Benita L. Epstein is a prolific gag cartoonist for magazines, greeting cards, websites and newspapers. She was a regular contributor to the
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
''
Six Chix
''Six Chix'' is a collaborative comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate since it debuted in January 2000.
The series is drawn by six female cartoonists who rotate the drawing duties through the week based on a fixed schedule:
* Monday ...
'', distributed by
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...
.
Before becoming a cartoonist, Epstein earned a Bachelors and a Masters in Entomology. In addition to her studies of autism,
lung surfactant
Pulmonary surfactant is a surface-active complex of phospholipids and proteins formed by type II alveolar cells. The proteins and lipids that make up the surfactant have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions. By adsorbing to the air-water inte ...
, photosynthesis, purine metabolism and yellow-fever mosquitoes, she assisted her husband in ecological field research at islands around the world.
Cartoons
As a cartoonist, she has focused on women, relationships, business, medicine, science, the travel industry, Jewish lifestyle, holidays, professors and education. Her cartoons have been published in hundreds of publications, including ''
Barron's Barron's or Barrons may refer to:
*Barron's Educational Series, a publisher of books, as well as college entrance exam preparation classes and materials, now an imprint of Kaplan Test Prep
** B.E.S. Publishing, the former owner of Barron's
* ''Barr ...
'', ''
Better Homes and Gardens'', ''
Harvard Business Review
''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massach ...
'', ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', ''
Reader's Digest
''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...
'', ''
USA Weekend
''USA Weekend'' was an American weekend newspaper magazine owned by the Gannett Company. Structured as a sister publication to Gannett's flagship newspaper ''USA Today'' and distributed in the Sunday editions of participating local newspapers, i ...
'' and ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''. For
Creators Syndicate
Creators Syndicate (also known as Creators) is an American independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns to daily newspapers, websites, and other digital outlets. When founded in 1987, Creators Syndicate became one of the few suc ...
, she created the
daily comics feature ''Drawing a Crowd'', which ran from January 2002 to June 2003. In 2006, she explained her working process:
:I start out feeding my brain with newspapers, books, TV news, Internet news, listening to conversations. Then I write, usually in the morning. Gags comes out of nowhere. Even if it's silly or stupid or unusable, I write it down. I can edit it later. I let the writing simmer. After a day, a week, sometimes years, I go back, fix the writing and pick out some gags to draw. Occasionally I have brainstormed via email with other cartoonists. It works great, and I can't ever remember when either of us wanted the other one's ideas; so we never really stepped on each other's toes... I make a primitive, rough outline of the people, main characters, in a basic setting on crummy copy paper with a regular pencil. Then I put a nice piece of smooth HP laser paper over the sketch and ink over it on a light table. For crowd, bar, vegetation, beach and laboratory scenes, I draw directly on the finished paper with no sketches because I draw fast, and background scenes are loosely lined. I use
Pigma pens and a brush, sometimes a Sharpie or a black calligraphy pen. Then I scan the drawings into Photoshop. If a company wants an original, I ink on good watercolor paper and add a gray wash or watercolor. But in Photoshop I shade/color the drawing using a Wacom tablet. If I'm on vacation, I can draw on tracing paper and save that to scan later, or photocopy the cartoons, send by mail to various companies, then scan them when I get home. I like to have every single cartoon scanned, so I can pull them up at a moment's notice and either print hard copies or send PDFs. I've been sending stuff via PDF for years worldwide, and I think it's given me an edge over a lot of cartoonists who concentrate on the regular major markets here in the U.S.
In 2009, she told interviewer Scott Nickel, "I have the
grapheme form of synesthesia where letters and numbers are perceived as colors. Others with this are the physicist
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...
, Russian writer
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
."
A Nickel's Worth
/ref>
Epstein has given drawing demonstrations to adult developmentally disabled and other handicapped students. She lives in Redding, California
Redding is the economic and cultural capital of the Shasta Cascade region of Northern California and the county seat of Shasta County. Redding lies along the Sacramento River, north of Sacramento, and south of California's northern border wi ...
with her husband, stepson and their pug, Harley.
Awards
The National Cartoonists Society
The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...
nominated Epstein four times for Best Magazine Gag Cartoonist and twice for Best Greeting Card Cartoonist.
Bibliography
*Epstein, Benita. ''Interlibrary Loan Sharks and Seedy Roms: Cartoons from Libraryland'' (McFarland, 1997)
*Epstein, Benita. ''Suture Self: Cartoons for Doctors and Patients'' (McFarland, 1999)
*Epstein, Benita. ''Science of Little Round Things: Cartoons about Scientists'' (McFarland, 2000)
*Donnelly, Lisa. ''Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons'' (Prometheus, 2005)
References
External links
Official site
GreenGo's
{{DEFAULTSORT:Epstein, Benita
American comic strip cartoonists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)