Today is Jim Henson’s birthday. He would have been 83. Never had a chance to meet him, but sure have been appreciative of his imagination.
I actually tried getting work at the Jim Henson Company after graduating from university, but alas, never did get hired. At least it led to a visit at the Henson brownstone offices in Manhattan that no longer exist. What a thrill to a kid ready to take on the world, however, my path eventually led to a career in animation instead of puppets.
This ink drawing was worked up in my sketchbook, then scanned and colored in Photoshop.
No actual rainbows were harmed in the creation of this illustration.
By the way, back in June during my travels on the east coast of the United States, my mother and I stopped by the campus of the University of Maryland, Jim Henson’s alma mater, where we posed for a picture with him.
Back in 2009, I did a little series of watercolor paintings of characters I had become familiar with having worked on three seasons of the My Friends Tigger & Pooh television show.
Lumpy the heffalump, introduced in The Heffalump Movie, was a sweet character and was friends with Roo. The paintings weren’t done for anything official for Disney – just something on my own.
I’ve enjoyed drawing the Pooh characters ever since that show, and still get requests from kids from time to time.
When I was working on the Green Eggs and Ham show at Warner Bros., I was chatting with some colleagues who shared an office with each other. Lorenzo Martinez was joking that he and Sarah Arakaki were Batman and Robin, to which Sarah commented that she was Batman in that equation.
I thought that image seemed funny in my head, especially since Sarah is a bit short, and Lorenzo is overly tall. So, when I had a moment, I decided to turn that into a real image. This was the result.
The Dark Knight and Boy Wonder instilling fear in the hearts of their enemies.
Hopefully you’ll find the image funny on its own merit since you all probably don’t know Lorenzo or Sarah. What you should know about them, though, is that they are brilliant animation layout artists. Those are the people who design the environments – the sets – in animation.
Lorenzo is a veteran going back to films like The Little Mermaid, and more recently was the layout supervisor for the animated sequences of Mary Poppins Returns. Sarah is new to the business with Green Eggs being her first show. She’s got a very bright future ahead of her! Together with Tyler Gentry who I worked with years ago on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, they make up the layout department on Green Eggs & Ham coming soon to a Netflix near you!
Thanks to my friend Judy Soemer Gracie who I have known since we were kids, earlier this summer I was reacquainted with this old drawing of mine that I did when I was in high school for our church’s member cookbook. I don’t even remember drawing it, and yet it is familiar all at the same time.
Sure hope he doesn’t cook pork dishes.
You can see the young cartoonist in me trying to figure out how those pros would make their beautiful drawings. I hadn’t figured out yet that nice thick and thin lines were made with brush and ink, not single width pens.
A fun detail that I can tell is in the background is a portrait of large celebrity chef of the day Paul Prudhomme, having “him” sign the picture “Pig Prudhomme.”
Anyway, thought this would be a fun Throwback Thursday post. Neat to see what I was doing so many years ago.
I belong to the National Cartoonists Society, and specifically am a part of the Los Angeles Chapter called NCS LA. Affectionately, our chapter is known as The Order of Cornelius.
Cornelius is a bear who reportedly saved the life of California cartoonist George Herriman from hurtling over a cliff on a runaway toboggan. He later saved the lives of several other cartoonists, too, and thus earned his place as the patron saint of NCS LA after his passing. He’s now remembered as an angel bear who continues to look after the well-being of LA cartoonists.
Under the leadership of The New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Matt Diffee, NCS LA began giving annual awards for career achievement and for volunteerism to our members. We began giving the awards without actually having the physical awards to give. After a couple of years, I was tasked with designing The Cornelius Award (the one for volunteerism), while Diffee and Spencer Ramsey set about designing The Dingy (given for career achievement).
I looked to classic Art Deco medal designs of yesteryear to attempt to give The Corny an aged provenance of sorts. Cornelius was depicted in a more realistic manner, with his stylized angel wings and halo. Add a few lightning bolt accents, and we had our design!
The next step was getting the medals made, which proved to be challenging. One of our members, Drew Aquilina, found a Los Angeles based maker of custom medals, so I reached out to them only to discover that while they had an LA office, they were actually based in the Philippines which is where the sales representative was.
There was much back and forth via e-mail to make sure the specifics of the design were met with their production people, and then the order was placed. The medals turned out beautifully! They measure a large three inches across, and came with a plaid ribbon of our design long enough so this can hang around the recipient’s neck.
Of course, you have to take a look at The Dingy Award, too! Named after NCS LA founder Ding Daniels, it is given once a year to the member who has T.I.U.A.N. – Taken It Up A Notch – in their career. Diffee and Ramsey did a nice job on this one, too.
Earlier this summer after both medals were completed, NCS LA had a special medal ceremony to give the medals to the six people who had earned them over the past few years. The three recipients of The Dingy were children’s book illustrator Marla Frazee, cartoonist of the online comic BaconLonnie Millsap, and former MAD Magazine editor-in-chief Bill Morrison.
The Corny was given to Spencer Ramsey, Frank Hansen, and as a big surprise, yours truly. It felt kind of weird to be given the medal I designed, but it’s neat to have one.
Members of the Order of Cornelius the evening of our medal ceremony from L to R: Steve Greenberg, Carlos Saldana, Spencer Ramsey, Tony Carrillo, Frank Hansen, yours truly, portrait of founder Ding Daniels, Matt Diffee, Lonnie Millsap, John Duncan, Marla Frazee, Kevin Segall, and Daryl Cagle.
Earlier this year, I created this piece for the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, otherwise known as The Order of Cornelius (OOC). It features the mascot of the OOC, Cornelius the Bear, who we hold in VERY high regard.
Bears really shouldn’t smoke.
I’ll have more to say about the OOC in my next post when I show you a medallion I designed for them, but for now, if you are interested, I encourage you to visit the OOC’s website by CLICKING HERE!
Recently, I have been doing quite a few new drawings of Disney characters that used to be a part of my official professional past. Thought I’d share this one of Chip ‘n Dale with Donald Duck – all three of which I used to draw back in the mid 2000s when I was a part of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse team for the Disney Channel.
Ducks and rodents living in harmony with one another – sort of.
For those of you curious about such things, these were drawing with Prismacolor colored pencils on textured Strathmore watercolor paper. I think I used a burnt umber, possibly French gray 50%, and one of their many shades of red. Might be fun to do this one again sometime, but as a watercolor painting.
While a lot of schools may have started already, that doesn’t mean summer is over. It’s still pretty hot out there, and that heat can really slow down a superhero. There’s a reason Batman only goes out at night.
Spandex and sweat don’t mix well.
About that topic of schools starting in August – bleah! School started in my adopted town of Los Angeles back on August 13!!! When I was a kid, I’d still be splashing around in a pool, lake, or lawn sprinkler at that time of year! For me, school always started after Labor Day. (For you folks in other countries, Labor Day is a holiday we have here in the USA in early September.) I’m not sure what the rationale was for starting later, except maybe because most of our schools where I grew up in New Jersey did NOT have air conditioning. Even in early September, it could be toasty, but it would soon cool down as fall encroached upon our summer.
Of course, now I don’t go to school at all. So there!
