Welcome to the Andertoons Cartoon Blog!
I post new cartoon stuff regularly, and here's my best stuff. Enjoy!
January 1st, 2011 in Andertoons Meta | Permalink | Comments Off
Love this behind-the-scenes look with The Onion's editorial cartoonist:
A while back I did a video on shading cartoons in Photoshop, so I thought I'd also give you a look at shading my cartoons with markers as well.
Enjoy:
Video Transcription
Hi there, this is Mark Anderson from andertoons.com, and I’m going to show you how I shade my cartoons using markers. We’re going to jump right in here. I have got a batch of cartoons that I’ve already inked, they are all about school by the way. And I am using Prismacolor cool grey markers, I think this one it’s hard to tell but I think this is a 30%.
I usually let the ink dry for a little while, although if I am in a hurry, the markers or the brush pen that I use dries pretty quickly, so I can usually jump right in and shade right away. But if I have the time I like to give the ink just a little bit time to set, so I can make sure that it doesn’t smear. I’ve got four cartoons on a single page of, I don’t know, this is 8X10 or, oh it’s 9X12, I believe it’s 9X12 Borden & Riley Marker Bleed Proof Paper, and I tend to work really small and I try to be efficient. So I’ve got four cartoons on the one sheet of paper here that I am shading, and again about being efficient, I am using the same marker to do washers on all four cartoons at once.
So I’ll shade one cartoon with the 30%, and then I will flip the paper around like so and then I will continue shading with 30% until I figure out I’ve got over 30% is done, and then I will move onto 40, 50, 60, what have you. I don’t do well a lot of shading, you can see here like there is a desk that I am not shading, you couldn’t find, there we go. I’m not going to shade all of the grass behind this, I am not going to shade the sidewalk. I tend to stay pretty light, it’s just personal taste plus it’s a lot less shading and there is a lot less marker work to do.
It’s just one of those things that has evolved over the years, I used to shade a lot more and I used to shade a lot heavier and darker and as time is going on, I tend to almost never shade the background on my own cartoons. I also work pretty fast, as you can tell. I’m going to shade four cartoons here about 7 minutes from beginning to end. I know a lot of people shade all sorts of different ways, ink washers and of course, I also have a video where I’ve shade the cartoons on the computer using some custom patterns that I created in Photoshop, but even that takes longer than most because then I can undo, and oh I’m not sure if that’s quite right, there is a real organic, real feel to working like this that I really like. You are not getting the marker in all of the places and you get variance, and sometimes it’s darker and sometimes it’s lighter, and it’s just there is a real feeling to it that I can’t get any other way. So if I can shade this way, I prefer to.
I’m using my iPhone, I apologize for this sort of shakiness and sometimes if the light tends to change, I’ve got my iPhone, I’ve got a special clamp clipped to my lamp on my drafting table that’s taking this, which is pretty good video. Now that I’m looking at it, it takes a little bit to see the product that you are shading through the iPhone while you are shading it, so this isn’t like 100% natural, so I tend to get really close, I have bad eyes, I have terrible vision. So when I am shading I’m right on top of it, and maybe it’s because I work so small, I don’t know, but I tend to like get my nose, I’ve actually gotten like my nose print on art while shading that I have to write a little note, you know remove nose print in Photoshop.
But this, I’m actually back a little bit because I need to make room for the camera, so you are not going to see any nose prints today on the art. We’re finishing up a lot of these here, I am just doing some detail work, there is my giant hand, looks like I am doing some darker work. I tend to work with again Prismacolor cool grey markers, and 30% is about the lightest, I’ll go, I find that that scans pretty light. I used to go 20% and 10%, but then I’d do all of these different percents, and then I would scan them and pretend the 20 just wouldn’t show up.
So over the years, I’ve gotten it down to be between 30 and 60, if I need something really black, I’ll do 70 or 80 but that’s pretty rare. Now I’ve got my little fixed notes there, and I need to fix the A in that formula on the chart board via the back of the a little bit. I’ll write myself notes like that, I tend not to draw over, again I draw really fast too, so little mistakes, I’ll write myself a note and then I’ll Photoshop out any problems.
Doing just a little bit of shading back there on the periodic table, let’s now go and see, looking to see if I, doing the little 30% line work on that sidewalk to make that pop a little bit, oh hey we are shading the background, breaking my own, I didn’t expect that I would but then you have it. You can see I’ve got the caption written in pretty sloppily below, that’s just to remind myself the caption. There has been times I have done a cartoon and inked it and shade it and then I didn’t write the caption down on the final art, and I had thought, oh I will find this sketch out or I will remember it, and I never do, and then I have a cartoon where I am like, oh, oh what was that caption, it’s driving me crazy.
Well we are finishing up here, there is four cartoons, and we are coming up to the end of the video, hope you liked it, feel free to see all of my cartoons on andertoons.com, there is thousands and thousands there, and I hope you enjoyed this look at me shading my cartoons with markers. I hope you learned something, I had a lot of fun, and I’ll see you next time.
May 14th, 2012 in Andertoons Meta, Cartooning | Permalink | No Comments
Tags: cartoons, markers, Prismacolor, shading, video
Hey, here's a new interview with me by Don't Pick the Flowers' David Hurley! Enjoy!
May 10th, 2012 in Andertoons Meta, Cartooning, Cartoonists | Permalink | Comments Off
Tags: interview
A late entry from my How To Draw A Cartoon R2D2 Tutorial, but a particularly great one, is this 8 x 10 acrylics on canvas astromech from Sean McCoy:

WOW! WOW AGAIN! And thanks so much, Sean!
It's Teacher Appreciation Week, so I thought I'd share a bunch of my teacher cartoons to thank all the educators out there (my lovely wife included) for all of their hard work! Enjoy:
I hear a lot from my wife about kids that are approaching standards, meeting standards, exceeding standards, etc... So this cartoon was sort of a no-brainer.
I was originally going to do this cartoon as a piano teacher one, but I thought band directors might appreciate a cartoon too. (BTW, I know there's also alto clef, tenor clef, etc... but for the purpose of this joke I just stuck to treble and bass.)
I hear my wife talk about her lesson plans a lot, so it was really fun to draw this bedraggled looking teacher being comforted by one of her students.
Copier manufacturers, I know schools make a lot of copies, but copiers have been around for a good while now. How about making one that doesn't break down once a week? Please?
Another take on standards; I think "standoffish" makes this work for me.
As a parent I certainly have opinions about my kids' education, but I try not to go quite this far.
I probably spent a good half hour looking at formulas I thought might be readable as some sort of texting acronym (LOL, WTF, etc...). Any thoughts on what that might stand for?
Being the husband of a teacher I've spent some time in teachers' lounges, and lemme tell you, comfy they're not. So why the lounge moniker?
Dogs eating homework seems so last century. Do they eat PowerPoints and PDFs now?
Ah... Periodic table humor...
Listening to my wife talk about school sometimes is exhausting because so much of it is acronyms. I try to keep up, but I think they mint new ones daily. Help!
I'm proud to say that my permission slip signing record is perfect so far.
This cartoon took a while to figure out. I had the drawing first, but the caption came really slowly. It wasn't until I thought "why is he giving her so many options" that it finally clicked - it doesn't really matter why, just that he did.
I'm not much of a mashup kind of guy. It's not that I don't appreciate a good one, I just prefer to create content from scratch the old-fashioned way.
My daughter just got a guinea pig for her birthday, so a class pet cartoon wasn't far behind.
There's a lot of educational theories and approaches out there. Currently there seems to be a lot of emphasis on almost constant positive reinforcement. Which is fine I guess, but it was pretty much begging for a cartoon like this one.
I remember doing a lot of simplifying back in the day, and I always wondered if there was some guy in a room somewhere taking basic math and just making it harder. Needless to say math was not my strongest subject.
I like this kid's thinking.
We didn't have homework folders when I was a kid, but now they seem to be all the educational rage. Call me a traditionalist, but the old backpack stuffed with crinkled papers works just fine, thank you!
Drawing this poor tired teacher is some of the most fun I've had drawing in some time.
To quote Daffy Duck, "pronoun trouble."
I'm proud to say this actually is not the only photosynthesis cartoon I've done!
I tend to stay away from politics in my cartoons, but this one is non-specific enough that I'm OK with it.
I'm honestly really curious what this kid wrote about.
Another cartoon that I researched a bit. I'd originally had more text about The Renaissance on the board, but decided that it read better if you weren't distracted by more text.
Semicolons are funny. They just are.
Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed them all! Feel free to check out all of my teacher cartoons, and happy Teacher Appreciation Week everyone!
May 7th, 2012 in Andertoons Meta, Cartoons by Topic | Permalink | 2 Comments
Mark Anderson is a cartoonist in the Chicago area. Check back often to see what's new about cartoons, cartoonists, cartooning, and, oh yeah, LEGO. Enjoy!
Please Note: All cartoons are copyrighted material and may not be used for profit without permission.
© 2011 Mark Anderson