Bored Panda once again reached out to Doug, who kindly answered our questions.
Doug’s cartoons often resonate with a wide audience, blending elements of boomer humor with a slightly twisted edge. We were wondering how the artist balances creating content that appeals to different generations.
“My ideas come from everyday life, family, and television. I don’t use social media much except for the fellow cartoonists I follow on Instagram. I don’t really try to target a particular audience. I suppose the boomer humor comes from my being 76 years old. The strange humor is just in my nature. I grew up with MAD magazine as well as the New Yorker and comic books,” replied Doug.
With a teaching career spanning over 30 years and instructing in cartooning and animation, they might have influenced one another. Doug shared whether his experience as an educator impacted or shaped his approach to creating comics.
“I don’t think being an art teacher affected my cartoons (other than giving me ideas); rather, I think my cartooning influenced my teaching. I always had a cartooning component when I taught junior high, and when I taught high school, my focus was on cartooning and animation. I was very lucky to have an ROP class in those areas,” wrote Doug.
Doug previously mentioned that sometimes an idea for a cartoon just pops into his head, while other times, it's more challenging to come up with concepts. We asked what strategies or rituals the artist follows to stimulate his creativity when he hits a creative block.
Doug shared: “Sometimes I stare at a blank paper and try to think of something funny. That usually doesn’t work. I have several techniques I use that often get me started. I’ll think of a situation and then twist it. Or a common or popular phrase and let my mind wander. One of my comics was 'Off The Wall,' which was about guys hanging in a dungeon. Those ideas came pretty quickly since I already had the setup. I do a lot of business and school cartoons as well as niche toons since I was submitting cartoons to publications."
Since Doug has been drawing comics for 52 years and over that time transitioned from creating comics for adult magazines to teaching art, and now into retirement focusing on greeting cards and online comics, we were curious to know how his artistic style evolved.
“I tried several major markets for submitting cartoons without much success. When I got out of the army, I went back to school, this time focusing on art. Figure drawing and composition classes helped my style, and soon cartoons were selling. But it was slow. The adult cartoon market offered more sales and for a while, I concentrated on them. When I finished my teaching credential, I didn’t think it was right to continue the adult theme toons and aimed more for general humor magazines.
When the magazine and newspaper markets dried up, for the most part, I tried submitting greeting cards. They were easy to come up with, but most greeting card companies have staff artists. I sold some ideas, but I wanted my art to be on the cards. Greeting Card Universe offered me both. Now I submit cards to my own store and they are offered through GCU. For the past 6 or 7 years, it has been very successful. I am retired and the cards provide a nice supplemental income, as well as keeping my hand in cartooning.
Many of the greeting card ideas came from my cartoons and vice versa. The Instagram cartoons keep me active and contributing to the cartoon genre. My hope is to publish a book (or several) of the Potpourri cartoons and hope to accomplish that this coming year,” wrote Doug.
And lastly, the artist shared whether his choice of using the traditional pencil and paper method over digital tools impacted his creative process or the final outcome of his artwork.
“I use the traditional method of pen and pencil mainly because I grew up with that. I have no desire to use digital art, with the exception of coloring the cartoons and saving them as files. My influences in cartooning come from every cartoonist I ever saw and studied. What made the joke funny or how did they set it up? I never could do a multi-panel comic strip, but studied them as well. My biggest influences were MAD Magazine, Charles Rodriguez, and Dan De Carlo. Mr. De Carlo’s work in magazines and Archie Comics taught me more about composition and layout than my art classes did.”
