In 1970, I was turning 29 years old, just 4 years out of art school. I had created a black and white drawing style mascot portrait called 'Johnny.' I made a poster for it and sent it around the world to corporate art departments.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wanted to study at the Art Students League in New York when I was young, but I didn't have the money. Then I was fortunate enough to become Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. At the time, I thought I'd make a couple of records and get back to painting. It never dawned on me that I'd be 64 years old and still making music.
I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.
Something happened when I was in elementary school. A Disney artist named Bruce McIntyre retired, and he had done drawings for 'Pinocchio' and 'Snow White' that was just classic stuff. He moved to the town I grew up in, Carlsbad, and he became a part-time art teacher at our elementary school.
Around 1980, I went back to painting with a vengeance.
I began painting well before I started doing comedy. In fact, when I came out of the war in 1946, I enrolled in art school in Dayton, Ohio. I painted for three years, and then show business took hold.
To support myself as a kid, I was a model at art schools around Boston.
I started painting when I was in high school.
I was a child prodigy. Like Michelangelo, who could draw a perfect circle at age five. I was extremely gifted. I could paint a perfect portrait of someone at age five.
I started doing cartoons when I was about 21. I never thought I would be a cartoonist. It happened behind my back. I was always a painter and drawer.
I've been working in sculpture and painting since 1920.