ARIZONA SKETCH BOOK

arizona sketch book Ross Santee--Artist-Writer

ROSS SANTEE writes straight, draws straight, talks straight and therein lies his charm.

If we were writing this article a hun dred years from now, time and distance would lend an impersonal view, and we could more properly evaluate his works and rate them for their intrinsic worth.

In that distant period literary scholars will write sententious dissertations on American literature, and when they do they will find western life, the saga of the cowboy and the open range, pictured accurately and vivid ly in the writings and drawings of Ross Santee.

If you want to read stories of the west, simple, beautiful stories of men and horses of the western range, we refer you to the books of Ross Santee: "Men and Horses," "Cowboy," "Spike the Story of a Cowpuncher's Dog," "Sleepy Black, the Story of a Cow horse," and "Bar X Golf Course."

Collier's for April 27, 1935, used his short short story, "Water," and that moving, simple tale of drought on a cattle ranch won the O. Henry award for short short stories that year.

Added to the excellence of his writing are the simple illustrations of the author, which tell their story as eloquently as his written word. It is with Ross Santee, the artist, that Arizona Sketch Book is principally concerned in this article. "I like to draw pictures," he writes in his own story, "Advice Is All Right If You Don't Take Too Much Of It" in the "American Magazine" for June, 1928.

As a kid I drew pictures of the things that interested me-- anything that struck my fancy. They were no better nor no worse than those the average kid makes, but I drew the things I wanted to, an' I drew them my own way."

He was born in Iowa and finished his last two years of high school at Mo line, Illinois. During a chance visit to Chicago he visited the Art Institute, saw an original cartoon by his boyhood hero, the cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, and made up his mind to go to school there. He did-and ardently imitated various cartoonists with no particular success.

"At first I tried to draw things my own way," he writes; "but my drawings were so crude I took to imitating too. That was where I made my big mistake, although I didn't know it then, not realizing that one drawing of my own, no matter how (Turn to Page 28)