Visiting Artist: David Sipress

For our first visiting artist of the 2015/2016 school year, we had the very kind and soft-spoken David Sipress. He has been a New Yorker cartoonist since 1998, but it took him 20 years of rejections to get in.

One of the important questions the students wanted to know about was how he stayed positive and kept submitting. For one, it helped that he was getting accepted other places. But a New Yorker cartoonist also told him not to quit. To keep trying. Never give up. And he got in a few months later.

The most important advice David gave about gag strips was about writing. After a rejection, he will often go back and look at the caption. He will examine why a gag didn’t work. Sometimes, changing even one word, such as “bouncier” to “more bouncy,” will affect a strip enough to get accepted. He even will draw a gag without a specific caption and then work on coming up with a caption for a few weeks.

We had some other special guests at this talk, including Harry Bliss (New Yorker), Vermont Cartoonist Laureate Ed Koren (New Yorker), Hilary Price (Rhymes With Orange), and published New Yorker cartoonist Mitra Farmand (CCS ’13).

The whole gang from left to right. Top: Harry Bliss, David Sipress, James Sturm, Mitra Farmand. Bottom: Ed Koren, Hilary Price.

The guests who came for David’s lecture as dolled up by Mitra Farmand.