Londons Times Cartoons Blog

I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t get asked what its like to lead the glamorous life of a cartoonist or humor writer. I s’pose I could put it in as few as words as possible, “Charlie Sheen, eat your heart out”…or, tell it like it really is.  My wife Lee isa fine writer and photographer and we both work in the living room.  Lee goes out nearly daily and hikes about 3 mountains a day, amounting to around 4-6 miles.  I snore and contemplate my 55 foot commute to my home office.  I sleep a little more.

Shirley Temple Of Doom

You see, if there is any glamor whatsoever in the world of independent cartooning it is that I set my own deadlines, create my own SEO and PR, tweet when I feel like tweeting, and say “Hi Ya’ll” to my childhood Mississippi friends most of whom no longer live there but still want me to say “Hi Ya’ll” and they always say “Hi Ya’ll” back.  It is sort of a ritual.

Always A Sox Fan

I often hear, “How do you do it? How do you create all these cartoons”.  That is a question that truly is not answerable and if someone teaches a class (for money) in humor writing and/or how to create funny cartoons, go find a guy named Elmer Gantry and buy some snake oil. It will probably do much more for you.  Like football, chess, tennis, math, or plumbing, it is something you have, or something you don’t.  At first, only you know it. Then when you create it and push it out into the public, and anywhere from 20 people have seen your cartoons, you get a general idea if you “have it” or not.

Sometimes I’m in the bathroom, sometimes out hiking, often watching tv. sometimes talking to a boring person (this is ideal because you shut up, stare at them in the eyes, they think you are listening, and you are mentally creating a cow and a zebra at a formal dinner/dance date in a single-panel form). You both leave smiling and they think you are the most attentive listener ever put on planet earth.

But its really not all glamor.  In fact only a small fraction is.  There’s sketching out the idea.  There’s writing the caption. There’s assigning the final product if I want a team member to create it (which I usually do).  There’s creating the products. There’s approaching the appropriate publications.

I often get asked, “How did you get into the cartoon business?  I don’t know. I really don’t.  I tried everything else, and as the late great Charles Schulz once told me, “I did because I tried everything else, and didn’t do it very well”. I could identify.

More on cartooning in upcoming blogs. Thanks for your time. Please feel free to comment.

Sushi Bar Exam

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

I am a writer, cartoonist, and designer. My name is Rick London and I founded Londons Times Cartoons in 1997 which have become Google & MSN’s #1 ranked offbeat cartoons since 2005.  I have launched about 5 stores that sell funny gifts and even a serious designer fashion shoe store with the world’s only famous love quotes on shoes called Shoes That Amuse. I love my wife Lee, animals and nature, the outdoors, and life in general.