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sunstone March 2010 |
Thursday, March 11, 2010
"Boxing Match" or "Ye Olde Timey Political Cartoons"
sunstone
I recently got an interesting commission from Sunstone magazine requesting an "old time looking political cartoon." I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but it involves Utah Senator Reed Smoot (being famous for
1. The longest serving senator in Utah history,
2. A polygamist
3. The Smoot-Hawley act which was infamous for stifling trade and helping instigate the Great Depression) and Elbert Thomas...the man who eventually won Smoot's seat. The request was to have them boxing.
I had just been reading about Thomas Nast (one of my favorite illustrators) and gleefully did a little bit of research into political cartoons around the turn of the last century. Here is what I found. Those men (and they were men) could DRAW. They knew *exactly* what they were drawing and knew exactly how to lay down their lines. To today's eye they probably look tight and decidedly "unwhimsical" but I really admire them and the obvious training these artists had.
If I were *really* going to do this right I should have gotten some parchment and pulled out dusty quill and bottle of Higgins black magic and went to work but alas, I didn't have time for the hours and hours it would have taken.
Still, I'm quite pleased with how it came out. And yes, I very specifically riffed the last frame of Rocky III.
sunstone I recently got an interesting commission from Sunstone magazine requesting an "old time looking political cartoon." I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but it involves Utah Senator Reed Smoot (being famous for
1. The longest serving senator in Utah history,
2. A polygamist
3. The Smoot-Hawley act which was infamous for stifling trade and helping instigate the Great Depression) and Elbert Thomas...the man who eventually won Smoot's seat. The request was to have them boxing.
I had just been reading about Thomas Nast (one of my favorite illustrators) and gleefully did a little bit of research into political cartoons around the turn of the last century. Here is what I found. Those men (and they were men) could DRAW. They knew *exactly* what they were drawing and knew exactly how to lay down their lines. To today's eye they probably look tight and decidedly "unwhimsical" but I really admire them and the obvious training these artists had.
If I were *really* going to do this right I should have gotten some parchment and pulled out dusty quill and bottle of Higgins black magic and went to work but alas, I didn't have time for the hours and hours it would have taken.
Still, I'm quite pleased with how it came out. And yes, I very specifically riffed the last frame of Rocky III.
