1946

This drawing was made for comic strip artist Al Capp's contest to draw the world's ugliest woman. In his comic 'Li'l Abner', Capp introduced a woman named Lena the Hyena whose face was never seen but who was referred to as the world's ugliest woman. Readers got more and more curious as to what she looked like, so Capp invited various artists to draw their version of the elusive character. Barks was one of them but he didn't win. The judges of the contest were Salvador Dali, Boris Karloff, and Frank Sinatra.

1968

Barks only made one to-order naturalistic painting, Last Days at an Old School (oil on masonite), which was ordered by a graduating class at the San Jacinto High school. They established a fund and scouted the San Jacinto area for a suitable artist. After several interviews they decided on Carl Barks who proudly unveiled the painting in October of 1968. He was paid 300 dollars for the job - a sum that made me feel like an overpaid Picasso, he later stated.
The painting was later sold and almost 40 years later it has an estimated value of between 4,000 and 7,000 dollars.

FC0029 The Mummy's Ring

Barks depicted Charles 'Chuck' Couch on a wanted poster in an Egyptian police station. Couch and Barks had worked together in Disney's animation studios for a number of years and Couch had several times characterized Barks on paper. One example is the drawing of Barks dreaming of non-Disneyish subjects! Notice that Barks was a pipe smoker at the time. Barks 'retaliated' a few years later in one of his first comic book stories.