Painting Fine-Art Cartoons in Oils - Enchanted Images

at the feet of the master
“As for your idea of learning technique from me, you’ll
be disappointed. I have no technique.”
Carl Barks
In one of the first letters I
wrote to Carl Barks I asked
him to write a Walter Fosterstyle
book on “how to paint
like Carl Barks.” His answer
was typically modest: “As
for your idea of learning
technique from me, you’ll be
disappointed. I have no technique.
The whole painting
builds itself as I paint over
one blunder after another. I
use a very small brush and
literally draw the shading
and values and blendings
like I would draw them with
a pen. I follow the rules of
color mixing and layering
that I read in instruction
books. I would not make
an interesting subject for a
Walter Foster-type book.”
(letter to me dated Oct. 9,
1983.) At that point, the fall
of 1983, I had been painting
copies of Barks paintings for
seven years, and I thought
he was wrong – I thought his
oil paintings of the Disney
Graphic Gallery No. 7 was my
first encounter with a painting
by Carl Barks.
(Letter to John Garvin, October 1983)
ducks were unique, done
with a craft and technique I’d
never seen applied to comic
characters. A technique I
was determined to learn.
My first exposure to a painting
by Barks came in 1976
when I was 16 years old.
While exploring a dingy
comic shop in San Francisco
(my family was there for
a “Star Trek” convention),
I stumbled across an art
catalogue of some kind. On
its cover was a painting of
Donald Duck on a golden
beach, gleefully exulting over
a treasure chest of pirate
gold. I’d never seen anything
like it before. I collected comics,
bubble-gum cards and
paperbacks and had seen
plenty of “painted” cartoon
characters, but even as a kid
I knew that this painting of
Donald Duck was unique and
different. At that time I had
no idea who the artist was,
but I knew his technique
wasn’t like the simple, realistic
painted comic covers
of Turok or Space Family
Robinson, the Dell and Gold
Key comics I collected. Or the
painted Mad Magazine covers
by Norman Mingo. Or the
painted covers of the Disney
Dell giants, which had garish
colors and vacuous characters.
Or the “Wacky Packages”
cartoon paintings. This
painting was more refined,
67
Barks’s work was unique, especially
when compared to other “cartoon”
paintings of the period.
Wacky Packages series 9, 1974.
Turok Son of Stone No. 96, 1975.
Donald Duck Beach Party No.1, 1965.