which by the looks of things these days, just might be a good thing to do when traveling by air.
Anyway, one of my cousins finally brought the red hoodie back to the city and gave it to me one Thanksgiving.
Went I went up to NY this summer, I had it out on the bed, as I was packing and I forgot to bring it, I left it on the bed. But it was so hot the time I was up north there that I didn’t need it once. I’ll bring it back again in October, when I go up for ComicCon.
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Last week I started placing lilies in my cartoons. You may have noticed.
They are in honor of something personal and I don’t know how long they will be there, but if you scroll through above you can see the last five cartoons that have had the lily or lilies. Can you spot them all?
It’s not a game, but if you want to make it one, check these out and all the upcoming cartoons which may, or may not have lilies.
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I was in New York for a few weeks and last week I went to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art. While there, it reminded me of this cartoon I published this past year. It’s a guy, most likely the security guard, looking out the window, rather than the masterpieces surrounding him.
Some of you thought it was an artists license, me adding a window next to the art, as if that wasn’t a thing. But it is a thing and I’ve seen it so many times at MOMA.
I took these two pictures last week. And there were so many more instances where I could have taken more pictures. People actually look out the windows at MOMA, right next to the art! I’ve done it myself every time I’m there.
I guess it’s the view – the skyline is a work of art itself, so you sort of gravitate toward the windows, which are right next to the art!
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10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes
One of my favorite comics is “Off the Leash” by London-based cartoonist Rupert Fawcett. I first saw the comic on Facebook, where Rupert has almost 1 million followers. The comic can also be seen on Instagram and on its own website. But Rupert is also known for other comics work including Fred, a single panel comic which, like Off the Leash, has has been published all over from newspapers, to books and greeting cards.
TOM: Regarding “Off the Leash,” You seem to get into the dogs’ heads, do you study them? Tell me about your own pets.
RUPERT: I’ve never consciously studied dogs but I am a watcher by nature, a people watcher and I suppose, a dog watcher too. I’m someone who is never phased by delays at airports or anywhere else as I know I will be happily entertained watching the people around me, although I have to be careful not to get caught staring too intensely at anyone. We currently have a two year old whippet and two Burmese cats.
TOM: How often do you publish Off the Leash? Do you draw up a bunch at one time or post them as they are completed?
RUPERT: I had a very productive three years of producing Off the Leash cartoons at the beginning but as I have other commitments I now only draw new ones sporadically. As soon as I have finished one I post it which is the great thing about social media for a cartoonist, it is so instant, from the drawing board to the worldwide audience in seconds!
TOM: I totally agree with that, I almost feel social media was made for art and cartooning. I noticed you work in black and white, why that and not color?
RUPERT: Black and white line gives enough visual information for a cartoon. Coloring would be time consuming and add nothing to the joke.
TOM: I like the clean look of your black and white work, too. Who are your cartooning influences?
RUPERT: don’t have any specific ones but I’m probably influenced by everything I see.
TOM: What medium do you use? Digital? Pen and ink?
RUPERT: I use old fashioned ink pens – I’m a bit of a technophobe.
TOM: What was the first thing you would seriously draw? I mean, I would draw Fred Flintstone, I always remember as a young child doing that. Did you draw a character or have a favorite subject at a young age?
RUPERT: As a boy growing up in the sixties I used to draw footballers quite a lot and soldiers. The comics I read as a child featured regular strips based on the war which was still very recent history. I also used to create my own strange characters. I used to get very absorbed and doodle for hours.
TOM: How did you begin your career as a cartoonist? When did you start cartooning? Tell me about Fred
RUPERT: Speaking of strange characters! I created Fred in 1989 and received over 80 rejection letters from publishers and newspapers. But when I had the greeting card range published by Paperlink it suddenly took off and became a big thing. Fred kept me fully occupied for about twelve years.
Fred was a combination of surrealism and suburban Englishness
TOM: Tell us about your studio or workspace.
RUPERT: I work in a fairly small room at home in South West London, it’s my ‘garden shed’ and i have to be prised out of it by my family sometimes. I’m happiest when I’m drawing and in my private dreamworld, just as I was at six years old.
TOM: What famous artist, dead or alive, would you want to paint your portrait?
RUPERT: Lucien Freud (with my clothes on)
TOM: What comics/cartoons do you read/follow today?
RUPERT: I probably don’t look at cartoons any more than anyone else but I always appreciate a good one. Gary Larson is brilliant.
TOM: Thanks, Rupert!
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These pictures of course do not do this justice, but the other day we went to the Van Gogh Experience in NYC. It was one of the best things I have experienced. The best part and most unbelievable part was just as we entered, my favorite song, No Regrets by Edith Piaf started playing.
This was not planned. We entered randomly, it was not as if the show was starting, it’s an ongoing thing. The person at the entrance, parted black curtains, and four of us entered, the lights came on and Edith Piaf started singing and Vincent Van Gogh’s work was bigger than life surrounding us. An indescribable moment.
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I’ve been in New York. Did a lot so far in a week. The worst part was the flight. From the time I left my house until I got to the door here in NY, it took 10 hours. The flight was delayed and then we didn’t have a pilot! We literally sat on the plane for an hour waiting for him to arrive!
But I’m here and all is well.
Been to The Hamptons with my family and friends, we were at an outdoor bar listening to one of my cousins perform., He’s an entertainer and he was doing his thing out at the waterfront. It was a perfect day.
Did a bunch of other things – ate at one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Brooklyn. Did Hoboken and saw Manhattanhenge.
On Wednesday, a friend and I did the Little Island. It was beautiful and a lot of fun, but the temperature was 96 degrees with a heat index of 105 degrees. Oppressive! I even passed up Mr. Softee – I was too nauseous to eat.
Thursday a friend and I did the MET Museum. It rained all day, so that was a good indoor thing to do.
Been to diners, had an egg cream. Did all my usual stuff.
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10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes
I interviewed one of my favorite cartoonists, Jason Chatfield, who incidentally helped me immensely with my own cartooning, as I live by one of his statements: “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” I live (and create) by that now.
I was interested in Jason’s schedule, technique and so much of his cartoons and comics work and work ethic.
TOM: You seem to do so much, TV, New Yorker cartoonist, daily comic strip (Ginger Meggs) and President of the National Cartoonists’ Society (NCS). What is the schedule like, for instance, when do you do the comic strip? When do you do New Yorker cartoons?
JASON: I have a pretty regular schedule — I work from a calendar instead of a to-do list — I tend to do 6 daily strips at-a-time, then the Sundays (weekend paper strips) on separate days.
I pitch a batch of 10 New Yorker cartoons each Tuesday; some roughs and some finished, and some of them re-submissions with new captions. 99% are rejected. Those are done in a 10-step process that I outline here.
The TV work is usually just a one or two-day shoot somewhere, then the show or commercial runs for years, so that’s not very time-heavy, and my NCS work is just constantly streaming in every day. Some days there is a lot to do, other days less so. Cartoonists are my favorite people, but trying to organize them can be like herding cats. ☺️
It sounds like a lot, but I manage to sleep somewhere in there and take weekends off with my wife and pup.
TOM: I see that Ginger Meggs recently turned 100 — that’s quite a weight to bear — taking over such a well-known strip. How did that come about? How were you chosen to do this?
JASON: When I was a 23 year-old editorial cartoonist in my hometown of Perth, the fourth cartoonist on the strip, James Kemsley, asked me to take it over. That was few days before he died of ALS. He was a dear friend and mentor so it was a very bittersweet honor to inherit. I’d give up the strip tomorrow it it meant having Kems back; he was an impressive guy, always way ahead of his time and always helping other cartoonists. I’m glad I could carry the baton and keep Ginger going past 100 years. (Details on the centenary are at gingermeggs.com )
TOM: As President of the National Cartoonists Society, what is your take on webcomics or comics only published online? They seem to be the most read today, yet I have heard that cartoonists have a problem joining the society.
JASON: We have many webcomic cartoonists in the NCS, and under past President Tom Richmond’s tenure (around 2010/11) the NCS introduced two webcomic categories into our Divisional Reuben awards. (Long form and Short form).
Webcomics are a rich and diverse artform we’re really proud to promote — comics in newspapers are only a fraction of the make-up of NCS membership. Our biggest numbers of entries for the 2020 Reuben awards were for both webcomics categories.
I think I read about 70% of my favorite comics online (the rest in magazines and printed book collections.)
TOM: Do you work digitally or with pen and paper?
JASON: I use both. I learned to draw traditionally before I learned to draw digitally, so the transition was very natural. I use a Wacom Cintiq with an Ergo Arm for most of my work, but I often spin around to my drawing board and use a Hunt 101 Imperial nib on my dip pen for a lot of my New Yorker finishes. (Mainly because people request to purchase the originals… And I like to get inky fingers so my wife thinks I’m doing actual work.)
TOM: What does your studio, workspace look like?
JASON: It changes all the time. I’ve moved so many times the past 15 years my studio has been every kind of room imaginable. You can get a glimpse of my current studio (June 2021) in this video just shot by Wacom for the production of a series of coins I designed for the Royal Australian Mint. They cut the part where my dog sits under my desk while I’m working and farts. Almost constantly.
TOM: What comics/cartoonists influenced you?
JASON: I was a big fan of MAD growing up, so all the Usual Gang of Idiots were my teachers — Sergio Aragonés was my favorite for his pantomime marginals, but Mort Drucker’s hand gestures and caricatured likenesses, Jack Davis’ movement, brushwork and shoes, Al Jaffee’s inventiveness (and snark) all contributed to my weird brain. And then the “newer” guys like Tom Richmond, Mark Frederickson and a slew of other talented idiots followed suit.
For comic strips, I loved Calvin & Hobbes and later, Cul de Sac.
TOM: If you could crawl into any strip or panel for the day, other than your own, which would it be, and why?
JASON: Cul de Sac. I would want to sit down and just pick the brain of Alice Otterloop. What a brilliant mind Richard Thompson had, to bring her into this universe. Wildly inventive, funny and smart character writing.
TOM: At what point did you realize you were famous?
JASON: Ha! I don’t think that’s true. I know it sounds silly considering all the things I do being so public-facing, but I now totally get people having a pseudonym. Fame isn’t something I aspire to — I just like to do my work and hopefully have people enjoy reading it. I think ‘actual’ fame comes with more downsides than upsides… unless we’re talking about my local diner naming a roast beef sandwich after me. That’s all upside. (And topside).
TOM: What song would be the theme of your life?
JASON: The theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm…
TOM: What famous artist, dead or alive, would you want to paint your portrait?
JASON: Richard Thompson. Without question.
One can dream.
TOM: Thanks, Jason! I learned a lot!
My daily cartoon is here.
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I had to laugh when I saw this cartoon by Ellis Rosen today, not just because it’s funny, but because I was thinking of this very situation at the moment I saw this on Instagram. My friend jak would say that’s a case of being in the right place at the right time.
I was talking to one of my neighbors about a delivery that was missing. Amazon delivered it, but she couldn’t find it.
I live in a small condo and deliveries are always left on a table down by the elevator, but her package was missing. What happened was, the delivery guy brought the packages up the stairwell, rather than leave them downstairs. Basically, no one uses the stairwell here, it’s an emergency exit, people use the elevator. I do use the stairwell, as I like to take the stairs for exercise, so I had seen the packages yesterday.
The elevator opens up into our units. There is no hallway or corridor. We use key fobs and each unit has its own code/fob and the elevator opens up right in your living room, which sounds cool, but it does get old after a week.
Anyway, there have always been screw ups with the elevator, the door would just open randomly, or the key fob doesn’t work and all the units are left unlocked, etc. So that’s where the cartoon comes in. I was thinking of the Amazon delivery and also of the time I came into my living room to find the FedEx delivery guy standing there with my package. He got into the elevator, because the fob system was not working, he pushed my unit button and there he was – in the living room.
I could not get mad at him or the Amazon guy, since they both went out of their ways to bring the deliveries up where they could have just left them down on the table in the lobby.
As I was thinking this, I saw the cartoon above pop up – a case of being in the right place at the right time. jak always said that when you hear a word on tv or radio or hear someone say it as you are reading it at the same time – that’s a case of being in the right place at the right time. Same thing when you say a word or phrase and someone else says it at the same time in person or on tv.
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10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes
I got the chance to ask Stephan Pastis, creator of the comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, my Ten With Tom questions. Stephan has one of the most popular comic strips around, his tipping point was when Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, noticed his work and mentioned it in a blog post. The rest is history. His online readership went through the roof overnight.
He won the 2015 Reuben Award for best newspaper comic strip.
Do people mistake you for Seth Macfarlane?
I’ve heard that before, but the one I hear more is Robert Downey, Jr. I even had a restaurant owner in Dublin, Ireland tell me what an honor it was to have Robert Downey, Jr. in her restaurant. I told her that I appreciated it, but that I didn’t like to be disturbed while dining.
Why do you create your comics 7 months in advance, why so far ahead?
I’m anal retentive. I need to relax.
Are you recognized on the street?
Almost never. Except as Robert Downey Jr. in Dublin.
What are a few of your favorite classic newspaper comics from your childhood?
Far Side
Calvin and Hobbes
Peanuts
Bloom County
Flintstones or Scooby Do?
Scooby. There’s always someone trying to scare away prospective house buyers by filling it with fake ghosts and/or monsters. Knowing that the ghost thing is a sham, I could probably get a great deal on real estate.
Which comic strip would you like to crawl into and spend the day?
Krazy Kat. Lots of peyote and throwing bricks at others.
Dick Tracy or Little Orphan Annie?
It wouldn’t be Annie. Her lack of pupils would be disturbing, particularly if you fell in love. You could never look into her eyes.
What section of the printed daily newspaper today should be eliminated to add more comics?
Many of the comics.
Without looking, what color is Olive Oyl’s dress?
Top half of her is red. Bottom half of her is black. Both halves are probably stained by spinach.
Do you think you’ll ever go digital in creating Pearls Before Swine? Why?
No. Too lazy to learn. Plus, it doesn’t seem like something Robert Downey Jr. would do.
Thank you Stephan!
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