I’ve got another book review today and it’s somewhat different from other books I’ve reviewed. It’s a title by the late George Webster Crenshaw (1913-2007) called How to Draw Cartoons Editors Will Buy.
This book was featured on the Small Press Comics FAQ page, as a part of their bookshelf page. I’ve mentioned this page earlier on the blog for a big reason. In addition to being a handy guide, the FAQ creator also coined something he called “M’s Law” which goes like this – any substantial book on how to draw cartoons will be written by an artist you never heard of before, whose own art is particularly average and uninspiring. However, that is NOT the case with George Crenshaw. If any of you readers out there are familiar with newspaper comic strips, you’ll probably recognize him as the creator of Belvedere, a newspaper gag cartoon which ran for over thirty years. But that’s just the start of his credentials. There’s a whole page listing his impressive credentials. He was an animator for both Disney and MGM, he drew cartoons for various magazines, and even “ghosted” (worked without being credited) on Dennis the Menace! If that’s not an impressive resume, I don’t know what is. Anyway, let’s talk about the book itself. Continue reading
