Larry's Cartoon Vault: Cartoon Correspondence School Ads

From time to time I‘ve enjoyed featuring material from the various correspondence school art courses
that were so common in the early part of the 20th century.

Back then "Make big bucks in cartooning!" wasn't just a come-on --it was a potential reality.

Not so well-to-do kids on farms who felt that art institute or university educations were beyond them  signed on with the Landon Cartoon Correspondence Course, or similar courses offered by W. L. Evans, Billy Hon, Zim or Dorman H. Smith.

The fact is these course —especially Landon's—really delivered.

Many alumni went on to professional careers working as newspaper staff artists, syndicated comic strip artists, editorial cartoonists, animators and illustrators.
 
Among them were Milton Caniff , Bill Maudlin, Ethel Hays,  Floyd Gottfredson, Edwina Dumm,  Carl  Barks, Jack Cole, Gil Fox, Chic Young, V.T. Hamlin, Gene Byrnes, Clifton Meek, Merril Blosser, Roy Crane, Stanley, Link, Edgar Martin, and Bill Holman.  

Here are a few of the ads that appeared in publications such as Cartoons Magazine, American Artist and other journals back in the olden days.

And you'd need a good drafting table...

And the long gone profession of Chalk Talks...

And some ads from circa late 1940's...

You can see more on cartoon correspondence courses by looking in the archives of this blog. 

(Some related posts are February 6, 2011, February 20, 2011 and July 22, 2012)

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.