As a cartoonist, I have a wide variety of influences. Folks that really made me want to pick up a pen and paper and make comics and cartoons.
Over the years, these various influences have worked their way into my style of writing and drawing for sure in ways both intentional and unintentional. In this case, this is a series of pieces I did for my own comic strip, Finding Dee, that were extremely intentional.
I enjoy studying the styles of the artists that have inspired me, and trying to capture something of those styles. It’s a creative exercise to try and suss out not just HOW, but WHY my favorite artists do what they do.
In the case of this strip, we had just brought two new kitties into the house, and our dog Poe was showing a LOT of jealousy. (This has NOT abated, FYI) It inspired a gag idea that I realized was basically a Garfield/Nermal strip, so I decided to lean into it and made the following parody.
As a kid, the work of Jim Davis and the other artists who worked on Garfield, astounded me. It was so expressive, animated, and CLEAN. It was some of the most precise cartooning in the papers and looked like a TV cartoon on the page before Garfield even WAS that. I adored it, and still do.
And those smooth, clean lines were INSANELY hard to try and replicate here. Hope you enjoy it, though.
Nice! You’ve really captured the style!