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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The Art of Roy Crane


I've just posted an article paying tribute to Roy Crane, one of my favorite cartoonists of all time,. Since I have a few other articles posted here about other cartoonists and the adventure strip, I thought I'd post it there for posterity.

Crane is the creator of Wash Tubbs and Buz Sawyer, and served as a bridge between the early "big foot" days of cartooning and the modern adventure strip which came into its own in the 1930s. He successfully blended a "cartoony" style with a strong black-and-white/semi-photorealistic rendering style (aided by his masterful use of Craftint paper as shown in the sample above). Though not as well remembered by some of his stylistic proteges and admirers, which include the likes of people like Alex Toth and Milton Caniff, many cartoonists recognize him as one of the greats, a true "artist's artist."

1 comment:

benton jew said...

I remember having the opportunity of seeing Charles Schulz speak many,many years ago. He said that in his judgement if a young artist couldn't grasp the simplicity and beauty of Roy Crane's work, the person probably wasn't going to make it as a cartoonist. It always stuck me a pretty bold statement to make.

At that time, I was pretty young and knew very little of Crane's work. Of course, the older I've gotten, the more I appreciate his work.