I was strongly influenced by the famous cartoonist, Walt Kelly. I always wanted to be able to create comics in his style. I dreamed of being able to meet Walt Kelly, and to study cartooning and drawing from this incredible comic artist. Sadly, that never happened. He passed away in 1973, at only 60 years old, way too young . I decided recently to “try” once again to recreate his drawing style for my own learning skills, and you are welcomed to follow along.

Walt Kelly Pogo 1959

There are hundreds of examples of his comic strips available on line in blogs and in his many published Pogo books and other publisher’s reprint books. Unfortunately all the examples available are all fully finished inked drawings. There are almost no actual examples of his original pencil drawings, that I have ever seen. Walt Kelly mostly made “under drawings” in non-photo blue pencil. He always inked over those pencil roughs with beautiful black India ink. Yes, we can study those drawings, but they don’t provide much of the drawing construction methods or techniques.

Walt Kelly in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, before he created Pogo, worked for the Walt Disney Studios as a story artist and as an animator apprentice and also as a comic book artist. That must have been an amazing place. He had the fortune to be taught and learned from Ward Kimball and Fred Moore, two of the Disney animation masters. Here is the type of thing Walt Kelly would have seen daily in the 1940’s working at Disney around these two greats artists. This simple example helps to show a Ward Kimball character construction.

Using the finished Walt Kelly inked comic strips requires some reengineering to establish the pencil drawing steps. Here is my initial rough drawing of Albert. I am trying to “block out” the character in blue pencil. I’m drawing a sitting pose and trying to establish his appropriate proportions. As I sketch, I am focusing on making the character look solid, not flat, with the illusion of three-dimensional volume, weight and balance. This is very much the style of Disney’s animation technique methods.

I really want to focus on using what I can learn from the 1940’s Disney sketching style and use this to develop an approximate of the Walt Kelly style that expanded from his time working at Disney. Later the inking style is very much Walt Kelly’s personal technique and will flow from his evolved finished Pogo comic strips. I have to keep reminding myself to step away from the finished inking and loosen up to produce pencil sketches.

I tried to create another drawing of Albert.

That gives me a chance to ink Albert. That’s quite a “Christmas” tie he’s wearing.

Next I tried a blue pencil drawing of Churchy.

And then in Ink.

A fun beginning. I’m learning a lot from studying the finished Pogo’s strips. I always have found Kelly’s hands and feet to be a bit wonky. He was a master of inking with a brush which is hard to produce otherwise. Hopefully, I’ll get better with more practice. Check back next time.