Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots

Style can be defined as the particular way in which something is done, created, or performed. In the case of my cartoons, the style I use is not only particular, it’s a bit peculiar, as well: instead of drawing with lines, as most cartoonists do, I use lots of dots. Of course, to make a cartoon, the dots need to be arranged.

In the cartoon below, I created every tone, from the lightest gray to the blackest black, with tiny dots, using the tiniest pen tip available:

When I started out cartooning, I did all my dot wrangling with this instrument, a technical drawing pen called a Rapidograph,

which was ironically named, as far as I was concerned, because the time it took me to do a cartoon with the Rapidograph was anything but rapid. This was owing to the laborious nature of dotting itself and the tendency of the Rapidograph’s ink to clog inside the tiny pen tip. Now I use this kind of pen:

It has the advantage of being clog and irony free.

Creating images using dots, which is called “stippling,” has a long tradition in illustration, but really none at all in cartooning. I’ve always thought that “stippling” sounds like a dermatological disease.

I’ve had a bad case of stippling going back to my time at The High School of Music and Art, where I came into contact with the work of the impressionist Georges Seurat, who created his paintings in a style called pointillism.

Now, that seemed like a crazy way to paint or draw, but maybe not so crazy, because, when I looked at photographs in magazines and newspapers, I noticed that when enlarged they were actually made up of tiny dots. And I started using dots to make my own distorted versions of them.

At that time, I was just doodling with dots, inspired by photographs of faces.

But this eventually morphed into my cartoon style.

Even though drawing cartoons this way took a long time, the dots did have their advantages. First, since no one had ever drawn cartoons using this style, it was certain to get the attention of editors. Generally, I think this worked in my favor, although I remember getting a note from one editor saying that my ideas were good, but could I redraw them in a less cumbersome style? When I did that, it turned out that the ideas weren’t good enough. Damn editors, impossible to please.

I know, now that I’m one of them.