Hidden gag in gag? (OS 408) / Barks' work methods

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

Last year, someone sent me information about Barks' lawn roller gag,
published July 1952, in black and white, on the inside backcover of
"Walt Disney's Donald Duck and the Golden Helmet" (OS 408):

  The duck's unseen neigbour, "Mr. Craig," may be a reference to Chase
  Craig, Carl Barks' editor at the Los Angeles Office of Western Printing.

His informal, private full-colour article contains information about Barks'
work methods and his art size, using the lawn roller gag as an example.
Panel 4, with the reference to Mr. Craig to be exactly:

  Below, one of the panels restored to about the size it was actually
  drawn, as it might have looked in india ink with Barks' blue pencil
  sketches showing through. [Panel 4, simulated original art, printed
  size 13,5 cm x 17 cm. It shows the inked art on top of a light-blue
  layer with added horizontal lines at the top and the bottom of each
  phrase in the lettering.] 

  Right, the panel colorized and reduced to the size it appeared in the
  comic book. [Panel 4, printed size 5,4 cm x 6,8 cm.]

  How was the Duck Man able to pack so much art into tiny comic book
  panels?

  Barks drew two and one-half times larger than the size his art would
  appear on the printed page. To make the layout sheets easier to handle,
  he cut them in two and drew a half page at a time.

  The printers spliced the boards together and reduced them to 40%.

[40 percent of the original size! That's no typo! And, as far as I know,
Barks' original art was then *destroyed*. I hope that at least these 
reduced reproductions have survived, but concerning the terrible quality
of a lot of reprints, I even doubt *that*. DvE]

  Barks sketched the panels in a non-reproducible blue pencil on
  heavyweight Strathmore bristol, then finished the drawings in india ink
  and white tempera, using pens and brushes. 

  He preferred inking with an Easterbrook 356 point, and used Speedball
  B-Series pens for the hand-lettered speech balloons. His brushwork for
  the solid black areas and white highlights was done with fine-pointed 
  Windsor-Newton Series 7 red sable watercolor brushes.

  Colors were added by the publishers, generally with little regard for
  detail or printing registration, much to the cartoonist's chagrin.


This email contains all the information from the article. I've devided the
text into paragraphs, which will hopefully make it more readable as email.
This is the first time that this article has been made public. In order to
keep it easily accessible, I will put it on a webpage.

DO NOT USE THIS ARTICLE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. I don't want to disappoint
the author. I think he deserves to know what will happen with the
information he kindly has supplied. (This article is only the surface.)
It's part of a project in development. More about that later. I hope within
a month, or so. It all depends on how much hours there are in a day.

Please let me know if you have additional information on Barks' work
methods. I would for example like to know which kinds of paper Barks has
used during his comic book career. There was a (temporary?) period in
which Barks had to draw on cheaper paper, for example. 


Best wishes,

--- Daniel