Heavy Black Dogs and Rumba Pencils

Sitting at my dining room table on a cool spring afternoon in East Sacramento, Charlie O. Hayward, the man who illustrates the wacky world of Dr. Bob Horseman, shuffled through a stack of 40 or more of his drawings and sorted out his thoughts.

"It's like I'm playing tennis with him," Hayward said of the double-edged creative process. "We keep hitting the ball back and forth to each other. There's a kind of interplay between the illustrator and the writer. There will be something he adds to the story knowing that I will draw it. It's almost like he's betting that he's going to get Charlie to put that in the drawing if he puts in this line."

A line such as "heavy black dogs"?

"Exactly. As I collected my favorite drawings for (this issue), I made a note of when I did the drawing and why I selected it," Hayward said. "Well, I selected three columns with heavy black dog references. In the first appearance, Bob writes, 'Large parties accompanied by heavy black dogs might burst through my doors and seize my receivables.' So I did this deal with the dogs. Pretty soon they show up again and again. It was like he knew if he put heavy black dogs in his column, I was going to pick up on it. And I have, at least five times."

Hayward has illustrated Horseman's humorous offerings for 10 years. During that span, he has also redesigned the look of the Journal of the California Dental Association twice. He continues to design the Journal's cover each month; and his illustrations, graphs and cartoons are featured regularly. Some believe his artistic crown sits -- slightly askew -- on Horseman's monthly column.

But it didn't initially come easy.

"When I was approached to illustrate Horseman, my first thought was 'How am I going to do this? I know nothing about dentistry.'" Hayward said. "I was having exactly the same problem with the magazine covers. But we worked our way through it. We discovered a cover was a cover. We had to get ideas across, and we did it. It's the same thing with Horseman. I read this stuff and I'm laughing, and I don't know dentistry. He's a really funny writer. He talks about things that are at a human level. Anybody can read this stuff and laugh."

Just as Horseman's wit has become a cornerstone of the Journal, so have the artistic offerings of Hayward. His first cover design debuted in March 1989. In April of that year, his first illustrative view of what Horseman was writing about appeared. The simple black-and-white drawing included Oliver North and other celeb-types who sported gap-tooth smiles. One hundred and twenty drawings later, Hayward still enjoys the mental tennis match.

"It's an interesting little creative thing," he said. "He's indulging in a creative process in writing it. Then I have to read it and react to it, and somehow I have to be sure not to overpower his writing. I want to support it and add to it. We've achieved this balance by tempering the size of the illustration. It's not huge. It's a spot illustration. And maybe, just maybe, if somebody is not familiar with Horseman, if they saw the humorous drawing, it might pull them in. That's the point, to decorate the page.

"It was a stroke of genius when the column's name was changed to "Dr. Horseman" and placed at the back of the book," Hayward continued. "That instantly made it an institution. Everybody knew where to find it. How often have we heard that Horseman is the first thing anybody reads in the Journal? Having the column in the back of the book is what made that happen."

Hayward has been cartooning since he was able to hold a pencil. He attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where he was preparing to be an advertising agency art director. But the Art Center likes to produce well-rounded students, so Charlie was exposed to a wide spectrum of subject from illustration to package design and photograph. One of them – filmmaking – became his new love. But, while his fellow students were creating live action films for their classes, he would do animated films. "I'd create the concept, draw the characters and animate them." Nobody taught me how do it. I taught myself. I bought an 8 mm camera, tacked my drawings on the wall and popped off two or three frames at a time. I didn't even know you were suppose to shoot everything on the table, so that gravity was working for you."

Following graduation, instead of pursuing a high-paying advertising agency gig in Chicago or New York, Charlie went to Hollywood seeking animation work. He worked at DePatie-Freleng on "Pink Panther," "Flip Wilson," afterschool TV specials, and Saturday morning kid's fare. But he particularly enjoyed his work for Bosustow Productions, a small Santa Monica film company that worked on "Sesame Street" and "Electric Company" projects.

"That was cool," he said. "The Children's Television Workshop would come to us and say they needed animated imagery that they could cut into their program. That's all they'd say. Here I was just at the start of my career, and I was the artist, the writer, and the director. We were a small company, maybe 10 employees. We would just brainstorm ideas and then individually take off with them."

One of Hayward's first Sesame Street successes was called "Rumba Pencils."

"I animated these three pencils with goofy faces and they came out in a line doing the rumba," he said. "The lesson for the kids was the concept of 'first' and 'last,' so the first one says, 'I'm first' and the third one says 'I'm last.' Well, they rumba a bit more and finally the middle pencil, feeling kinda insecure, blurts out, 'I'm Crazy Melvin!'"

When the film work got too seasonal, Hayward shifted directions and went to Petersen Publishing, the well-known publisher of automotive magazines. As an art director there, he was able to combine his love for cars, graphic design, and cartooning.

"The idea of hiring on there was kind of neat. I got totally into the car thing again. Here I was in my early 30s art directing Car Craft, Rod & Custom and Hot Rod magazines. I hadn't worked on a car since high school, but I bought a 37 Chevy and fixed it up. I currently have a 39 Ford hot rod. I can't seem to shake the car deal. I just love it."

After a nice run at Petersen, Hayward and his wife, Bev, began to think it might be time to move the family north. With two children, Carrie and Casey, the Haywards landed in the foothill community of Grass Valley, east of Sacramento. After commuting to Sacramento daily for several years, working as an art director for a business magazine publishing company, in 1989 Hayward set up his own graphic design business in Grass Valley – Hot Art.

And just about that time he was introduced to the Horseman guy.

"My gosh; it's been 10 years, 12 times a year. That's 120 blasts at this thing. I can't even believe it," Hayward said. "A lot of it is good enough that I have it in my portfolio. I'm sure Bob looks at it the same way. Some of them he looks back at and says 'That's just OK,' and others are his favorites."

Hayward and Horseman have only met twice, most recently for a photo session. Their common mode of communication is the fax machine.

"I guess you would call us fax pals," Hayward said. "But we really are on the same wavelength. He gets a kick out of what I do, and I get a kick of what he does. I look forward to reading his columns, and he says he looks forward to what I draw for them."

And so do the 20,000 readers of the Journal.