Norm McGary is one of my favorite Golden Book painters.He has a slick style and puts just enough detail into the backgrounds and characters to give you a different experience than what you get from watching the cartoons.The cartoons have the advantage of sound and motion but are limited in how the characters can be rendered, so good Golden Books like McGary's give you extra treats in the rendering.
I like when he does the 2 color limited palette pages too.
Hawley Pratt drew these and he was lucky guy to get so many great painters to polish his rushed drawings. I think more people know his name than the painters who spent must have more time on the books.

I always wondered what the pay rates were for each job. Does the layout artist get as much as the painter? Even though the painter does the most work?
And how much does the writer get who spends half an hour writing a whole book in retarded baby-talk? I love how the writer gets top billing - as if that's what anyone buys a Golden Book for.
This Huck and Friends book has everything an HB fan could want- a bunch of favorite characters in a rocket.

And such a beautifully rendered rocket too! I used to fake sick, skip school and stare at this picture for hours and wonder how many years of intense schooling, whippings and study it would take to become a giant of the Golden Book world of painters.Sometimes McGary would use more grays and neutral colors than most cartoon painters (who tend to use too much primary and secondary colors.)
He used darker colors than the typical Golden Book.
I sometimes confuse his work with another good GB painter - whose name escapes me right now. (I think he did the Beany and Cecil Book)



I also like the way he painted all the humans' noses red, like they went around drunk everywhere.
Aww, how cute...

http://goldengems.blogspot.com/search/label/Norm%20McGary

With so many ways there used to be to paint cartoon characters, you have to wonder why this terrible style is the only one left. Does anyone like this??
I also wonder why CG films have settled on making once cute characters as ugly as possible, when there is so much reference on how to render cartoon characters as appealing as their original designs and cartoons.
Like is there a law that says if you revive a classic character, you have to make him look uglier than real life?

When do you think it was decided that cartoons should no longer appeal to the eyes and whose idea was it?

Here are the last paintings from the Norm McGary book.


I love how old cartoon paintings have so many varieties of styles and approaches.Each painter will take the basic studio style-in this case Hanna Barbera, and do his own own particular variation on it.
These last 3 are Mel Crawford and use a very different approach to design and painting than the Bamm Bamm comic.

Nowadays we only have 2 cartoon illustration painting styles - the video box airbrush style, which is not a style at all, and the faux Mel Crawford Golden book style that started in the last decade and a half.

I'll post more of those Crawford books soon.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to eventually be an encyclopedia of cartoony cartoons and techniques.
Little by little I'm amassing as much fun stuff as I can in the hopes that it will be useful to other folks who like cartooniness.
Some of the posts take a long time to put together. I think I will put some up like this, that just show really fun art. I'll always put a label or more to go with it, so you can click them to see if I have already said anything about the subject.
For example, this would be in the category of "character painting", which I've already talked about.
To me, really nice paintings like this speak for themselves, but you can click the label to read theories about it.

These paintings are by Norm McGary.
And drawn by Hawley Pratt.

More paintings to come...