The Complete Book of Fun for Boys (Knickerbocker Publishing, 1943) doesn't contain a single chapter about how to score with the ladies, but it will teach you how to handle a rope, punch a bag, spot an airplane, and oh wtf ever! The editor of this book clearly knew what they were doing because Chapter One is what every boy wants more than anything else in the world (second only to scoring with girls), --and that's The Secrets to Cartooning! And better yet, we get master cartoonist, animator, illustrator, Chuck Thorndike to show you the real ropes in 8 tremendous lessons. So grab yourself a pencil and some paper, it's time for you to become a cartoonist too! You can always learn jiu-jitsu and ventriloquism later, after you become the life of the party...
That's a really good couple of lesson pages! I will say it kind of gives up; the heads and hand pages (for instance) show a lot of the mechanical lines you can use to draw those things, but later on it's just kind of a bunch of X (like animals.)
ReplyDeleteStill, all of it has something to learn from and something to copy from. I would have loved this as a kid, though I was less about drawing comics and more about drawing Iron Man, etc.
That hands page strikes me as particularly valuable. It includes many hard-won examples of anatomical position and orientation. Too bad there's not one for feet. I think it's funny that he feels he has to differentiate the ladies' and babies' hands with a cigarette.
ReplyDeleteOof, though. Books like these are sure programmatic, aren't they? Hell bent on prescribing gendered behavior to define budding sex identity; a cheery little "battle of the sexes" boot camp. I'll bet the girl version is twice as queasy. I raged against this stuff when I was in elementary school.
And I learned my judo from the Black Cat.
The section concerning cartoon work reminded me of the two PBS shows featuring how to draw and cartoon, one starring Bruce Blitz and the other featuring Mark Kistler. I had bought a few of Kistler's books and in them he simplified artistic concepts for younger audiences, (foreshortening, size, shading/shadow and horizon.)
ReplyDeleteOn the Caricatures page, not including Charlie Chaplin, I wonder how many of the faces would be recognized or remembered today.