463. Drawing Dogs in Florida & NYC, Lunch with Morty G, & Beth Spencer Returns for Season 2 of DMA!

Plus! New Yorkers get cryogenically frozen, Blackwing invents a pen, & Morris gets excited about stomping in the black slush.

(I know. I know, ‘2017 called… it wants its reference back!’)

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Hey again, friend!

Welcome to Issue #463 of New York Cartoons.
As I’m writing this, my toes curled around the prehistoric heating pipe in my apartment, trying to thaw out after trudging back from the Westminster Dog Show in the snow.

Oh, did I bury the lede there? Yes! I’ve been drawing dogs for the AKC Museum of the Dog at the Westminster Dog Show in New York. If you’ve seen the Christopher Guest movie “Best In Show” you’ve seen exactly what I’ve been looking at. That movie isn’t a comedic parody; it is an honest-to-God documentary.. (No joke, those characters are actually based on real people.) I did a rewatch of it this past weekend, and it absolutely holds up. It’s definitely worth another visit. Read more below:

Speaking of drawing dogs…

From Scott:
We had such an event on the weekend at a fantastic bookstore in Naples (the Florida one, not the Italian one) called Books on Third. I love doing these things but I’m always easily the most stupid person there and I feel like I’m ruining it for everyone. But…

Using Amazon to Support Independent Bookstores.

This coming Friday at noon Eastern Time, I get to chat with one of my favourite artists on Substack, Beth Spencer. Beth is back for a repeat visit and we’re going to talk about a lot of different things that she’s been working on lately. I’m really excited to kick off season two of Draw Me Anything.

.aaaaand lastly, I got a nice surprise in the post this week when Blackwing pencils sent me a mysterious new product that they’ve been working on for many, many years. And by gum, I think they may have just pulled it off.

Read More Below…

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This week’s Sketchbook pages are from the first drawing exercise for Process Junkie from 2024, which you can try if you feel like it.

Just. Hands.

They are, famously, the hardest thing to draw, which is why I want you to sign a contract with yourself before you begin: This page is never to be seen by anyone. Not even me— don’t share it; it is for your eyes only.

Go nuts! Don’t hold back. Draw your own hands. Draw different people’s hands from the TV, from pictures on social media, and from people watching in a café. Whatever kind of hands you like to draw, don’t draw those; challenge yourself. Draw hands in positions you have never drawn before. Fill the whole page.

Then, once you’re done, scrunch up the page and throw it out. Know that there’s zero commitment for these to look ‘good’ or ‘right’. Just have fun with it. They can be cartoony hands. They don’t need to be super realistic or rendered with shadows and highlights. Just… draw hands. Fill every part of the page.

New York has been particularly rude to its residents this past two weeks. The freezing cold is completely exhausting, and even the slightest glimpse of sunlight is going to elicit squeals of joy the second we see it… Such is the abusive relationship of living in New York City.

One of the longest residents of New York City is also one of my favourite cartoonists in the world and one of my favourite people in the world: the one and only Mort Gerberg. Long-time readers will remember Mort from my Someone You Might Like section. If you want to catch up on that now, you can read that here:

I got to have lunch with him this week. Mort is a bottomless pit of knowledge, advice, and inspiration, and I consider myself extremely lucky to call myself one of his friends. (Whether he calls me a friend is another issue altogether.)

Can we please go stomp around in the disgusting diseased slush!??