Once again a cartoon of mine popped up on the New Yorker’s Day-to-Day Cartoon Calendar. Conde Nast, which owns the New Yorker, tells me that this cartoon has been ordered several times by customers as frameable prints and other novelty items – I assume as gifts for teachers! If you’d like to do the same just click here to order.
Here it is a little larger, if hard to read –
It’s very gratifying to see my cartoon pop up today on the New Yorker’s Day-to-Day Cartoon Calendar. Somewhere up there my Mom & Dad are smiling – and I hope it’s because they’re laughing at the gag!
Closeup below in case you can’t see it –
I was on Blaine Greenfield’s podcast last night – a delight all around, he’s the Ed Sullivan of the Asheville, NC area!
I fumbled a bit getting my artwork to screenshare, so I’m posting a pdf of some of my New Yorker published-and-rejected cartoons below, so you all can take the full tour I was going to give Blaine. Please scroll through – just place your cursor on the vertical bar at the right of the image and slide it down to scroll.
(If they appear too small to read, try clicking on the three horizontal lines at top left. All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles, but the first four are (c) The New Yorker.)
Now below is the slideshow I was going to show Blaine of my children’s book illustration, and some illustrations for adult books too. Included are illustrations from The Upside-Down Gardener, Grand Slam Birthday and the Adventures of the Poodle Posse series by Chrysa Smith; Robbie to the Rescue by Laurie Nowlan; Let’s Visit New Hope, by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler; The Book of Jims and Bills! Bills! Bills! by Jim Miller (they are fun books all about famous people thru history named Jim/James or William/Bill, fun to give as a gift to friends of those names), Leading Team Members with Super Powers by Thomas Edwards (a great informational book about working and training neurodiverse employees), and A Woman’s Book of Dirty Words by Mary Fran Bontempo. If you want to purchase any, I believe they are all available on Amazon. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
This slideshow below shows some of my greeting cards for Eagle Scout events and for the holidays – some are available now on my Etsy shop (click HERE) and some I hope to post there soon. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
Below are some of the cards I’ve drawn, which Blaine enjoys so much, for Kohlhepp Investment Advisors. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
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And finally here are my illustrations for the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Society, a wonderful group of devotees to some of the loveliest, and funniest, operettas ever written. (All artwork is (c) Pat Achilles)
Now you have seen all the things I meant to show Blaine – thanks so much for taking a look. Here’s the link to the half hour of me with Blaine: go to https://www.blainesworld.net/ and look for the podcast dated 11.8.2022 And thanks again to Blaine!
–Pat
I’ve been flipping through more Arthur Getz cover art from The New Yorker and came upon this beauty from 1957. Let’s take a look.
Mr. Getz was an expert at capturing small moments of New York City’s outdoor culture, and what is more ubiquitous in NYC culture than the sight of heavy construction parading right under the nose – or just over the heads – of the citizens? This scene of the renovation of a brownstone is as busy with textures and colors as a paisley tie, but hangs together beautifully thanks to his composition and palette.
The first thing I notice in Getz’s composition is how he directs your eye. Your view naturally starts at the upper left where there are sunlit construction workers and juicy detail in the nearest brownstone’s lovely oriel window. From the top left your eye slides down the chute and the wood planks, past the palisade of old doors to the dump truck; you inevitably climb the intricate façade of the buildings to the right of the truck, up and up to the hazily blank sky, where you can’t help but land with a thud on the bulls-eye of the whole scene, the wrecking ball. It’s a superb construction, sweeping your eye all around the view.
In landscape painting there is a general rule that warm colors advance and cool colors recede. This scene adheres to the rule with great success, with the warm brownstone tones closest to us, the middle ground scene of doors and rubble painted in slightly cooler shades, and the background sky and skyscrapers in the coolest, grayest tones – even that yellow apartment building is about as chilled a yellow as you can get in paint. I love how the artist ties together the scene by splashing periwinkle blue here and there – on a couple of the doors, under the scaffold, the brownstone handrail, the debris chute, one plane of the roof gable, and even high up on the top balconies of that yellow building. Getz’s loose but masterful treatment of the brownstone’s architecture is so admirable too, from the carvings and rustications in the massive sandstone shapes to his seemingly casual squiggles indicating the elegant wrought iron balustrade of the staircase.
Finally let’s point out Mr. Getz’s effective use of angles to make this scene dynamic and yet balanced. There are a number of strong diagonals echoing through this composition, that drive from the upper left to lower right, as I’ve indicated here:
They are formed by weighty, dark masses within the picture and give it a dynamic leftward and downward push. The scene does not ‘fall over’ from all that thrust though, because Getz brilliantly balanced all those forces against one thin, gangly yet very important element: the crane arm holding the wrecking ball. Its push is from lower left to upper right, and because it is a dark structure against the lightest part of the picture, and is more finely detailed than all the dark chunky shapes, and it holds that formidable feature of the portentous wrecking ball, it balances all that leftward thrust and makes the scene satisfyingly stable.
Arthur Getz created a stunning snapshot of NYC life here, marrying its iconic brownstone architecture with the careless jetsam of city construction zones. I would call this one of his best works ever for The New Yorker.
I wrote another cover review which you can read HERE. To see other New Yorker covers by Getz go HERE .
— Pat Achilles
In addition to my gag in the printed magazine, the New Yorker is also running this cartoon online, as their Daily! It can be seen at https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-november-2nd-campaign-signs
Today (June 4) is the last day of the Cantus Novus auction, and bids are being taken until midnight tonight. Have you taken a look at the items, trips and event tickets HERE?
Cantus Novus is a 40-voice choir that performs beautiful choral music in two annual concerts in the Bucks County area. I’ve donated my original art of a recent New Yorker cartoon, “Student-Teacher Conference,” which appeared in the May 10, 2021 issue of the New Yorker. I drew this cartoon by hand in prisma pencil and ink wash on illustration board, and on the back of the 13″ x13″ frame I’ve attached the printed page of the cartoon from the New Yorker in a plastic sleeve.
I think the topic of the gag cartoon would give a laugh to any teacher, principal or school staff member who receives it as a gift, so consider those end-of-the-year gifts for outstanding teachers!
If you are interested in owning an original drawing that was published in the New Yorker, you can easily register to place a bid. My cartoon is listed HERE and all proceeds go to help fund the extraordinary music created by Cantus Novus.
In case you missed it in my video interview with realtor Linda Crane, I mentioned that I have donated the framed original art of my recently published New Yorker cartoon to the auction supporting the wonderful choral group Cantus Novus.
This original signed cartoon “Student-Teacher Conference” appeared in the May 10, 2021 issue of the New Yorker. I drew this cartoon by hand in prisma pencil and ink wash on illustration board, and on the back of the 13″ x13″ frame I’ve attached the printed page of the cartoon from the New Yorker in a plastic sleeve.
I think the topic of the gag cartoon would give a laugh to any teacher, principal or school staff member who receives it as a gift!
Bidding is open to the public until June 4, so if you are interested in owning an original drawing that was published in the New Yorker, you can easily register to place a bid. My cartoon is listed HERE and you can take a look at a lot of other auction items, including some terrific vacations, on the site HERE. All proceeds go to help fund the extraordinary music created by this 40-voice Bucks County choir.
My friend Linda Crane, a charming and detail-oriented realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach and the Trident Group, has a weekly chat with interesting people in the area, and whether they work in the real estate industry or not she brings along her knowledge and personality to make it a fun exchange.
Linda asked if I’d talk with her a bit about my cartooning, especially selling cartoons to the New Yorker magazine, so we pulled a couple chairs up to the old zoom box and had a conversation.
I tell Linda how I became interested in cartooning and what it’s like submitting sketches to the New Yorker in the video of our chat, below. Linda has more of these fun discussions on her Youtube channel – I invite you to check it out after you listen here.
At the end of our talk I mention the choral group Cantus Novus and their auction in which one of my framed, original New Yorker cartoon drawings will be sold. Cantus Novus’ concert We Rise Again is online today, Friday May 21 starting at 8:00 PM, on their Facebook page. Their online fundraising auction will start at the conclusion of the concert, at approximately 9 pm, and Pat’s New Yorker cartoon is available for bids HERE. The auction will continue for 2 weeks after the concert, and all proceeds benefit this excellent non-profit choir.
Neshaminy Journal has its newest issue out – it’s the magazine produced jointly by the Bucks County Writers Workshop and the Doylestown Historical Society. This issue includes some great articles, all related to the history and culture of Bucks County, a place with a long association with writers, musicians, artists and theater people.
Among the local creators featured in this edition are Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, who studied in Doylestown under Oscar Hammerstein II; Pearl Buck, Nobel prize-winning author of The Good Earth; poet-novelist of the Harlem Renaissance Jean Toomer; Eric Knight, author of the classic tales of Lassie; and painter, teacher and writer Robert Beck, whose oil paintings chronicle our area’s beauty and its people. There is also original poetry in this issue and several illustrations by yours truly.
I recommend Neshaminy for everyone who has a connection to beautiful Bucks County. There are some fascinating aspects and stories to the people who have contributed and still contribute to its arts and history, and the writers involved here know how to spin wonderful tales. I enjoyed reading every one of them and learned a lot of Bucks County history that I didn’t know!
Neshaminy will soon be in book stores and can be ordered online by clicking HERE.
Who doesn’t remember this good girl? But you might not know that the glorious collie Lassie, star of a dozen films and a television series – and even a radio show – also has a brush with Bucks County history. The author of the first Lassie novel, (Lassie Come-Home, 1940) Eric Knight, lived in Springfield at Springhouse Farm in the 1940s, where he and his wife raised collies. The upcoming issue of Neshaminy Journal – produced jointly by the Bucks County Writers Workshop and the Bucks County Historical Society – has a long article about Knight and the famous collie, for which I painted this portrait in ink wash and pencil. This issue should be available in April at local book stores and through the website HERE.
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