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Artist Thomas Kinkade's girlfriend says two handwritten wills entitle her to his home and $10 million, but his estranged wife has a different take. Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, spent his last two years legally separated from his wife of nearly three decades and struggling with alcoholism.

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."

Thomas Kinkade’s paintings of bucolic landscapes and light-filled cottages have been scooped up by collectors nationwide ever since the artist’s death at 54 on Friday.

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.

While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, partly because the Internet has enabled them to do so.

In a strong affront to the Chinese government’s attempt to censor artists and internet users, fans of the artist Ai Weiwei have raised more than $830,000 in three days through social media to help the artist fight a $2.4 million tax bill from the state.

Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose secret detention earlier this year stirred an international outcry, has been given two weeks to pay $2.4 million in back taxes and penalties, he said Tuesday.

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