Image credit: National Portrait Gallery, London

Hans Holbein the younger (c.1497–1543)

National Portrait Gallery, London

A cartoon is a full-size drawing used to transfer a design to a finished work. In the Renaissance, cartoons were often used in preparation for fresco. The cartoon drawing was laid on the wall itself and traced or imprinted onto the wet plaster. The artist then painted in the design. Artists sometimes used cartoons for easel paintings and tapestries, as well. The word comes from the Italian word 'cartone,' which means heavy paper. Some of the most famous cartoons are now in British collections, like the Burlington House Cartoon.

Cartoon for Stained Glass – Ratho Church (unrealised)
Cartoon for Stained Glass Commemorating the Girl Guide Jubilee Year 1910–1960: St Mark's Church, Raploch, Stirling (left panel)
Cartoon for Stained Glass at St Peter's Church, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh: Saint Peter
Cartoon for Stained Glass Commemorating the Girl Guide Jubilee Year 1910–1960: St Mark's Church, Raploch, Stirling (right panel)
Cartoon for Stained Glass, in Memory of Lieutenant Ian F. D. Robertson (1919–1943), SAAF: St Michael
Cartoon for Stained Glass, in Memory of Major General William Henry Evered Poole (1902–1969): Saint George and the Dragon

Cartoon on Wikipedia

Cartoon in the Oxford Art Dictionary

What is a cartoon? from the Royal Academy

Cartoon on Grove Art Online

Clock with Cartoon Characters 20th C

unknown artist

The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust)

What about modern cartoons?

When we hear the word 'cartoon' today, most of us think of drawn or animated pictures in a specific, unrealistic style that is often satirical or caricatured. This style evolved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the influence of illustrated magazines like Punch in London and the import of Japanese visual traditions like anime.

With the birth of motion pictures around the turn of the twentieth century, animated cartoons came to life. Animators like Walt Disney and Warner Brothers in the United States made cartoons famous and widely accessible on screen, with characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny becoming household names. Cartoons also often appeared in comic strips in newspapers in the twentieth century, echoing the tradition of caricature and political satire in illustrated magazines in the nineteenth century.

Drawing is central to the meaning of 'cartoon,' from its earliest uses to the present.

Cartoons were made in preparation for final works, often in full-scale.

Cartoons like these, which were made in preparation for stained glass windows, were often made in life-size proportions. They served as practice runs and eventually final designs of the end product an artist intended to make. They were made of cheaper and easier to use materials, like paper and ink, to give the artist lower stakes as they worked through ideas to get to the end result. Making stained glass is a long and labour-intensive process, so it is important to have the design carefully rendered in advance. In some of these images, you can see wrinkles, tears, or other signs that the paper has been used – cartoons were physically part of the process of making the final artwork. Sometimes they were traced or used as reference points during installation.