A Winning Cartoon !

jamestrueman ESCAPE ART
Jun 18, 2022
3 min read

Welcome to June 2022 blog post

From the article in The Artist Magazine, June 2022,

celebrating the 90th anniversay challenges.

On a winning note…. Having become a member of Paintersonline.com during its 90th anniversary year, I decided to enter their October 2021 competition …and won!

The monthly competitions centred on a theme inspired by a key event of 1931, the year which saw the launch of the Artist magazine.

October’s challenge celebrated the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould debuted in October 1931. You can find out more about the creation of this American Comic strip hero by folowing this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tracy

To commemorate The Artist Magazines October 1931 edition, Paintersonline artists were asked to create their own cartoon character.

Having entered previous months competition, I thought I would try again and I decided on my cartoon inspired character from a children’s book, I previously self published titled ‘Uncle Sonny’s Settee.’

Considering the various characters I created, I focused on the character of Mrs Bellispot. Although not a main character, she is one of my favourite in the book. I had always seen Mrs Bellispot as someone who was a bit mysterious with a background of secrecy. The fact that this mature lady has a bionic false eye was perhaps a hint of this. What has happened in her past to lose an eye? Was it just an accident? When we meet her in the story of ‘Uncle Sonny's settee’ Mrs Bellispot has been a housekeeper to Sonny for some years.

Having designed the book cover and some illustrations I already knew what my cartoon character looked like.

Here is the winning painting Mrs Bellispot in the middle of the picture all the other characters surround her, their reactions of surprise at the revealing of her past and ability to handle a weapon that is slung over her shoulder.

Mrs Bellispot, Housekeeper and SAS Agent.

From left to right around Mrs Bellispot is Esme, Marissa, Sonny, his sister Rachael, Eric and nuzzling Mrs Bellispot’s leg is Comfrey the green cat.

Drawing out the characters I completed the painting in gouache and used pen to outline the details. This was not the original painting I intended to submit. Initially I painted the characters with a a background:

Not usually a winner of competitions, I was taken aback and very honoured to be chosen.

Here are a few comments on my entry:

That's great and well done, I really liked this

and thought it was very funny. Super drawing.

Posted by DC on Tue 07 Dec 22:44:57

Lovely and well done on competition

Posted by FP on Wed 08 Dec 07:31:16

She looks wonderful and that cat is a joy!

Posted by HL on Wed 08 Dec 08:30:48

Like it and the humour.

Posted by PD on Wed 08 Dec 09:53:08

Full of humour and great character

expressions James. Not surprised it won

a competition.

Posted by CR on Wed 08 Dec 10:04:02

The following details are quoted from the paintersonline website:

Winner of October's The Artist 90th anniversary challenge announced

James Trueman has been selected as the winning artist in October's The Artist 90th anniversary challenge for his cartoon character, Mrs Bellispot,

As the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould debuted in October 1931, we invited artists to create their own cartoon character for this month's challenge.

James's charcater, Mrs Bellispot - housekeeper and SAS agent, certainly had us asking what adventures were to be had by her and the other figures in the scene!

Congratulations on your win which will be announced on PaintersOnline and on our social media channels later this week and, early next year, The Artist will be sharing all the winning entries to these challenges in the magazine.

Having written the children's story I was on holiday in France when I thought about designing a book cover and started to think about how the characters might look. I started to fill a number of sketch books. The following are examples of the first sketches I did for Mrs Bellispot:

Mrs Bellispot study, along with Rachael and Eric.

The idea was to make Mrs Bellispot something of a scary character - although friendly Mrs Bellispot can sometimes be intimidating. Although good at cookery Mrs Bellispot is something of a messy cook, due to her enthusiasm. When we first meet Mrs Bellispot she is wielding a knife having been chopping tomatoes with resulting red stains all over her pinafore.

Esme Meets Mrs Bellispot

In addition I created an animation of Mrs Bellispot in action! Depicting the housekeeper carrying out some of her favourite activities. This is from the album The Time Busters, a collection of songs and music inspired by the characters of Uncle Sonny's Settee.