Alan’s Cartoons

Cartooning has been a Major Part of my Life

I have been drawing and cartoon since I was about 2 years old and before I could speak due to the surgeries I went through for my cleft palette and hare lip at birth. Drew through elementary and high school. Had a cartoon strip in college. Throughout the rest of my life I have done cartoons for cleints for various projects and as special cards and posters for offices I worked in.

In 1979 I became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Athens Banner-Herald.

Then in 1982 I did a 25 foot long cartoon, 3 trip-tik/panel, cartoon of the Cortona Travel Abroad Program.

Since High School Biology I have been integrating cartooning into my visual notetaking.

The cartoons of me as an adult were done for a colleague in Malaysia when she wrote a book about creative people she knew from around the globe.

Here are a variety of my cartoons
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Alan’s Cartoons

I have been cartooning and drawing since before I was 2 or 3 years old.
I do not remember if I copied first, traced first, or drew my own first.

Whichever it was, I did each many times. When I teach people how to begin to cartoon and draw now I have them copy others, then trace others and then create and draw their own. Some of the techniques I try to teach include….

….learning to see what you are looking at,

….seeing the basic geometric shapes

….seeing the sizes, locations,

….seeing the lines, the textures, the shadows, etc.

Drawing is learning how to see and record what your mind sees with pencils, pens, crayons, chalk, paint brushes.

We can all DRAW!

We can all CARTOON.

Here are samples of my cartoons from throughout my life.

Recent cartoons done for my workshops, the Japanese edition of my book BROKEN CRAYONS and for a book about creative people from around the world written by Dr. Alice Lee, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

4 of my characters Dr. I. L. Create, the Viz Whiz, Mr. Crayon, Me

Here is a series I did in the 1980s of WHOLE BRAIN RATS AND THE MAZE.

me doing a workshop

a drawing representing my many jobs and careers

Dr. I. L Create

Wandering Alanmy IDEA SESSION balloon exercise

one of my life jokes…”friends that I became an architect because I had spent so much time in the corners of my classrooms growing up.”

family story…I graduated from Wayne State University before I went to kindergarten because I spent so much time at WSU from 2 to 5 for speech theraphy and correction.

travel joke asked for a cappachino in Delft MIT SLAG. In Amsterdam that meant with some whipped cream on top. It had no meaning in Delft so waiter brought me a plate of whipped cream along with my cappachino, after much laughter in the kitchen

this depicts my families many summer vacation from 1950 to 1962-I had been in all 48 mainland states by the age of 17.