I’m going local with this edition of Frank’s Buffalo Born Babble, but there are so many expatriates of my hometown, Buffalo, NY, that my interpretation of “local” spreads far beyond the geographical limits of Western New York.
For this post, it matters whether or not you follow NFL football, like or loathe the Buffalo Bills. My point is that the team and its famous Bills Mafia following inspire me to draw sports cartoons that masquerade as commentary on the opinion pages of two local newspapers, the Niagara Gazette and its sister publication, the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal. Otherwise, my ideas would exist only in my head or as simple sketches in a notebook that nobody would ever see.
Not too long ago, I sniffed at my meager newspaper presence, but considering the declining state of newspapers, I feel pretty good that I have this gig that started in mid-2020. I’m a little late to the party as an editorial cartoonist, but there are still some goodies on the table, and I intend to hang around as long as there is something to eat.
A simple art lesson.
One-point perspective is one of the first technical aspects of drawing that young artists learn. Railroad tracks aimed at the horizon serve as the clearest example.
Photo credit: hollysartcorner
The tiny green dot where the rails converge is called a vanishing point. It lies on the red virtual horizon line.
This one-minute “making of” video illustrates how a vanishing point and a few converging guidelines serve as a compositional basis for my cartoon.
Where’s the vanishing point? It’s way off to the left, off the limits of the drawing. That’s the cool thing about perspective; you can bend its attributes to suit your needs. In this instance, I needed only a one-point perspective to set up a street scene. I’d have added a second vanishing point to the right to show these buildings and what’s around the corner.
I want to break this video down into pause points to give you a glimpse of the thought process behind a cartoon. However, time is tight today, so there are no promises, just good intentions. Two of my earlier posts
explain cartoon creation in this manner. I get great pleasure from making detailed posts like this. However, they are labor-intensive, and I only have so many discretionary hours, like all of you.
A little is better than nothing, so I hope you got an enjoyable peek into the process. Cartooning is a solitary venture, and so is posting on Substack. I welcome all comments to know you’re out there. Chime in!
I learned about vanishing points in high school when i ‘commissioned’ a friend to draw a giant spaceship on many wall. A vanishing point was the first thing Joe drew.
Why did the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Sumerians manage to create three-dimensional, fully realistic sculptures of human and animal forms but never embrace perspective in flat art? Indeed, why did it take until the Renaissance for this technique to be widespread?
And while we’re on the subject: In photography, why are horizontal vanishing points q requirement while vertical lines must be parallel? Tilt-shift lenses and corrections filters in Photoshop go to great lengths to deal with this issue.