Valentin Druzhinin is a cartoonist of the old Soviet tradition, who for many years collaborated with the popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, back in the days when the notion of a free press was not a fiction. His cartoons are bold, funny and witty, but at the same time Druzhinin, like many other cartoonists in the late 80s-90s, did not slip into outright vulgarity and blackness, and did not later draw the bravura and joyful drawings that our officials and patriotic press like so much.
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That's why there are many fans of his work, although they probably don't have much idea what it's like to keep such a strict balance, to follow his truth and his style. It requires talent, incredible diligence and a fine sense of proportion, which Druzhinin has in abundance.
We will talk about the life and work of Valentin Druzhinin in this article.
An unexpected catch
Druzhinin came from the village of Kyzyl-su and spent his childhood and youth in the city of Krasnovodsk, which was later renamed Turkmenbashi after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Valentin always liked to draw, designed all kinds of wall newspapers and was well regarded at school, although he sometimes got a beating from teachers for drawings in textbooks and on desks.
A difficult turnip
Then he moved to Ukraine, and ironically all his artworks were Komsomol artworks - the Komsomolets movie theater, the Komsomolets Zaporozhye newspaper, and finally, the famous Komsomolskaya Pravda, to which Druzhinin sent his first drawing in 1976. And 25 years later he became a staff artist there, together with Victor Balabas constantly responding with his witty and topical caricatures to all the news events of those years. He continues to do so to this day, and has no intention of resting on his laurels, not bronzed by numerous awards and widespread recognition.
And a woman and an appetizer.
Moreover, the Soviet past became for Druzhinin a kind of "quality mark", a wonderful school for forming a good style, the ability to draw without unnecessary vulgarity and blackness, and when it is impossible to do without them, to do it as delicately as possible. Many modern network artists have a lot to learn from the representatives of the "old school", yet it is much more difficult to consistently produce really high-quality cartoons than it is to quickly make a vulgar meme on a trending topic.
General cleaning
Druzhinin has a lot of caricatures - over 10 thousand, that is, on average, every 2-3 days a new drawing appears under his hand. Druzhinin draws the old-fashioned way - with pencils and watercolor paints, he does not trade on new-fangled computer graphics and Photoshop. In his opinion, otherwise "the soul of the drawing is lost", it becomes impersonal, like a picture created by neural networks.
Weightlessness
In addition to caricatures, Druzhinin creates illustrations for books, writes articles and is interested in soccer - "in my youth I played, but now I'm an old fan, and now I spill my frustration from lost matches in acrimonious caricatures of soccer players.
One-eyed Vasya
We can also mention the now almost forgotten art of friendly caricature of celebrities, in which he is a real master: it is no coincidence that some stars are genuinely happy when they manage to get a caricature drawn by Druzhinin himself as a gift.
And what do you think of Druzhinin's caricatures - write in the comments.
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