Jefferson Machamer: Gals, Gals, Gals Cartoonist

Thomas Jefferson Machamer (1901-1960) was a popular cartoonist from the mid-1920s through the 1940s. A brief Wikipedia entry is here, and a detailed career outline and evaluation of his work is here.

Machamer had a breezy, sketchy, distinctive style of drawing in ink that served him well. The second link above opines that the humor in the situations he depicted and the wit of his captions wasn't first-rate. I'm inclined to agree; his strong suit was his drawing style. He featured attractive young women ("gals") throughout his career, and even married one (movie actress Pauline Moore). A problem I have with this is that the gals he drew tended to look very similar if one ignores their clothing and hair style/hair color. Apparently this didn't bother his many fans.

The bottom line for me is that while I have some reservations, I basically enjoy Machamer's work. Click on those images with lots of details to enlarge.

Gallery

Judge cover - 6 August 1927
Satire on 1920s fashions for guys 'n' gals.

Judge cover - 10 March 1928
Here we get closer to Machamer's signature style.

Judge interior art

Katherine Hepburn
After Hepburn burst onto the Hollywood scene, Machamer's gals' faces underwent a change.

A representative post-Hepburn cartoon by Machamer

Gags and Gals panel - late 1930s
The fellow in the top hat in the next-to-bottom strip is a self-caricature that Machamer often included in his cartoons.

Some advice on drawing cartoon gals

Workups of gals' heads

Workups of full-figure gals

Example of Machamer landscape drawing - 1949
Look carefully and you will see a gal.

Roy Doty, Charming Cartoonist

As of the time I'm drafting this post, Roy Doty (1922 - ) is still alive and presumably making cartoons and illustrations, something he has been doing at a top professional level since the late 1940s. Information about him can be found here, here, here and here.

The classic Doty style involves clean, thin lines punctuated by solid areas of black and/or other colors. Sometimes compositions are simple, yet others can be complicated crowd scenes.

I find it interesting that illustrators who cartoon seem to have career staying-power, especially if they have a distinctive style popular with viewers. This is compared to illustrators in general, who can become victims of their signature style when it goes out of fashion or else are forced to change styles to keep commissions coming.

Here is a Doty sampling.

Gallery

Promotional ad for Life Magazine - 1953

Autobiography - click to enlarge

Wordless Workshop - a comics series

In House Beautiful - 1949

Apparently from an Art Directors Club of New York annual