We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Phil Witte. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Phil below.
Alright, Phil thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
When I was a child, maybe 8 or 9 years old, I began drawing single-panel gag cartoons. I don’t know why. Maybe I was intrigued by the cartoons in The New Yorker or more likely Mad magazine. After a year or so I had a little portfolio. Occasionally I’d show my cartoons to my parents or their friends. Oddly, I never shared them with my friends.
In high school I drew caricatures of students and teachers in the back of the class. My high school yearbook refers to me as the class cartoonist. But in college (Princeton) I dropped cartooning. Instead, I focused on writing, both humor and “serious” writing. I wrote a three-act play that was produced on campus. My creative writing teacher was the great novelist Joyce Carol Oates. I was thinking about a career that incorporated fiction writing and journalism. I already had articles published in The Washington Post and other newspapers.
After teaching English in Bangkok for a year, I wasn’t sure what to do next, so partly by default I went to law school at the University of Chicago. I know–not very creative. But I kept writing fiction, with limited success. Eventually a book publisher approached me about writing a joke book about turning 50. (I was in my early 40s at the time.) So I wrote “What You Don’t Know About Turning 50” (the publisher’s title). It sold over 100,000 copies, so they asked me write “What You Don’t Know About Turning 60,” which I did. The publisher had a cartoonist supplement the jokes with cartoons. I had a lightbulb moment: If I combine my early cartooning skills with my gag writing skills, I could be a cartoonist.
At first, I sold gags to syndicated cartoonists. After improving my drawing skills, I began selling my own cartoons pretty quickly. I eventually quit practicing law and became a full-time cartoonist. I couldn’t be happier.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My main focus is providing cartoons for magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Reader’s Digest, and regional magazines, as well as British publications, such as Private Eye, The New Statesman, and The Spectator. I also do marketing work for private industries, both in the U.S. and abroad. That involves getting to know their products and creating cartoons and illustrations that address customer needs.
I think what sets my work apart from others is that my humor is fun, relatively sophisticated, and inclusive. My clients are pleased with how quickly I work and how responsive I am to their requests. I really enjoy collaborating with talented people. I can also write clearly and effectively (thank you, law school). A selection of my short humor pieces can be found at https://www.pointsincase.com/author/philip-witte. I posted a few examples of my work as a journalist at www.philwitte.com/journalism
Businesses and individual professionals–textbook publishers, law firms, realtors, investment advisors, to name a few–regularly lease my cartoons to add fun to their publications, newsletters, and other communications, through CartoonStock. Here’s the link to almost 1,000 of my cartoons to choose from: https://www.cartoonstock.com/search?cartoonist=philwitte%2CWitte%2C+Phil&page=1
I’ve also teamed with NobleWorks Card Co. to produce cards for holidays, birthdays, and other occasions. They have proved to be very popular, especially the Senior Game Show birthday card. Here’s the link: https://www.nobleworkscards.com/search-results.html?vwcatalog=yhst-94387763560218&query=Witte&x=0&y=0&.autodone=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nobleworkscards.com%2F
The big news is that I am co-authoring a book, Funny Stuff: Great Cartoons and How They Work. It will be published by Prometheus Books in the fall of 2024. The foreword will be written by Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor at The New Yorker. The book will be an exploration of gag cartoons and the cartoonists who create them. Great gift item!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I failed at many things before I found success. I tried writing plays, screenplays, short stories, even poems, with little to show for it. At the same time, I was working 50-60 hours a week as a lawyer, so I had to squeeze my creative efforts in at night or on weekends–if I had a free weekend, which was rare. I made some sacrifices–short vacations, zero TV, limited social life–but I persevered. Every so often I’d get a nibble of interest that kept me going.
Sometimes opportunity presented itself in unexpected ways. I went to a convention for librarians, hoping to find someone interested in a children’s book I wrote. I ended up talking to a publisher who later offered me a contract to write a humor book and a second book after that. I didn’t even have an agent at the time. Those books led to cartooning, as I explained earlier. The cartooning led to a blog I co-wrote about cartoons, just for fun. That blog led to a paid gig writing about cartoons, which led to a very cool book deal–with an agent this time–plus solo shows of my work, awards, interviews, podcasts, etc. I never sold the children’s book, but that failed book effort became a mere footnote in a journey of over 20 years.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
People tell me how much they enjoy my cartoons, humor writing, books, art, or greeting cards. Sometimes I hear personally from folks in the town I live in, and other times I receive appreciative emails. It’s very gratifying to know that I’m spreading a little joy, perhaps making someone’s day a little brighter.
I also get pleasure from creating. I admit that sometimes I even smile at my own cartoons. I get real pleasure out of coming up with a funny idea and executing it well.
Contact Info:
- Website: philwitte.com
- Instagram: philwittecartoons/
- Facebook: philip.witte.9/
- Other: pointsincase.com/author/philip-witte https://www.nobleworkscards.com/cards-by-phil-witte.html https://www.amazon.com/What-Dont-Know-About-Turning/dp/0684040026/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EJI13EKY0BIK&keywords=p.d.+witte&qid=1680586938&sprefix=p.d.+witte%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/What-Dont-Know-About-Turning/dp/0671317733/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2EJI13EKY0BIK&keywords=p.d.+witte&qid=1680586938&sprefix=p.d.+witte%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-3 https://www.stitcher.com/show/alta-podcast/episode/altatude-cartoonist-phil-witte-62911302
Image Credits
Rob Yelland