By Jacquie Roland

Today, for some reason, I decided to redo my mailbox. (As if I don’t have enough other stuff to do.) However . . . When I came in to get out of the heat and have a cool drink, my phone rang. Not unusual. Except that I couldn’t find it. I could hear it, but . . . Well, as it turns out—in a fit of artistic madness—I had epoxied my live phone into the assemblage. (The old phone had dropped out of sight behind my work table.) And now my good Ma Bell is glued into the sculpture. Forever. *sigh* I guess it will just have to keep ringing until the battery wears out.

Copyright © 2010 Jacquie Roland.

This post was adapted from an e-mail I received yesterday from my friend Jacquie, who, as you can see, keeps very VERY busy in upstate New York. This 3-D doodle was too good—and the story of its creation ‘way too funny—to keep to myself. Click images for larger views.

Willie: Good morning, Jim.

Me (Turning, walking backwards as I reply): Good morning, Willie.

Willie: Jim, this is my friend, Hud (Name changed).

Me (Still walking backwards.): Yeah, I’ve met Hud. (To Hud.) Mr. Hud KENT, right?

Hud: You can call me Mr. Superman. (We all laugh.)

Willie: They used to call me Superman, too, until I lost my power.

Me: And what might that have been?

Willie: The power to get an erection. (Laughs all around.)

Me: I don’t believe that for a second.

At this point, Willie turns off the trail and heads for the visitor’s center. I turn around and walk on ahead, several yards in front of Hud. When I reach the end of the seawall trail I reverse direction as I’m watching two swallows “courting” on the wing. They dart to and fro together, fast and low, skimming the grass.

Me (To Hud as we pass face-to-face.): Swallows are flat out CRAZY—they mate in midair!

Hud (Surprised.): They DO?!

Me (Laughing.): As far as I can tell.

Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.

The person who invented the culotte

Should be taken out and shot.

Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.

“Between 1956 and 1964 I worked at The Famous Artists Schools in the correspondence art school. I worked on the Cartoon Course. We would get a student’s assignment and put overlays on it and point out various “trouble” spots and sometimes re-draw the whole situation and then send a letter to accompany the crit. The letters were standard form letters (after all everybody would make the same “mistakes”) but we would “personalize” the letter by inserting certain words that applied specifically to the student’s particular picture. We had lessons on inking, heads, action etc.. There were 4 or 5 of us doing the lessons and we would bounce the student around between us so he or she would have the advantage of more than one point of view. I was the youngest, being hired at the ripeness of twenty years. The others were pretty much retired guys in their 60′s having had careers in the field. One of them had and continued to draw Popeye, another had worked on the Lone Ranger, another on Katzenjammer Kids, another on Captain Marvel Jr. and Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang and Playboy girlie cartoons etc..

“So . . . the other day I’m surfing the web and I come across a blog called “Doodlemeister”. The fellow that runs it named Jim Sizemore had a post where he, in great detail, described critiques of mine he had received when he was an FAS student. It was a trip down memory lane alright. He complained that I had always given him high grades and flattery when he really wanted tough criticism. He pointed out that my overlay comments were a little more to the point than my letters (form letters). I made a comment on his blog post and invited him, if he wished, to send me an assignment NOW and I would give him a free crit. He was 25 then and is in his 70′s now as I am. I promised him, in addition, that this time I definitely would not give him a good grade. Here then is my crit of his “assignment” because he took me up on it.” (Click images for larger views.)

The one disagreement I have with Mr. Enos’ critique is not visual but verbal—his suggested caption, making it about the mythical memory powers of elephants instead of cross-species relationships. In the writing process I considered the memory angle but quickly rejected it as too much the cliché. I  think the relationship idea is the more original—and funnier—choice.

Mr. Enos ended his blog post with these kind—and much too generous—words: “Y’know, the more I look at it . . . the more I like his cartoon better than mine.”

Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, when I was trying to become a magazine cartoonist and having only moderate success at venues such as the Saturday Evening Post, TV Guide, and Writer’s Digest, the publication I really wanted to crack was Playboy. Next to the New Yorker, (which rejects just about everybody) Playboy was and is one of the highest paying magazines still in the gag cartooning game. The problem was, I had no idea how to write a sexy caption or draw a sexy woman—especially not a sexy naked woman. But the money was good, so I decided to try anyway and hope that Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s founder and editor, would find my subtle attempts at fleshy humor appealing. After all, I thought, the man’s not just a booty-hound, he’s also an intellectual—all you had to do was read his essays in the magazine to know that. But as it turned out selling him one (or more) of my cartoons was not to be. (Click once or twice on the rejection letter for a larger view.)

Prior to receiving that letter I had been encouraged when the long-time cartoon editor of Playboy, Michelle Urry, “held” some images from three “batches” of ten cartoons that I submitted each month. So I knew that Hefner’s  gatekeeper appreciated my indirect take when it came to the subject of male lust, liked them enough to show them to the boss. But several additional months went by before I heard the final verdict, which you see above. Just for laughs I showed the no-sale notification to a feminist-Marxist friend of mine. She promptly displayed her sharp radical-chic sense of humor by scrawling the note you see in the upper right hand corner of the “damning-with-faint-praise” letter. Her joke alone almost made the failed efforts worthwhile.

Below are three rejected cartoons from one 1997 batch. Now you be the judge—are they Playboy-worthy?

To purchase reprint and/or other rights for these cartoons, buy  framed prints, or have them reproduced on T-shirts, mugs, aprons, etc., visit the CartoonStock website by clicking the sidebar link.

Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is

how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”

Paul Klee, 1879-1940

To purchase reprint and/or other rights for this cartoon, buy a framed
print, or have it reproduced on T-shirts, mugs, aprons, etc., visit the CartoonStock website by clicking the sidebar link.

Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.

“It’s about time we started to take photography

seriously and treat it as a hobby.”

Elliott Erwitt, born 1928

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.