Last Updated: March 02, 1999
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Cartooning
The good drawing — the use of shadow, perspective and
shade — that used to be an integral part of editorial cartoons is being
diminished to the level of doodling
Imagine Daffy Duck delivering the Gettysburg Address. Or Goofy reciting
the Bill of Rights. Or John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address read by Bart
Simpson. Incongruous? A little undignified? Ridiculous? This is the state
of the art of editorial cartooning today: Serious matter being conveyed
by the wrong messenger, but the messenger these days is a poorly used medium.
Drawing an editorial cartoon is somewhat like giving a speech. Your
task is to take your subject matter and write a convincing recitation stating
your case, and, finally, stand at a podium and impart your thoughts with
passion, conviction, and sincerity. Only, in editorial cartooning, once
we have conceived an idea stating our point of view, we don’t stand at
a podium. We sit at a drawing table. We don’t speak into a microphone —
we put pen or brush to paper and draw a picture that evokes our feelings
in as effective a way as possible. We use caricature, composition, scale,
light and shade the same way a speaker uses inflection, vocal dynamics,
and timing.
Or at least we should.
Take a look at any of the editorial cartoon ghettos appearing in daily
newspapers around the country (called Views of the Week, Drawing Board,
Cartoon Views or the like) and you’ll see one cute rendering of national
and world leaders after another. The drawings of Bill Clinton aren’t so
much caricatures as they are comic evocations looking remotely like the
president. These drawings look more like designs for political Beanie Babies
than attempts to convey through caricature the feelings of the artists
toward their subjects: two dots for the eyes, bulbous nose, goofy grin.
A caricature is an exaggeration, a super-likeness using scale and distortion
to suggest the artist’s feeling toward the subject. It is one of cartooning’s
most potent weapons. Yet in a poll taken by the Association of American
Editorial Cartoonists awhile back, cartoonists put caricature near the
end of the list of what they consider essential elements of a good cartoon.
In the same poll, “drawing” was deemed less essential to a good cartoon
than the “idea.”
Is good writing considered less important to a newspaper article than
good reporting? Of course not. Provocative writing and comprehensive reporting
both work together to convey a story. Is a well reasoned but poorly-written
editorial considered as effective as a well-written one? No. Both work
together to convincingly assert a strong opinion. Similarly, good, strong
drawing is essential to good editorial cartooning. A powerful concept paired
with amateurish, childlike doodling simply doesn’t hit the mark. The same
can be said, of course, for a cartoon brilliantly drawn, but based on a
weak idea.
Look at some of the great artists who preceded the present generation:
Daumier, Thomas Nast, Ding Darling, Herblock, MacPherson, Oliphant, Conrad
or MacNelly. Each have in common a combination of passion, memorable ideas
to express their views, and excellent draftsmanship to convey them.
Poor use of the medium —draftsmanship and caricature —have given us
a preponderance of visual editorial comment resembling comic strips or
greeting cards instead of the potentially explosive catalyst for thought
and feeling that cartooning could be (and has been).
Morin is editorial cartoonist of The Miami Herald.
