“I’m thinking about putting my face on our new product line, like Paul Newman does…would that turn you on?” ©D.Barstow 2009

I heart Paul Newman! Not so much for his movies, although he was great – but for entering my own life by doing movies on location, where I found him in person.

I was dating the special effects guy on one film, and I remember he had to build a special sweat hut so Paul could sweat off all the beer he drank each day and still look trim for the film. (What, no Paul Newman beer? I think I saw a beer in his hand every time I saw him.) Read more »

For Illustration Friday. Subject: Vacant.

Is he not vacant? Of course, it doesn’t have to be a man in advertising. Could be a hedge fund manager, too.

The Drawing.

I had fun with this Wacom brush and the colors.

This is from a very early drawing. He has a neck! I struggled with the eyes, and couldn’t figure out if the writing on his forehead was big enough to read. Why yes, it is!

Notice the hands. Cartoonists are notorious for drawing 3 or 4 fingers, especially in the comics (in the paper). The illustrious Marty Murphy says,

Indicate, don’t illustrate in cartoons.

Good point, Marty! But still, I like 5 fingers better, though maybe not as long as his are. I think there’s a medical word, actually, for his fingers.

“I just told him to pack his bags, get out, and send me large checks.”

Of course, this is a New Yorker cartoon, or SHOULD be a New Yorker one. Tell it to Mankoff. This is for the Illustration Friday topic of PACKED.

I guess divorce isn’t very funny, is it? Probably why I don’t have many divorce cartoons. I was trying to take a different tangent on love gone wrong — and she may be just posturing here. You know she’s spoiled, and used to being taken care of. Rich b.i.t.c.h. thinks the world is her oyster. And it is!

The colors in this cartoon are spring, Easter colors. I decided to go the opposite way of the subject matter. I’m always trying out different color combinations, and it can be a struggle. I didn’t go to art school – which is true of most cartoonists – okay, cartoonists who write their own material.  (We’re writers, first!) I keep thinking that art school would have revealed the mystery of color.

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I have this weird thing, where, when I color a cartoon, I often decide that there aren’t enough colors. Not that there aren’t enough colors in my paintbox or on my palette ( or more recently, in my Painter Essentials 4 program), but not enough colors in the universe.

LA is green.

I can’t even think of the colors I need and want, which makes it that much harder. I get mad looking at my huge cardboard color wheel; who the hell invented this, with not enough colors on it?

I’ve noticed greens are one of the hardest to find. I think I bought most of the shelf watercolor tubes in green. My mainstays and faves are olive and lime green, but I’ve noticed lime green doesn’t go very well with a lot of other colors. Turquoise is good, but then you’re tending towards blue, and that’s another whole can of worms.

But one day last “winter” – the best season for photography in LA – I saw this from my window. This is nature’s way of saying “green rocks, and don’t you forget it.”