White Plains Public Library Saturday Afternoon

I'm teaching a cartoon class Saturday, March 12, from 2 til 3pm at the White Plains Public Library, in White Plains, NY. It's free. If you are in the area, please consider dropping by.

A public thank you to a certain fan who helped make this event possible!

Cartoon Class: George Booth, Puberty & the "Exquisite Corpse"

One of my summer traditions is teaching an intense week of cartoon classes at the Long Island Museum. I also get to hang out with some wonderful cartoonists and friends.



CARTOON CLASS

We always have a grand time in cartoon class. This year, we averaged about 7.5 complete drawings per hour. The kids, all between 10 and 14, were drawing machines.

I stand at the front of the class, and we all draw together. We draw people, expressions, pigs, cats, monsters, penguins, and many, many other things. We develop comic strips, tell visual stories, create characters and do a lot of writing and drawing. By the end of the week, the students are doing more and more of the drawing without my help. When the students leave, I hope I've empowered them to tell their own cartoon stories.

GEORGE BOOTH

It's been a pleasure to get to know George Booth this year. We worked together on his presentation this past May for the National Cartoonists Society Reubens weekend, where he received the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.

Since the Long Island Museum is near his studio, we got together to have lunch last Wednesday. His wife and daughter were able to take time to join us as well. It was a grand lunch that lasted a couple of hours. George was, he told me, very interested in my cartooning class. I said he'd be welcome to drop by for maybe the last half hour and sit in, if he would like to.

George walked into the classroom bright and early the following morning. I introduced him as "my friend, George." I may have mentioned he was a cartoonist. I didn't tell the kids that George is, so far as I am concerned, on the Mount Olympus of great cartoonists. I figured he wanted to be discreet.

He stayed for the entire cartoon class on Thursday. Sure, I was nervous. Fortunately, I had over-prepared for the class, with at least twice as many projects -- so I knew we would keep busy. We had a lot of fun. And so did George, who laughed at a lot of the solutions to the "what comes next?" cartoons. This is just one of many cartoony things we draw in class.

The "what comes next?" exercise is where we all draw one panel together, and then each student draws the second panel, showing what may occur next. Here are a few of the set up panels, scanned in from my tiny sketchbook and blown up big:


"Do you bite?" does get a lot of dog-eating-person drawings for the second panel, of course.


The "Say cheese! and "No!" panel. I've seen students draw another 6-8 panels after this, with the kid basically saying "No!" to anything the adult says.


iPods are easy to draw and this always gets some interesting responses.



The "Why aren't you extinct?" panel, which usually results in a sympathetic dinosaur portrayal.


Sometimes it's best to be ignorant of what's in your food.



And so on. I have a lot of these panels and it's fun to see what the student cartoonist imagines what happens next.



THE EXQUISITE CORPSE (Yes, That's the Name of This Game)

Near the end of the class, George asked for a sheet of paper. He then drew something on one side and folded it over, so I couldn't see what he had drawn. He invited me to draw something else on the blank side. The one rule: I had to incorporate the lines he had made at the top.


And George then added the dubiously helpful hints "front maybe," "front maybe," and "bottom maybe."

And so I drew this:


And then we unfolded it to reveal:



Here's a close up on that goofy bird:


What a great game!


PUBERTY: A CAUTIONARY TALE by Cezanne Lojeski

Cezanne, one of the talented students, came in with the cartoon below -- a hilarious and creepy story of puberty that she had drawn on her own time. I thought it was GREAT and asked her if I could share it. She said it would be OK to post it here on the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog. Take it away, Cezanne!

Here is the giant size 16 x 20 original:


I've cut it into panels for easy viewing. Click to supersize:


"Everyone get into a line," she says. "Class! We are going to play a game!"


Fred, who is the star of this tragedy, has a question. Sadly, he will not be able to ask it. Keep reading!


Above: "What's wrong with Fred's armpits?" "Gross."





Above: "PUBERTY IS COMING!" And Fred says, "My armpit hair is strangling me! HELP! HELP!"

"AAHHH!"

"AAHHH!"

Thank you, Cezanne, for letting me share this!

---

A special thanks to my great friends and cartoonists Don & Suzanne Orehek, Trade & Annalisa Loeffler and Adrian & Pat Sinnott for letting me eat their food and sleep over during my time away.

Have a Great Week!

I'm off this week. Kind of a busman's holiday. Does anyone SAY busman's holiday anymore???

Anyway, where was I? Yes. I'm off teaching cartoon classes in NY. I'll be back next week.

Happy summer!

Buy Now: CARTOONING BASICS by Mike Lynch

CARTOONING BASICS by Mike Lynch.

This 22 page book shows a step-by-step cartoon drawing process to drawing. Take a look. Below are a few pages:




There is also a "finish the comic strip" section:



Each book comes signed and with an original sketch.

CARTOONING BASICS by Mike Lynch. $2.99 each plus $1 postage & handling in the United States. 22 pages, 8.5"x5.5", B&W interior.

EDIT: THIS BOOK HAS SOLD OUT.

Cartoon Class: Drawing, Drawing, Drawing

I'm talking about my cartoon class today. If you are interested in learning to cartoon, I teach in New England and New York. I'm currently book Fall 2010 dates, In the meantime, my book is available for sale.


Some of the kids in my cartoon class surprised me on our last day of class with some wonderful homemade cards. Above is Noah's.

In the cartoon classes I teach, we draw a lot. When you are a cartoonist, you have to know how to draw EVERYTHING and, yes, it sure helps if you have ideas and are able to write too.

Drawing everything takes a long time, so I show them how to cheat.

Whenever I say "cheat," that gets attention!




From left: pear, triangle, triangle. Just by changing the shape of the head, your cartoon character becomes a different type of person.

You can show people in a car without actually drawing the car; or get the sense of where a chef is by merely showing his immediate surroundings -- no drawing the entire kitchen, the spice racks, the pots & pans.



Above is scanned from my messy sketchbook.

Another for instance: You can show the concept of "lost" with the below drawing:



I don't even think you need the word "Map" on the thing.

Anyway, point being that, yeah, OK, you DO have to be able to draw a lot of different stuff --

-- And a lot of the drawings are FUN to do -- BUT -- you can learn shortcuts, or "cheats," if you want to use that word.

It was gratifying to see Hannah's card (below), which showed me some of her favorite drawings that she learned to do -- one of which was one of those "cheats" -- that poor lost couple.




Thank you, Mary Waterhouse, Director of the Acton Public Library, and Hannah and Noah, and the great future cartoonists of Acton, Maine. It was my pleasure to teach you these past six weeks. See you in the funny papers!

Mike Lynch Cartoon Class Media Coverage

We had a wonderful cartoon class in nearby New Durham, NH. We drew a lot. We had a nice graduation.

And we also had some media coverage. Here's a round up, and then a big thank you.


I'm thankful to the Rochester Times. Editor John Nolan personally came by to take the above photo of three of the hard working student cartoonists. Below is the photo from this week's edition:

Nationally-known cartoonist Mike Lynch's six-week cartoon class, just winding up at the New Durham Library, has proved popular, with a full class signed up. Here, from left, are Anna Lise Cataldo, Marc Cataldo and Bradley Barbarisi get inspiration from Lynch, who draws the first panel of a strip on the blackboard, and asks the class to create what happens next.

Also, a big thank you to The Baysider ...


... which ran the below photo of more students, hard at work, cartooning, in its April 1st edition:

Students follow along at the six-week cartooning class offered at the New Durham Public Library. The class was taught by area cartoonist Mike Lynch, who featured some of the students' work on his blog at mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com.

I would like to add my thanks to the Friends of the New Durham Library for their support of the cartoon classes. Another big thank you goes to the staff at the New Durham Public Library, whose letter below appears in the same issue of The Baysider.



I'll be starting up new classes in Maine next month, and in NY this summer.

Cartoon Class

Above: the cartoon class graduation photo!

Last Friday was the final day for the cartoon class I've been teaching for the past 6 weeks. The kids -- there were about a dozen -- were grand and fearless artists. We drew a lot! (Just look at the Draw 16o cartoon class exercise!) Some really great kids -- some of whom I may be competing against to get jobs in 10 years!

I decided everyone should have a certificate of achievement or a diploma. Something to remember the class. So, I drew up some sketches:


I like the guy with the irreverent big mouth and tongue.



The reason for the hydrant is that we all draw a fire hydrant in class. A fire hydrant is the perfect example of good cartooning: you take some rectangles and circles and combine them together to easily make this very recognizable object. I also just like drawing fire hydrants.

This was cute, but, frankly, I though it was maybe ...uh .... a bit insulting. Like I said, this class was FULL of great kid cartoonists. Every one of them could draw better than that representative stick figure with his beret and pencil.

I drew up the middle one.


Above is an early draft. Below is the final, color version:

One of the things that the kids were not afraid of was DRAWING. And here, in this little behind the scenes bit, you can see that there is sometimes a lot of drawing that goes on the people do not see. Yes, cartooning is a bit of work. I mean, you have to letter and color and be able to draw on top of all that, dogs and hydrants and everything!

Draw 160

A comic book artist friend of mine, when looking at comic art by Wally Wood (Wally Wood being the best artist ever, in his opinion), would point to Mr. Wood's art and always say, "Look at the knowledge!"

And that's what drawing is all about; acquiring the knowledge of how to draw. How do you draw a fish? A bird? a cool car? a poodle?

Sure, when you read those words you get a visual in your mind -- but how to train your hand to draw what you imagine?

By drawing a lot.

How do you get to be a better cartoonist?

There is the old piece of advice: take a stack of paper the same height that you are. Draw on every one. When you get to the bottom, you've gotten a lot of the bad drawings out of your system and you're a better artist.


I teach cartoon classes in New England and New York. One of the things we do is the "cartoon grid," a series of empty boxes on a page with a word under each panel. Above is one of the cartoon grids, all filled out by last Friday's class.

There are 10 kids in the class, all of them in the upper grades at the local elementary school. All of them are fearless drawing machines!

Here are some details:


Above: 4 of one page's 16 panels. The sleepy monster is one of my favorites.



The chef is crying! The student cartoonist added the emotion herself. What's the story? Cutting onions? Did the souffle fall? Did Gordon Ramsey yell?


This is the most devilly devil have ever seen!



I like the addition of "Yo! Yo!!"




Yes, that IS a big nose!


It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Captain Underpants!


Look at that breathy exhaust! Great!


This does not look like a nice robot.


I couldn't draw a pencil better myself.

The class of 10 drew 160 images in about 25 minutes. How it works: you would get the cartoon grid and read all 16 of the boxes. Pick your favorite to draw and then, when finished drawing, pass it to the left, to the next student cartoonist. The 10 pieces of paper went around the circle of hardworking cartoonists until all of the grids were filled in.

Here is the rest of the results (click on them to supersize):









Just look at all that knowledge! And look at all of the personal, artistic touches: those steam lines coming out of that hot cup of coffee, the girl dancing with the "TAP TAP" sound effect, the mountain climber with all of his gear. I could go on and on, but pictures are worth a thousand words. And there are 160 pictures to look at, so take a moment to look above, and see this next generation of talent.


It worked out to be about 6.4 drawings per minute. All together it looked like this:

A lot of pages! It's not a pile of paper as high as I am, but it's a darn good bit of drawing by a classful of talent for sure!