This sketch in honor of “Little Orphan Annie,” the comic strip chronicling that red-headed ragamuffin created by the cartoonist Harold Gray in 1924. "Annie" ends syndication today, and the last strip is a strange cliffhanger. It seems to me Annie has become a female version of TinTin, getting kidnapped for each time he gets hit over the head. My sketch is a copy of a frame in one of the earliest strips. It's well worth a look, and of course you can critique my attempt at the iconic pair. Little errors in angle and size add up to change the way the characters look. I spent quite a while on Annie's face before pronouncing it "cute enough." Amazing how one stray pencil mark in a cartoon evokes totally different stereotypes of ethnicity or personality...Suddenly Annie looks mean, or flirtatious, or Asian, or (dare I write) mentally deficient.Interesting to note: Conservative cartoonist Harold Gray used his characters in thinly-veiled attacks on FDR, big government and labor unions. Annie was never a charity case.
