The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-11-28
HOW TO BE A FUNNY MAN
RIGBY GIVES A TALK ON COMIC
ART.
The Recipe For Fame-Take n Style
and stick to 1t, and People win
Begin to Talk About YOu-The Fun
ny Man Gets Rich.

wants TO be a newspaper artist must be-
| gin before he is born.
That is such difficult line Of training
for the woud-be artist to follow up that
I am going back to qualify that state
ment with certain others.
| I do not believe thatathoa artist lives
who can tell when he began to draw. If
| you ask Phil May when he commenced to
| study art he will scratch that long head
of his and say: when 1 got hold of my
| first piece of COAL
My mother tells tales of how a son of
| hers began sis life work of art. The first
time he sat at a kitchen table he moulded
| a Noah's ark out of bread dough, and
later in the same day he received his
second pair of boxed ears for drawing
pictures in the mud with stick.
An artist may beStraned, but he must
also be made, and any man who likes
to draw can be an artist. Those two
facts will not be denied by any man who
is artist enough to earn living with his
pen and brush.
A man or woman setting out to work a
way in the field of art must keep close
eye upon the drawing board. AS soon as
the work begins to show signs of original
ity, then comes the critical point
In this country there is~no room for an
orignalst. If a man invents a new style
here he is immedia tely copied; and the
man who follows in his footsteps gets as
good prices as the originalist. This is the
fault of the public. The average man or
woman would as soon have COW paint
ed by Rosa Smith of Smith street as by
Rosa Bonheur of France, provided the
COW is Just as spirited and pleases her
eve as well. Her father may prefer the Bon
heur from a commercial standpoint but
the Smith sells.
We are too Independent here. We see
pictures ands like them and buy them and
we set up our own ideals. The pictures
may be just as good as any others, but
it is upsetting to the ideals of art and
demoralizing to the artists.
In Europe it is different There it Is the
name that sells and nothing else. People
buy name, and they don't care Tor the
picture. If a genius copies a well-known
painter he is condemned for initiating a
style And the one who is initiated rises
In value as others copy him. Here he
falls off in price.
America, however, is the place for the
humorous artist, who wants to make
| money In Europe, though they HOMIE a
| man, they do not pay him much. And
! the funny artists who want to get rich
better come to this country and stay here,
| for there is a fortune in making funny
| work with the pen. They say that funny
artists do bad work, and that the poorer
| the work is the funnier. But this bs not
so. Work no matter how crude, must
be done we'll or it is not funny.
Take these strange pictures you some
! times see In the magazines and newspa-
| pers. They consist of only few strokes
Sometimes forty strokes will make
| man completely dressed in outdoor
| on
artist has drawn him by funny methods
SO that he looks funny. But you mus
not think that the work Is necessarily
| poor
! once a humorous man who had earned
| considerable reputation by his work tool
the end of broom-a small oroom-wel
wor nat the elbows-and dipped 1t In ink
With this rough brush he sketched two
men looking at each other.
| When it came to the whis1xers he use(
the whole broom. The result was, If no
elegant, at least funny. He considered thu
| picture the worst he had ever done, We
the most artistic. 1t was the worst be
cause he had not used an artists i'm
| Elements, but the most artistic because
| he got his results the easiest.
In this country you often hear people
say: what an excellent picture! Tina
| man must have worked on 1t THOUSAND
hours, Just look at 1t! There are 1000
strokes of the PEN" eh'
Now. in Europe, where art is older, they
do not look at a picture that way. They
look on the effect, and If man Is able
| to get the same results with few
strokes, why 1t Is all the same.
Art, in way, is aiming toward the real
| istic. Realism Is to my mind, drawing q
thing Just as it looks. And the real artist
when he looks at a thing, sees 1t al
crossed with lines, just as 1t would be il
he we're to draw 1t.
He does not always see great masses
| of color. but he sees lines crossing each
other or running the same way until they
make color This rs the artists eye.
A funny artist sees things exaggerated
| and when he draws them he draws them
in such a way that they are amusing,
! though real.
! How many times have you, when talking
| with person who was telling you some
| thing serious. had an inclination to laugh
which was so strong that you could hard
w control it? Ttsis this humorous turn
of mind that the artist finds valuable to
| him in funny work.
A good humorist is one who tells the
story without words You look at a man
| with his back turned to you, and you
| can tell whether that man is happy or
unhappy The shrug of the shoulders, the
! set of the coat the pose of the hands
| the spread of the feet, the very direction
in which the head is turned. tells you
whether that man is enjoying himself or
| not.
The funny artist picks up this pose, and
makes a happy man NoF a miserable man
lust by the attitude. He has a great ad-
! vantage in being able to draw things as
| he sees them, and not as they ought to
| be. The same with a woman. He can SET
her down in such a way that she will
look detected and the picture, as you
glance at it, win.haye a funny look. The
! bad pictures are those that combine out
| lines and masses Of color awkwardly
| They are what artists call lazy pictures
| Artists make them, when they are tired
yet they are often successful.
A funny artist finds that he can make
men look funpier than women. The pub
! lie will forgive an Il-shaped man, but II