Funny cartoons are perhaps the easiest way to cope with stress and there is nothing easier to obtain, whether browsing a newspaper or magazine, or surfing the net visiting web sites providing graphic entertainment.

Stress is the source of numerous diseases, including chronic fatigue, headache, anxiety attacks, mood swings, peptic ulcers, and in more severe cases, migraines, respiratory problems, high blood pressure, and heart disease. However, medical research has found that humor is helpful therapy that not only reduces our chances to be at risk for these problems, but also can eradicate them. Funny cartoons promote relaxing smiles that enhance anyone’s mood with ease. Scientific evidence found that an estimated 40% to 80% of visits to the doctor’s office occur due to illness directly linked to stress. When there is no humor to cope with stressful situations, people tend to abuse alcohol and drugs, to escape from stress.

Other people may suffer from eating disorders and smoking problems, but as soon as they find a good source of laughter, such as funny cartons, the situation changes, finding prompt recovery and over time suppressing all the stress in no time. Cartoons are graphical depictions that provoke a smile after people look at them, so there is no need to undergo complicated and costly therapies to recover your good spirit by laughing aloud.

When you see the funny side of the miracles in life that can happen and you soon will be recovering from stress. Seriously, it is not a joke that you can find emotional support and alleviate most diseases with just a smile. “Spend 1 minute – get 1 smile”, why not make this simple phrase your motto for a healthy life? Funny cartoons provide you with humor and a positive attitude in your life.

If you are not new to drawing you already know that the real fun begins when you start drawing characters. Drawing props can be interesting but that is no match to character drawing. And drawing cartoon characters can be even more interesting. But let me tell you at the outset, character drawing is more fun because it is more challenging. You need to have right techniques in your bag. Apart from that you will need to practice a lot before you start making decent cartoon characters.

To be successful in character drawing you need to keep in mind the difference between a prop and a character. In one line it can be said that a character normally communicates something to the viewer through facial expression, gesture or body language, whereas a prop just remains there in the scene. So your main task as a character artist is to let your creation communicate with the watcher. You will need to learn the basics of expression. Fortunately the fundamentals of drawing expressive characters are same no matter if your character is a man, a cat or a tree.

Be a close watcher of people around you and note how their facial muscles react to various emotions. Pay special attention to eyes, eye brows and mouth as these are the areas that play major part in forming various expressions. Also be a keen watcher of body language and try to implement your findings in your drawing where appropriate.

There may be times when facial expression or body language may not be sufficient for your character to express itself. For such situations you can represent your characters speech or thought using speech balloon or thought bubbles as you can find in various comic books. If your character is in motion you can use motion lines to represent that. Trailing straight lines can not only show if the motion is slow or fast it can also show the direction of the motion.

Proper use of shadows is also very important. The shadows can show the time of the day, weather. Detailed shadow will take lot of drawing effort, if you do not want to spend much time for drawing shadow you can use small patches to represent shadow which is much better than using no shadow at all in your creation. Use right kind of props to compose your scene. The props can set the mood of the scene. So be selective about the props. The right types of props can add to the expressiveness of your character.