Waterhole No. 3 1967

This is a poster for "Waterhole No. 3", by Jack Davis. I can only imagine Jack with his pens and brushes, sitting at his drawing desk, sketching out those crazy figures and lettering. The colours are so saturated, they pop right off the surface! I wonder what it was like for Jack to conjure up those cowboys with their goofy expressions, and that blonde bombshell who is hanging onto the main guy for dear life? It's like a madcap circus, a visual explosion of comic energy. The artist is using bold lines to define the characters and create a sense of movement. Look at the way the figures are arranged, all piled on top of each other. They're all part of one big, chaotic scene. Davis's work always reminds me of other cartoonists like Al Hirschfeld and Mort Drucker, who were masters of capturing personality through caricature. You can almost hear the saloon piano playing in the background, can't you?