Reuben Report- Sunday

Sundays at the Reuben Weekend are always the most laid back and relaxed of the event. Any pressure of the shows, awards, speakers or other parts of the weekend are behind us and it’s time to just kick back and enjoy the company.

This year NCS luminary Cathy Guisewite generously opened her nearby home to the members for a backyard picnic dinner. She allowed everybody to tour her home, studio and guest house while the grounds were transformed into party area with catered Mexican food and cocktails. Needless to say, as one of the most successful cartoonists in the last several decades, her home was beautiful.

We had an opportunity to see her studio, which she had set up with a step by step of how she does her cartoons.

Cathy’s doppleganger is frustrated with work today

Here’s where Cathy draws her dailies

Here’s Cathy’s steps to doing a daily cartoon:

A close up of her light table

Sunday’s are also the day the sketchbooks come out and the cartoonists do drawings for other cartoonists, their spouses, kids, etc. The Lovely Anna has many scrapbook albums she has done over the years, and is not shy about accosting people to draw for her.

Minnesota illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt

Hallmark artist David Mowder

“The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” creator John Hambrock

Animator Gary Goldstein

“Loose Parts” panel cartoonist Dave Blazek

“Ginger Meggs” Aussie cartoonist Jason Chatfield

Jeff and Melinda Keane

Cathy took a page from Mell Lazarus‘s book and had a giant urn and a smaller scale toy piano for the cartoonists to doodle on.

Me drawing on Cathy’s urn

I also got roped into doing the “blindfold” drawing that NCS photomaster David Folkman and company have been getting people to do for the last couple of years for the publication “Hogan’s Alley”. Patterned after a challenge some notable cartoonists did in the 40’s where they had to live up to their claim they could draw their characters “blindfolded”, and they were asked to do just that. They have artists do a drawing of their cartoon character blindfolded on the left side of a page, and then do the same thing without the blindfold on the right. Of course I don’t really have a “character”, so I drew Alfred E. Neuman. I really hate drawing Alfred cold because it’s very difficult to draw him right without looking at a picture of him… he’s got a bizarre asymmetry to his face that defies easy reproduction. I did it anyway… the blindfolded one turned out better.

Me doing a bad Alfred drawing

Us with our generous host, Cathy Guisewite

After a wonderful afternoon at Cathy’s we bussed back to the hotel and went up to a private event at a nightclub next door called “Level 3”, where we were treated to the sounds of Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez‘s band (who were fantastic) followed by the traditional karaoke.

Steve Silver, me and Keelan Parham

Lovely NCS ladies Melinda Keane, Barbie Parham, Heidi Silver and Anna

Jay Kennedy Scholarship winner Chris Houghton and his girl friday Kassandra

Karaoke NCS style

Another fantastic Reubens weekend. Many thanks to the board and especially to the hard working Jeff Keane for doing so much to make it so enjoyable.