Sketch o’the Week- Buster Keaton!

This week’s sketch of silent film star Buster Keaton was inspired by a post from my pal Mark Evanier‘s sensational (and long running) blog News From ME, in which he waxed nostalgic about Saturday morning TV, Cheerios, and “The Buster Keaton Show”. As Mark talks about in his post, this show was shot (live) and aired in the early 1950’s on a local Los Angeles station. Reading Mark’s comments about the show and Keaton’s legacy, I realized I had never drawn the legendary comedian/filmmaker. This one was drawn primarily from the photo Mark posted in his article, which is of an older Keaton well past his glory days. His face is pretty fascinating, and the older version has a lot of both character and worldly weariness. Keaton was, of course, famous for his deadpan expressions in the face of outrageous physical action by himself and things around him. The older face makes that expression even more intriguing, in my option.