Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 07, 2015

Maybe, Steph needs a collaborator with artistic talent.

…or a GoFundMe for drawing lessons.

Hey Goat, ask him about Rat, the crocs, Guard Duck, and Snuffles. Their a bit different from you, Pig, and Zebra in terms of character models.

I wonder how do you make the crocodiles look like Rat or vice-versa.

Ever since Dilbert, everybody thinks they can draw.

Hey, Steph, what happens if you splice some Croc DNA into Pig, Goat, Guard Duck, and Snuffles? And how would Zebra react?

Of course they resemble each other, they’re all members of Steph’s close family.

It’s okay if you’re a hack; just so long as you acknowledge it. Stay humble, my friends.

Love how you draw, Stephan. But maybe a few lessons from that art school on the matchbook covers…?

Omg … I… I actually never noticed this. lmao

Just suppose you drew Goat with a longer nose, and stuck his horns into his mouth. Then you stretch his ears out and paint him grey … Robbie the Republican! !

Time to buy Cartooning for Dummies.

Thank-You Steph for giving all of us a free art lesson. You start out with one item and then build out from there. :-)

When I attended Cartooning classes at the University in 2314, they said that the similarity of the characters was due to them being anthropomorphized representations of the archetypal animal component members of the human psyche, so that they all held the basic nature of the individual to whom they belonged.Now I want my money back, but it’s a long walk from 2015 to 2314, and I’m pretty sure they don’t give refunds.

No worries, Steph. I think you’re doing a great job. Of course, I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler!

Toon Boy exposed…….by Toon Boy.

Cartoon-Boy’s shameful secrets revealed! The Veil of Mystery ripped aside and the Truth ruthlessly laid bare!Oh, the shame of having limited artistic skills!Art School could probably fix that over a period of time….

Only Six Faces.

If you let your eyes stray to the right side of this post, you’ll see that Cartoon-Boy won a Reuben for the Best Newspaper Comic Strip for 2015. That’s a pretty good indicator of his talent.

Oh, goodness. Don’t beat yourself up. Just take a look at Peanuts.

If it was drawing over content, everybody would be reading Prince Valiant. There are some strips like Pearls that are really funny, even when the drawing is somewhat poor, then we have strips like Pigborn or 9 Chickweed, which are very attractive to the eye but with poor content and of course we have those extremely rare cases when drawing and content are at their best, like Calvin and Hobbes.

Pibgorn has excellent content. In a completely different way, so did James Thurber’s cartoons, which were…..well, nobody ever mistook them for the Old Masters. What I’ve noticed is how rarely Zebra appears these days, and I’ve wondered if Pastis is just too lazy to draw those stripes! Zebra used to have the kinds of conversations with Rat that Goat tends to monopolize these days.

Another comic I love to read is called “Order of the Stick” and all of the characters are stick figures. One time he actually drew just to prove he could and that the regular stick figures are part of his artistic choice: OOTS 339

… Scott Adams is very clear that he can’t draw, and that its harder these days to succeed without being able to draw. But not impossible. And overly cartoony simple drawing can be pleasing.

Stephan has serious guts for his self deprecating reveals. It’s hilarious though.

OOOO – I never realized THIS.

The secret is out! I never noticed this. HA

Yes indeed. That tremendous variety of character types in “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes” and “Blondie” and just about every other comic strip ever read….

Oh well. Schulz made millions using variations on the same large-round-head-with-little-body-children theme for five decades. If it sells, why change it?

Proof that it’s not JUST the drawing or the dialog.It’s BOTH.

Hilarious! (I hope it doesn’t affect my view of future strips.)

I wonder what Rat would look like with black and white stripes and the end of the nose being bigger

I wonder what a plate of scrambled eggs would taste like if you took away the eggs and put a piece of chocolate cake on the plate instead?

You’d look like Goat.Not difficult. Haha.xxx

oops. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Never noticed. I could maybe pick Pastis out by drawing style, but I suppose I pay more attention to the dialogue and the personalities.

I mean, XKCD is one of my favs, and Munroe only draws stick figures. Pab Sugenis uses clip art. On the other hand, I adore MythTickle’s rich artwork as well as its dialogue.

It matters more how you relate to the personalities, I think. Witness, Big Nate’s recent run-in with a potential girlfriend, and how his readers are all aflutter (not excluding myself).

You can remove Goat’s horns, lengthen his nose a bit and he looks like Pig. But were we given some sort of dialogue, we could probably assign the correct dialogue to the correct character… because Pig and Goat are more than just drawings.

Stephan always appears the same—does that mean he has only one self-character design?

The quintessential example of repeated simple images (hieroglyphics, anyone?) that transcend this supposed “limitation” to achieve high art is Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy”. It has been said… disparagingly by some who can’t see past the sameness and admiringly by those who recognize icons (as in the ancient sense of symbolic representation) when they see them… that the strip could be produced with rubber stamps. The famous assessment that it is easier to read “Nancy” than not to read “Nancy” is apt. You can absorb it in a glance. But careful study of the images, in sequence or in isolation, can be richly rewarding. This is true, in different ways, about “Pearls” as well.

Often wondered why goat and zebra were given the snout of a pig.

It startles my family when they hear sudden, explosive laughter coming from my office. You did it again, Steph!

He’d look like Goat with hair.

Hey sometimes a key design is what works. Think about it, you can make a character using some circles, lines and a little bit of erasing.

Answer to Zebra: Pig with a mane

How does Rat connect to this.

Thanks for getting the Croc and Zebra family back in the strip. They are our favorites.

The real stroke of Stephan’s genius are the Crocs.