Artist, Celebrity Deaths | featured news

THE PROBLEM WITH drawing lines for a living is that sometimes, even the comics fan doesn’t follow them back to the beginning. Which is another way of saying: If you don’t know “Herman,” you should remedy that and acquaint yourself. Because prior to “The Far Side” and “The Neighborhood” and “Speed Bump” and other single-panel strips that are labeled/branded as “quirky” or “weird” or “off the wall” (or in the case of my own ol’ syndicated single-panel strip, “warped”), there was “Herman,” which sprung from the unique pioneering mind of Jim Unger.

Artist Thomas Kinkade's death last month was from an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium, according to the Santa Clara County, California, medical examiner.

A family member says painter Thomas Kinkade battled alcoholism over the past several years and had a relapse just before his death at his home in Santa Clara County. Kinkade's brother, Patrick, tells the San Jose Mercury News (http://bit.ly/IxRfr0) that decades of attacks on Kinkade's work and a split with his wife two years ago had taken a toll on the famous "Painter of Light."

Popular California artist Thomas Kinkade died of natural causes Friday at his home in Los Gatos, a family spokesman said in a statement. Kinkade labeled himself the nation's most collected living artist. His paintings and spin-off products bring in about $100 million a year in sales, and are said to be in 10 million homes in the United States.

Pioneering TV cartoon artist Alexander Anderson Jr., who created Rocky the flying squirrel and Bullwinkle the moose, has died. He was 90.

Mr. Wyeth’s precise realist views of hardscrabble rural life became icons of national culture and sparked endless debates about the nature of modern art.