Some cartoons and art school sketches

Above and below are a couple of cartoons that I drew for Detroit Magazine in 1946, the year that I graduated from High school,


My best friend, Herb Schiebold, and I won scholarships to a Detroit art school, The Society of Arts and Crafts. Below are some pages from my sketchbooks. I rarely sketched in pencil, preferring ink and a brush because one can't erase an ink line. I felt this would train me to be more observant and more careful about drawing accuracy.








Herb and I only stayed at the school for about six months, the commercial art teacher obviously had never been in the business, so we decided to quit. We both already had been working in the commercial art business and the school seemed like a waste of time. I now wish that I had stayed and took more life drawing and painting classes, it would have helped me later in the business. Sarkis Sarkisian was my painting instructor and he was excellent. Later in 1967 Sarkis hired me to head the Advertising Department where I taught graphic design, illustration and cartooning.
Herb and I decided to start our own studio with a salesman named Denny, I don't remember his last name at this time. Denny was older than us and had experience as a commercial art salesman. We rented space in a downtown Detroit office building and were in business. Denny brought us in a lot of graphic design work from Chrysler. We were doing pretty well until the Detroit auto workers went on strike, then business dropped off to nothing. We had to close up shop and look for a job.
Soon I ran into Jim Donahue from my early days at Brophy's, he had just started a new art studio, Allied Artists, and wanted to hire me as a graphic designer, another real break. I've been very lucky to run into some great opportunities throughout my career. Right from the start at Allied Artists I was kept quite busy doing mostly graphic design assignments and some illustration. Below is one of my first illustration jobs, an ad for Wettlaufer Manufacturing Corporation. It was done in 1947 or 1948.