Interview: Chester Gould in 1961

The other day, my pal Sherm Cohen pointed me to a page on the Comic's Journal site where they have assembled various audio interviews with prominent cartoonists. This interview with Chester Gould, the creator of Dick Tracy is great! He talks about "the three Cs: Caniff, Capp and Kelly" and his early education taking the W. L. Evans Course. Check it out!

Chester Gould Interview (1961)
6.6 MB / MP3 / 29 minutes
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Education: W L Evans Cartooning And Caricaturing Course Part One

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instructional material.


I don't normally post twice in the same day, but today is special. Cartoonist, Marc Schirmeister stopped by to donate the granddaddy of all cartooning courses to the archive- a stack of 19 mail order cartooning lessons by W. L. Evans.

In 1913, Elzie Segar, aged 18 began a correspondence course headed up by the Cleveland Leader cartoonist, W. L. Evans. The course cost a dollar per lesson and it took Segar a year and a half to complete the 20 lessons. By 1917, he had landed a job penning the "Charlie Chaplin Comic Capers" and "Looping the Loop" strips. In the ad above, Segar is quoted as saying, "I'm getting along fine, and it's all your fault."

Decades later, Segar made mention of his early education in his strip, Thimble Theater. In 1934, his character, Sappo took the W. L. Evans Cartooning Course and delighted readers with cartoon drawings made from letters of the alphabet. Segar wasn't the only cartoonist who got his start with this course. Chester Gould of Dick Tracy fame was a graduate of the W. L. Evans course, as was Dennis the Menace creator, Hank Ketcham.

Here is the first lesson that got these great cartoonists started on their career path. If there is interest, I will post more of this landmark course.








THE PLATES




STUDENTS: Print this stuff out and USE IT!

If you found this post to be interesting, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips and Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, and Part Five: Sketching and Part Six: Magazine Cartooning; Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: The History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

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