This is third part of an Ink Spill series looking at newer New Yorker cartoonists. I asked three of the most recent additions to the magazine’s stable of artists to tell us a little about themselves and how it was they ended up at The New Yorker (previously we heard from Liana Finck and Edward Steed). The series wraps up with the newest of the trio: Charlie Hankin, whose first cartoon appeared in The New Yorker this past August (a Hankin cartoon from The New Yorker, October 14, 2014 appears below).
And now, here’s Charlie:
My interest in cartooning went through cycles. I did single-panel bits for my high school newspaper, and then nothing until a single installment of a graphic-novel/zine I drew in college. After school, I got deep into realist painting. I also started a comedy webseries called Good Cop Great Cop with my friend Matt Porter. Maybe the merging of art and comedy finally attracted me to cartooning for The New Yorker. Either way, it seemed like a good fit: both the webseries and my paintings have undertones of dry, quiet absurdity.
Since entering the fold, it’s been great to meet some of the big names in cartooning–Roz Chast, David Sipress, Sam Gross, and of course Bob [Mankoff]. Ben Schwartz and Liam Walsh have both given me guidance. And I dig around the archives for extra inspiration. Much older generations aside (Chas Addams, Peter Arno, et al.), I love Mick Stevens, Mike Twohy, Tom Cheney, Leo Cullum, Jack Ziegler, Danny Shanahan, and too many others to name.
Further reading:
To see Charlie Hankin’s New Yorker work, link here to The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Bank.
Link here to visit Charlie’s webseries, Good Cop Great Cop.
To visit his website, link here: charliehankin.com.
Photo: Sasha Arutyunova