Funny Animal Drawings

 Thurday Superfluous Day.

I'm still here! Something seems to be up with my blog, someone carpetbombed ads in the comments and I removed them all. I am just adding a small little post, to see if it still works. I still have loads and oad of scans that are waiting to go on. If I could just find the time.

Do you know Hayseeds? You should. Harry Hargeaved was a South Africa born artist who lived in Kent and was already know for his funny bird cartoons in Punch (and subsequent books) when he started his own funny animal strip for the London Evening News. It looks a lot like Walt kelly's Pogo, but that probably came about in a roundabout way. Hargreaves worked at the Toonder Studio's in the Netherlands in the fifties (first in Amsterdam and later from home) where he produced the succesful Panda daily strip for many years. In the fifties Toonder discovered Pogo and was influenced by the way Kelly drew bears (as the second character in his most famous series Tom Puss, was one as well). So someone around that time knew about Pogo. It may even have been Hargreaves himself. Combine that with Toonder's house style and Hargreaves's own, and you get this. A lovely, llovely, sometimes very funny daily strip.

There are two books, which I both have. But Hargreaved did the series for many years (before getting even more fame for illustrating The Wind in the Willows and designing the popular Basil Brush character for television). I found a source for these strips and will be pulling them one by one to show here. I am not far yet, but this is the perfect place to save them.