Step #11 is the Important One

People sometimes ask me How Do You Do It? But for some reason nobody makes it past the 45 minute mark of my answer, where it's just getting interesting. So I drew this 20 step tutorial to cover just the basics. Try it yourself, you'll be shocked and disappointed at just how easy it is.

You can find the version with ads here .

Chat 'n Chew

Next Friday, October 12th, I'm giving a talk at the Writers' Center in Bethesda MD at 7:30 pm. It's timed to coincide with the annual Small Press Expo that weekend also in Bethesda (well, White Flint). I'm posting this a week ahead so you can make plans, or cancel the plans you've made and rearrange your schedule. And those of you in Canada or New Zealand might still find available transportation (or maybe you two could carpool). I've got no idea what I'm going to say yet, and the way I mumble you'll not have much idea what I said, but they're good people at the Writers' Center so come on down. Did I mention it's free?

And Bethesda is like Eating Central, with every block crowded with restaurants elbow to elbow . When we were dating my wife lived smack in the middle of it and around 3 in the afternoon you could hang out her window and inhale the smell of all the grills starting up and thousands of dinners being prepared in every cuisine imaginable.


But no place in Bethesda can compare to the Tastee Diner, which has sat on its corner, opened 24 hours a day, for about 70 years. It's where the waitresses stop and chat, call you Honey, and know what you mean when you ask for a one-eyed bacon cheeseburger. And late at night, early in the morning, you'll see a wider cross section of humanity in its booths than you'd think one planet could hold, never mind one diner.

So here's the deal. After the Writers' Center chat, let's head over to the Tastee Diner for some scrapple or a plate of fries with gravy or one of those milkshakes where they bring you the shake in a glass and the silvery pitcher it was mixed up in too, with some extra shake still in it. I'll need one for sure.

Another old drawing

I thought of this about 20 or more years ago, but it took me about ten to get around to drawing it. The original plan was to come up with a bunch of famous quotations and then illustrate them inappropriately, but I got this far and ran out of ideas. Maybe it's time to find some more quotes and give it another shot. Did this Erasmus guy say anything else funny?

Crushing Deadlines of Doom

I need a dingbat to use as a placeholder for when I can't think of anything funny to post because I have to draw a cartoon, and nothing saps you ability to be funny like having to draw a cartoon. So I'm using this, though he'd work better as a plea for money. Which could happen, too. Anybody got anything funny to add? The only actual joke I know goes on forever and I always forget the part at the end where the punchline happens.

Also, anybody got anything stronger than coffee?

Mini Golf

It feels like summer here in Northern VA. So let's play mini golf! Or is it putt putt, I'm not clear on the difference.

This is just another example of me foisting old stuff that 's already on my computer onto you, the discerning yet time-wasting blog reader.

Talk to Nick!

Hey everybody, now's your chance! Go to Washington Post Cartoon Genius Nick Galifianakis's online chat and ask him questions, like: how he does it, what he draws with, how's his dog, what's it like to illustrate an advice column, and would he please teach us some cuss words in Greek? His chat is at 1 pm EST at The Art of Nick .

And ask him about his glamorous globe trotting, his years in Hollywood and about the time he found a rubber sink stopper in his plate of eggs benedict at a fancy restaurant in Virginia. No, don't ask him that, just ask him how he got to be such a dang good artist & writer and when is he gonna do a comic strip?

Still Can't Draw Cheney, Can He?

This is about a year old, but you know, it's really timeless. And I found it on the computer so up it goes! I'm just emptying old drawings onto this thing because nobody saw 'em the first time around. And yeah, the Cheney's still iffy, the Churchill's so-so, but I like the writing. Except there's no N in "symptom".

Walk Like Groucho Day

This is being posted a few hours early, unless you're a few time zones east of here in the middle of the Atlantic. October 2nd is the birthday of Groucho Marx, born Julius Henry Marx in 1890. In celebration, I propose a national Walk Like Groucho Day, to be held on this date annually. Everybody walks like Groucho, or we line 'em up against the wall and Pop goes the weasel!

How do you walk like Groucho? You just squat and scuttle, taking long strides, not as extreme as a duck-walk and not as athletic as a Silly Walk. If you can wear a tail coat that flaps behind you so much the better. I've included this chart which illustrates Newton's 2nd Law of Motion (Force = Mass x acceleration), and shows ground reaction forces measured in various strides and different types of footwear. Please note the looping blue line labeled "Groucho". I'm sure this'll help you a whole lot. The chart was taken from Dr. Chris Kirtley's site Clinical Gait Analysis http://www.univie.ac.at/cga/. (You can't propose a day of national celebration without some kind of scientific & academic support.)

So quick everybody! Squat 'n' Scuttle!

UPDATE:


It's also Wash Post Genius Gene Weingarten's birthday! I detect a theme, and it may not be in the way they walk.

Talking Animals

As today's Cul de Sac features the first syndicated appearance of the guinea pig Mr. Danders, I'd like to talk a bit about talking animals. But I can't think of anything to say except dang, they're fun to draw. If I meet someone around here for the first time and we have the what do you do? conversation and I say, I draw cartoons and they say, which one? I say a couple that appear in the Post and this draws a blank, then they say wait, is it the one with the guinea pig? oh, I love that guinea pig, he's on my refrigerator, in my cubicle, tattooed on my baby's head. Why? It's because everybody loves talking animals, even when they're pompous little things, like Mr. Danders. I've found the key to his character is that nobody calls him anything but "the guinea pig", nobody calls him "Mr. Danders" except for him. It must drive him crazy.

One More Time With The Unsuccessful Cow Noisemaker, Then I'll Shut Up About It

Here are the last two of the sequence that was shot down. Someday maybe you'll read it in the funny pages and vaguely remember it and get mad 'cause it looks like the paper's reprinting old stuff then write a misguided letter to the editor. That's what I'd do. Heck, maybe I will.

Sunday Bonus; Successful Cow Noisemaker

Commentator Ponto mentioned this on a previous post. This one ran in the Post Magazine maybe a year ago. I think we can all feel the dramatic tension here.

Stuff on the floor

We went to a baby party tonight. A friend's daughter turned one and I hadn't been to a party for anyone under the age of fifty in a while. Our daughters go to birthday parties for those who've turned their ages, 9 & 12, but without us. So anyway, being at this baby party in a house with babies made me aware of things on the floor. Here are some things on the floor of my studio.

Lots of drawings.

Lots of rough sketches, copies of sketches, revised rough sketches.

Lots of abandoned inked finals.

Some drawings with watercolors.

Some more in frames, leaning against the wall.

Those sneakers I was looking for that I thought were under the bed.

Lots of books.

A drawer full of Cul roughs I pulled out of my little flatfiles because I couldn't find one of the sheets with the color codes on it. I still haven't found it.

Some money (probably not really; if I convince myself there's some money to be found on the floor it'll give me the impetus to pick stuff up).

Some CDs and a box of sheet music.

A banjo I haven't learned how to play.

A case with my old bagpipes that I've forgotten how to play.

A cat toy (I'm assuming, there's always a cat toy).

Pencils.

A blue gum eraser that bounces under furniture when dropped.

I hope not an Xacto knife.

Some bugs (I'm assuming; I've got a basement studio so there's usually bugs).

A narrow path through all this stuff. I'm clumsy and step on things without meaning to, so maybe I'd better pick up stuff. Plus I hear there's money under it somewhere.

What's on YOUR studio floor?

The Failed Cow Noisemaker

These are two sketches for strips that were rejected. Someday I'll revise them just enough to be unrecognizable, or wait long enough so no one remembers them, and use them again. There's something in the cow noisemaker I find compelling.

Probably Shouldn't Draw

Every once in a while I do an Almanack with a realistic & fully-posable finger puppet that can be cut out and enjoyed by anyone who can weild scissors & tape. Like this one. They're really just self-indulgent failures of the imagination. I can't think of anything else to draw, so I draw a face that's fun to draw, then at the last minute I add a comment at the bottom and hope for the best. I may have gone to the well one time too often and I should quit. But look at that face! Who can resist? And Tom the courier and my friend Mike both say they're fun to cut out and collect, though I haven't tried either. And the kids love 'em, or at least they haven't specifically complained about them.

Can't Draw

On the other hand, I still can't draw Cheney. Even when I try four times.

Can Draw

Here's the only drawing of GWB I've done that I like. It was for Chris Curry at the New Yorker, who's fun to work with. I keep reusing this face in various forms, which is what I'm doing here more or less.

Hollywood Blows It Again

So I have to draw a tiny caricature of Walt Whitman tonight and looking at a picture of him I'm floored by his resemblance to Gabby Hayes. I'm sure I'm the last to notice this. But wouldn't that have been great casting for a 1940s Hollywood biopic?

Now I'll never be able to read Leaves of Grass without hearing Gabby Hayes' voice. Not that I ever read it much, but it's something to look forward to.

A Happy Story with Prawns

Ok, here's a story with no point. I had dinner Tuesday night with several editors from my syndicate, Lisa, Alan & Lee, who were in town.

We randomly chose a restaurant near their hotel, a place called Il Mulino that looked pleasant but not overbearing. It seemed empty but, as we had no reservation, we had to wait a bit. The first thing we noticed was the waitstaff; they wore white tie and there were a lot of them (the waiters, I mean; each had only one white tie visible).

When we were seated and presented with menus the first thing we noticed were the prices, but as the syndicate was paying our shock quickly turned to joy. There followed a procession of waiters, each with one white tie and each bearing a different type of small appetizer thing. A tiny sausage, some kind of relishy stuff, a massive wheel of parmesan off which the waiter carefully picked some bits off for us, etc etc. At one point, just to show off, a waiter came by carrying a large tub of prawns and gave us their whole provenance, their life history, ages, hobbies, just kind of bragging about the prawns (we didn't get any, but they were very nice and seemed to be proud to be in their tub and who wouldn't be?).

So dinner passed like this in a four-hour blur. The restaurant had filled up quickly with well dressed people (though no one topped the white tie) and most of them looked like they were used to restaurants such as this with many of them ordering complicated meals that required several waiters to fix half the food at the table. More used to places with plenty of highchairs and crayons, I rubbernecked like a yokel. One man at the table next to us bore a very close resemblance to Ben Bernanke, it was either him or a Bernanke imitator, who are rife in DC.

By the end of the very excellent meal we were the last people there, and after dessert another waiter (who looked exactly like Prince Harry; I doubt he was, but I'm just sayin') brought us a complementary glass of grappa (raspberry infused no less) poured from this huge tank packed in ice. When we finally left half the staff escorted us outside, telling jokes in various languages all of which were really funny after that grappa and the previous bottle of wine and two beers. The editors poured me into a cab, pressed enough money into my hand to get home, and the next thing I remember I'm typing this.

So my plan is, I'm gonna rent a white tie tux, affect an accent, buy some small boxes of crayons and kids' menu type things with the puzzles and dot-to-dots on them, and sneak into Il Mulino and distribute them to the diners when no one's looking, like between the appetizers and the travelling prawn show. Who's with me on this?

Okay, Now What?

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