Dirrrty!

I just got my copy if the new Arf book - Clean Cartoonists Dirty Drawings.
It's chock filled with gorgeous artwork and dirty stuff by some of the greatest cartoonists from the past 100 years.
Do I have to mention that I love it? :)

Here's what Last Gasp writes about the book:
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By day their cartoon creations included Mickey Mouse, Superman, Beetle Bailey, Betty and Veronica, Wonder Woman, Batman, Charlie Brown, and the Cat in the Hat. But when night fell, they abandoned their pursuit of heroic deeds and good clean fun to draw the risque -- slinging ink to make kink. Collected in this volume for the first time are scores of rare, previously suppressed, underground sketches by mainstream cartoonists: Carl "Donald Duck" Barks, Steve "Spider-Man" Ditko, Otto "The New Yorker" Saglow, Chuck "Bugs Bunny" Jones, Alex Toth, Walt Kelly, Johnny Hart, Dave Berg, Syd Hoff, Ernie Bushmiller, George Herriman, Rube Goldberg, Will Eisner, Sergio Aragones, Lynn Johnston, and many more artists. These cartoons will shock and amuse you with their sexy strays from the straight and narrow! Includes a revealing foreword by underground legend R. Crumb. Mostly b&w, some color.

This special limited edition of 300 has 16 extra pages, and is signed and numbered by editor Craig Yoe and cover artist Dean Yeagle. Hardbound.
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The book contains mostly artwork reproduced large with short biographical entries abuot the artists.
At some places I wish the author would have mentioned were the art was published or what it was intended for. But for the most part the art speaks for itself. A few pieces has bad reproduction, but I guess the scource material wasn't the best. The majority is reproduced crisp and clear and many straight from original art.
The only artist that was a bit dissapointing was Fred Moores entry. I know there are plenty of his good girl art out there, but here we get some common pics enlarged from the Illusion of Life book. I hope there will be more and rarer Moore work in the follow up book. There's also a regular softcover edition of this book. But then you'll miss Dean Yeagled cover pictured above.

With that said I urge you all to get it. Especially if you, like me, like brilliant cartoonists and dirty stuff.

Arf! Arf!

Coming up soon:
The dark side of Joakim. The dirty artwork from the hidden files of yours truly.
You have been warned...

Enchanted etc

Wooha!
That not-by-Barks drawing ended at $153.59. Not too bad for a piece of paper with a badly traced duck on it...
I really hope the buyer bought it because he or she likes the drawing of Scrooge and not because Barks name was on it.

To end the weekend with some fun stuff, I bet you all know that Disney's Enchanted premiered. If you havn't seen the trailer you should. And ta-da here it is. :)


And here's the music video with some animation created especially for it. Enjoy!

More from Hedvig

Saw these on Hedvigs drawing board a few minutes ago and with her kind permission I hereby put them on the blog. Enjoy!
(If you wonder what these are for, just scroll down and you'll see.)


Now I shall have some lunch (Having spent an hour at the gym I'm really, really hungry now.) and then I'll check how much that Scrooge letter went for... :)

Ray Moore and "Barks"

Here's the follow up to Lee Falks bio earlier this week: Ray Moore. The first artist that drew the Phantom strip.
Hmm... I don't know if this has been reprinted in the Scandinavian Phantom books. Maybe it should be? Germund: If you want to use it, just let me know.



Some of you might have noticed this signed first day of issue letter that's currently for sale on eBay. ($94 right now.)
It's signed "Carl Barks" and has a drawing of Uncle Scrooge on it.
If it had been described and sold as a drawing of Uncle Scrooge on a letter only, I'd have had no problem with it. But this... well, just take a look at the model sheet below that features actual artwork by the great Barks and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how much it sells for. Only 8 hours left.


PS. If you like this blog please link to it from your website or your own blog. And spread the word about it on mailing lists and forums. It's always fun when you know that there's an audience out there. :)

David Nethery

Need some weekend internet surf tips? Check out David Netherys two excellent blogs featuring his own work and animation related stuff. Links can be found on his equally excellent website. Enjoy!
http://www.inklingstudios.com/


(I took the liberty of snatching this cute bunny from one of his blogs. Can you draw a bunny more cuddly?)

If you still need more great stuff, just follow the rest of the links in the "Other stuff you'll like" list to the right. :)

Now I'll finish my red bull energy drink and then the "Emma and Sara" page I'm working on. Then I'll just draw for fun the rest of the day. :)

Have a nice weekend!

Jippes and Watterson

Click here for some beautiful Asterix covers by the great Daan Jippes!

Will try to do two more KFS bios also this weekend. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, here's a rare pic of no other than Bill Watterson. Not too many of those around. This one is from the 1980 Kenyon College Yearbook.

Lee Falk

Since I know there are many loyal Phantom fans out there, here is Lee Falks bio from the KFS book.

New stuff by Hedvig

Intermission.

We take a break in the posting of the 1946 KFS stuff for some of Hedvigs artwork. (Follow link under "Artists - Swedish" for more about her.) What she's working on here in the studio right now is a story filled with intrigue, love and relations. Just thought I should post some of the artwork from it here. (The first pic isn't actually from the comic but a calendar illustration featuring the two lead "actors" Ron and Vixie.)
She isn't working the usual way when she's doing this story. Instead she's doing every panel separate then building the story/pages digitally in the computer, without knowing how they will fit together in advance. That way she can edit and work with the story very much like a filmmaker can cut a movie. And besides that, she's way cool. :)
Enjoy!

Walt Disney

Here's an odd one.
Walt Disneys bio in the 1946 KFS book. Naturally he didn't draw any of the characters pictured here...



PS. Notice the off-model black nose on brer Rabbit.

Mel Graff

Got two requests for Mel Graffs bio. So here it is!

A few years ago Mels drawingboard was for sale. Anyone who know were it ended up? Is it still for sale? I'm tempted to buy and have it shipped here. :)
Anyone with rare Graff art or runs of his (or Charles Raabs) Adventures of Patsy: please send me a mail. Got stuff to trade and I'm always interested in buying if the price is right.

Three more to go. I'm tempted to do Fred Lasswell next. He did a really good illustration of Snuffy Smith in the future. :)


And as some of you might have seen "The Floyd Gottfredson Library: The Best of Mickey Mouse - Daily strips 1930-1933" will be released next summer. However the "best of" treatment might mean we get censored or missing strips...
Let's hope not.
Heres a link to amazon.com: FGLibrary

A Brick for Arthur

Here's one for Arthur Lortie!
Clarence Grey and his Brick Bradford.
William Ritt, the writer, is unfortunately only mentioned in the appendix as one of the other writers and artists.


Four more to go...

KFS 1946

I was asked to post stuff from my copy of the 1946 edition of King Features "Famous artists and writers".
So here is the intro to the book and two of my own favourite artists.
Since I don't have the time to scan all of the bios I will take requests for five more. Just name your favourite KFS artist in the comments field. Maybye Hilda Terry or Bela Zaboly are your faves? No? Alex Raymond or Don Flowers then?
Let me know and I'll try to upload them soon.





And I must also give an apology to many of you who has sent me emails over the past few weeks. I'm way behind in answering mail right now. But I'll get back to you soon. Promise!

Stina Hjelm

One of the coolest persons here in the Studio is Stina Hjelm.
I just love this pic she did yesterday. If you are from a small town on the country side you'll get the point of this drawing even if you never heard of Linköping.

And if you are really fast you can still check out a large selection of her drawings here! She told me that she'll stop posting there and who knows they might all be deleted tomorrow.

this and that

Right now I'm in Rasmus Klump mode. Again...
This childrens comic that I've mentioned in earlier posts has really stuck in my mind right now. So I just had to do a "cover" featuring him and two of his friends. Hedvig suggested that it should feature gryphons and it was quite fun to do it. Far from my usual work on Emma and Sara but necessary to keep drawing beeing fun. And as I said before I just loved Rasmus as a child. :)
Without further rambling here it is:


Last year I did the drawing you see below. I was asked to do it for artist Lise Myhres (creator of "Nemi") birthday on november the first. It has never seen print so I thought I should put it up here. The character on the pic. is "Skalman" from swedish childrens comic "Bamse". Apparantly Lise thinks he's cute... I never heard back from the norwegian editors who asked me to do it, but I hope she liked it. It was sure fun to do. :)


Anyway, I'm much too tired to write this evening so i'd better head home to get some sleep.

Buynlarge

New from Pixar...
Buynlarge

And if you are in Malmö this weeknend don't forget to visit I seriernas värld.

Brrr... Winter.

It's getting cold outside here in Sweden. I live in the southern part so there's no snow here yet, but still. The wind makes it hard to go outside without something warm on your head. Brrr...
I havn't had the time to post the last few days. Hopefully I'll get something interesting up tomorrow. Until then: here's an old Emma & Sara page commenting on the season. (Sorry, Swedish text only.)



Oh, well now that I'm at the computer anyway... Here are two rare examples of an unusual teamwork: Dik Browne and Stan Drake doing a comic strip together! Not too hard to figure out who did what on these strips... :)




And... Anyone who happens to have tearsheets of Little Orphan Annie from 1924? Dean M. who puts together the new LOA editions are looking for some strips to make the book as perfect as possible. He tells me that most of it will be scanned straight from Harold Grays original art. Wooha!
So if you have any please drop him or me a line. Or just leave a comment here with your e-mail address.

Now I gotta hit the sack. Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Gottfredson letters

Tony Fischier posted his Floyd Gottfredson letters from 1978-83 here:Gottfredson letters
Check them out!

Last of the rabbits.

Here are the final three pages.
Please notice that these are up here for study only and for you to compare with Peets storyboards.
I've got the rest of Murrys run and I believe I've got all of Dick Moores too. However, lets hope it will all be collected in one big handsome volume someday. :)
(In English and black and white naturally... )
[Images removed]
BTW: Does anyone know why these sundays have screen tones? They were supposed to be printed in color. Maybe this is a version for newspapers running their sunday funnies in black and white?

Tar & Rasmus

Here are page 2 and 3 of the Tar baby story.
Only three more to go. And remember these rabbit posts will be taken down after a few weeks.
Enjoy them while you can. [Images removed.]

After reading the Rasmus Klump album I mentioned in my last post I was so inspired I just had to try drawing him and two of his friends. So Hedvig gave me two suggestions of poses and I had a go at them. My first two attempts at drawing Klump can be seen here. :) I just couldn't resist doing them. Strange that I never have tried to draw them before. Anyhoo, I gotta get some coffee and then some work to be done...
Have a nice weekend all of you!

Thursday update.

Yikes! I havn't made any update since monday!
Have been working and have started to work out at the gym again! :)

And since you asked for it here's another Brer Rabbit sunday. Thought I'd run the Tar baby story too. Just so that you can compare Bill Peets storyboards with the sunday version. Murrys art for these are some of the very best he did. And check out the inking. So fluid and yet controlled in it's looseness. Great stuff.
Here's the first page. The rest will follow.


And I have to mention that there's a new album out now (#38) with my favourite childrens comic character: the Danish "Rasmus Klump". (aka Petzi in Germany and Rasmus Nalle in Sweden.) If you are four or five years I can't think of any better comic to read. There are no villains just happy and exciting adventures. They eat pancakes all the time too! Weird and unexpected things happens in these stories and reding them as adult is just as entertaining as it was for me when I was four. Yes, when it comes to Rasmus Klump the child within me comes to live instantly.:)
Even though this new (The material is from the early 60's I believe) album isn't as great as the early stuff from the 50's it's still well worth buying. Go get it! (If you havn't read any Klump before start with the early stuff.)