Larry’s Cartoon Vault Pt II: The Cartooning Correspondence Courses

In the last post I focused on the early 20^th century cartoon instruction books.

Those booklets were easily accessible and were for most young hopeful cartoonists the only educational outlet available-- with the exception of the mail-order cartoon courses.

The premier correspondence course was Charles N. Landon’s Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning. Landon, a veteran cartoonist of The Cleveland Press and art director of NEA (the Newspaper Enterprise Association) probably wasn’t the first to offer a correspondence course in cartooning but his was most certainly the most successful.

The roster of graduates includes many of the most renowned comic strip, editorial and magazine cartoonists of the 1930’s,40’s and ‘50’s.

Among them were Milton Caniff , Bill Maudlin, Merrill Blosser, Floyd Gottfredson, Edwina Dumm, Carl  Barks, Jack Cole, Gil Fox, Chic Young , V.T. Hamlin, Gene Byrnes, Clifton Meek, Roy Crane, Dorman H. Smith (who started his own mail-order course years later –see previous post), Stanley Link, Edgar Martin, Ethel Hays and Bill Holman.  

Here from the Cartoon Vault is a sampling of the Landon correspondence course.

Landon placed ads in a variety of magazines such as Cartoons Magazines.

Students received lessons on a regular basis.

Students returned work for evaluation.

Landon also published Pen and Ink Magazine which published students work.