Thrilling photos of guy at drawing board!

Received a nice letter from Lynn Stedd, Community Relations Director of the San Diego Blood Bank yesterday. It was a note to thank me ---and of course a dozen or so other cartoonists who had been at the most recent Chargers Blood Drive.  I thought that would be a good topic to address today. Then, I thought, “The Annual Cartoonists Day at the San Diego Blood Bank will be coming up in only a couple months.” It will be the 23rd or 24th  time that our club will be helping to draw blood by drawing pictures, I do believe! We’ll tackle that issue in April.

As a cartoonist I’m always interested in seeing how other cartoonists work, how they  became interested in this craft in the first place, and if their studios are anywhere the model of  tidiness that mine is. Those who know . . . will know that there is a dismissive touch to that last remark.  The photo shoebox relinquished a few pictures of my room. Before they’re filed away again, let’s walk through a few years together.

Here I am in Watkins Glen, NY in a tiny guest room in my mother’s house. That’s a $17 drawing table I’m using. Note the cigarette!
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A few years later, a studio in the basement of our home in Reading Center, NY. I’m still a cool cartoonist. See, I smoke Kools.  How cool could I be?

                                            

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Leaping ahead now, more than several years to 1984; our first apartment in Solana Beach, CA. A bedroom there morphed into a modest studio. Actually, it was the only bedroom. We slept in a pull-out sofa for almost a year---not continually, you know what I mean . . . 

 
until we were lucky enough to move across the street to The Turf Club, where we lived luxuriously in a two bedroom apartment. The larger one became the place for pencil, pen and paper. By this time, a certain sanity must have taken hold. See----- no cigarette.  VINCENT is offering his congratulations.
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Scarcely a year later, observe if you will, the impressive head of clutter I’ve achieved.

                                        

             A larger studio dictates more clutter. A given.


In this, and the previous two photos I’m shown working at the drawing table given to me by Anne Cobean. It belonged to her husband New Yorker cartoonist Sam Cobean who was the first professional cartoonist I ever met. Sam was most generous with his time and counsel. I’m so grateful to have met him.   

It was just about this time I began living in color. I also began to find that hard work often means more than talent. More next time.