Learn from the cartoonists

If you’re ever in doubt about whether you’re a ‘good artist’, reflect on the power to communicate belonging to newspaper cartoonists. Their pictures are often nothing more than a tiny collection of marks, hemmed into the corner of a page, trying to convey an idea to a busy reader whose attention is either on the main article or their next train stop. 

None of the attributes of a hardworking picture like this demand a high level of artistic technique. What’s more, experienced cartoonists make their own quirks and imperfections work for them to create images with a compellingly human quality to their message. And that helps them stand out against columns of machine-made print. 

That’s not to say we should all deliberately draw with a wobbly, whiskery line. When we’re starting out and developing our own style, it helps to ground our own and others’ belief in what we’re drawing if we commit to a clean, firm, confident line. But what we discover from the great cartoonists that the power and clarity of the ideas and feelings that their pictures communicate matters far more than how they were drawn. So if you ever find yourself doubting your artistic skills, remember this mantra from Bob Mankow, cartoon editor at the New Yorker:

“It’s not the ink it’s the think.”

Cartoonist Mel Calman (1931-1994) knew he wasn’t a talented artist. Responding to a comment that ‘any child could do better,’ he once replied ‘yes, but it takes courage for an adult to draw as badly as that.’ In the mid-1950s, the editor of Punch magazine rejected his work with a note saying ‘I rather doubt if cartooning is really your line.” But he had great ideas and his drawings were good enough to express them. In fact, their slightly hesitant, vulnerable quality grew to suit the tone of his cartoons very well. From the 1960s to the 1980s he was one of Britain’s best known and most prolific cartoonists.