Hitting the Books, Pushing the Pencil (Eighteenth in a Series) – Library of American Comics

Continuing our look at the Famous Artist School’s (FAS) cartooning course with lesson examples longtime LOAC Friend Bill Chadbourne turned in when he was a FAS student, plus background on and a letter to Chad from his FAS instructor, Bill Feeney. (Click each image for an isolated view.)

When I mentioned to Chad the structure of this two-part look at the Famous Artist School, he said, “The promise of seeing my early assignments makes me wince, mainly because they are so stiff, and I had yet to loosen up.” He went on to say, “Decades later, when I conducted a short course of How to Draw for the ladies and gents at a local retirement community, I employed what I had learned from the Famous Artist course. At that time I was deeply into oil painting, and a dozen of my canvases were on display at the main county library. I used The Grid system, working from thumbnail sketches or photos. I tried to pass all this along, but the ladies really wanted to be entertained more than trying to actually draw.”

Instructor Bill Feeney’s assessment of Chad’s FAS lessons does not seem to align with his student’s modern-day assessment of that work. “Your drawing here is excellent,” he tells Chad in this letter, which was part of the input Chad received for the “Johnnie!!!” lesson shown above.

As an instructor, Feeney’s job was one part coach – offering corrections, guidance, or suggestions – and one part cheerleader. His comments to Chad strike this author as being sincerely collegial, not filled with empty and insincere encouragement.

Another FAS cartooning instructor was Randall Enos, then a tyro in his early twenties. Enos went on to build a stellar career as an illustrator, placing cartoons and images in publications as varied as The Atlantic, National Lampoon, and Playboy. Mr. Enos reminisces about his FAS experience in a 2019 article where he says, in part: “I was the first one hired from the ‘outside’ to work in the cartoon course. There was Bud [Sagendorf] (director), Pete Wells (co- director), Barney Thompson (brought over from the illustration course) and Bill Feeny (brought over from the school’s art department). The five of us worked in a bullpen situation rather than choosing to have separate offices like all the other instructors at the school. We liked to collaborate freely in one room, because the course was brand new and we were feeling our way along. I had to learn how to draw cartoons while I was teaching people how to draw cartoons. And I found out that drawing funny was very serious business. The other four instructors became my mentors and teachers and everything I know about drawing cartoons I learned from them.”

With his varied artistic background, Chad would likely say the he didn’t learn everything he knows about drawing cartoons from the Famous Artist School, but it’s clear he did the work required by the school’s cartooning course, and received serious, valuable feedback related to each lesson.

We hope you’ve found this look at the Fanous Artist School’s course in cartooning to be as big a treat as we have!