I posted three cartoons yesterday! The first one started out as I was thinking of the Republicans taking “a big bite of the apple” which didn’t quite work, because it looked like the elephant was damaging and consuming the capitol, so I went with a Capitol ice cream cone and a big lick. (No, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the perspective on the Capitol – hey, this is a cartoon.)
And here’s the GOP having a nice day, while the Democrats are having a lousy day.
Here’s the GOP win. They played a good game this time around.
Tic-Tac-Toe cartoons are a favorite of mine; they show more than winners and losers, tic-tac-toe shows a strategy. I drew this one when it became clear that Obama was going to beat Mitt Romney.
I drew this one four years earlier, when it was clear that Obama was going to beat McCain.
Tic-tac-toe isn’t only good for elections. I drew this one a few years ago, when Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.
I regret that my early Iraq cartoons were not very sophisticated, and were much to supportive of the war. I’ve learned my lesson this time around and all the warmongering media and public support for going back into Iraq looks like the old rush to war winning over the public again … as illustrated in the tic-tac-toe-oldie below. Somehow it looks like there is more tic-tac-toe to come.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been eager to be the “take action guy” with Ebola. He sometimes gets the facts wrong, accusing a nurse of having ebola symptoms when she didn’t have ebola symptoms – and that’s great for me; as a cartoonist, I gotta love Chris Christie.
I get requests to show my rough pencil sketches – here’s the sketch for this one …
I draw these on tab sized paper, 11×17. I almost had Christie with multi-hand-motion-chip-eating-action, but that was too complicated. Simple is better.
It is rare that I draw governors; most readers don’t know the governors of other states, let along their own states. Christy stands above the other governors as a great character. Here he is bouncing back from this “bridge-gate” scandal.
The guy is fun. Here’s Christie on running for president – I’d like to see him run.
For a while, Christie’s “Bridge-gate” traffic-jam scandal looked like it would sink Christie and I drew this umbrella cartoon.
I need to keep drawing this guy.
The idea of President Obama as an anchor makes me laugh.
The feet amuse me on this one. And the brown/blue color palette is unusual for me. Obama also makes a great stand-alone anchor …
The media has been obsessed this week with Renee Zellweger’s new face, with articles quoting plastic surgeons on why she doesn’t look like herself. Zellweger says she looks different because she’s happy now and doesn’t admit to having plastic surgery.
Most plastic surgeons are quoted saying Zellweger has had work done, agreeing that she had her eyelids “opened” and disagreeing about other possible surgery, like cheek or chin implants. Some pundits complain that the media obsession with her new face is sexist, that no one would care about changes like this if she were a man, and the emphasis on her face is hurtful to her and shows society’s priorities are in the wrong place.
The real experts on faces are cartoonists. Plastic surgeons can change flesh and bone, but cartoonists must know how to make someone really look like themselves. Cartoonists come face to face with America’s sexist realities every day. Caricature artists learn this right away when they draw couples together. We can exaggerate a man’s features and his female companion will laugh, say “that looks just like you” Most men will smile, or they will snort, say “OK,” and move on without feeling too insulted. If a cartoonist exaggerates a woman’s notable features, he’s only asking for trouble; both the man and the woman won’t like it. Caricature can be an insulting profession.
The solution is to draw every woman so that she looks like a “Disney Princess.” Ask her something about herself; perhaps she plays tennis; give her a Disney Princess face; keep the hairdo and draw her playing tennis; she’ll love it. Making a man look like a Disney Prince doesn’t work, men have to be drawn so they really look like themselves.
Caricature is a process of identifying interesting, distinctive features on a face and exaggerating them. Women don’t want exaggerated features. The standard for the most “beautiful” women is that there are no outstanding, distinctive features at all. The most “beautiful” women are the most difficult to caricature, because there is nothing there to exaggerate.
So it is with Renee Zellweger; her old face was the face of a pretty “girl next door”, not a fashion model. She had a chubby, cheeky face with “hooded” eyelids. The new Zellweger face has lost the old eyelids, opening her eyes up to be less distinctive. It looks to me like her nose has been shaved down a tad, to be straighter and a bit less full.
Another big issue in caricaturing women is weight. Most women want to be thin. No matter how slim they look, they will be happier if they are drawn to be thinner. Zellweger looks to have lost a lot of weight; she’s lost her signature chubby cheeks and full lips. The weight loss makes her chin and jaw line more angular.
Renee Zellweger was lovely as a girl next door, and she is still lovely now that she looks like a different person and has the features of a fashion model/Disney Princess. Many women are unhappy, obsessing about how they look, even if they look great already. Women can always be thinner. Every feature can always be less distinctive.
The real problem with Renee Zellweger’s lovely new face is that there was no problem with her lovely old face, and still she wanted to get a new face.
Well … I thought this was funny. Maybe it is too soon.
Here’s Isis/Isil/I.S./Islamic State, Ebola and the fickle media.
I like fickle media cartoons. It is fascinating how ebola has taken over cable news – to the exclusion of all else. That has to be frustrating to those media hog/hams over at Isis/Isil/I.S./Islamic State.
The fickle media serves me well. Here is the media pushing Obama into war …
Here’s the school shooting in Connecticut back in 2012…
Here’s Obama, the media and the Secret Service prostitution scandal …
In the 2012 election, here’s the media focus moving from the Iowa Caucuses to the New Hampshire Primary …
Remember back in 2009, when the media was obsessed with the Obama girls getting a new puppy, when they should have been paying attention to Obama dumping money on his evil Wall Street buddies?
Sorry to neglect the blog! I’ve been away on two cartoonist convention trips and I need to catch up! Here’s the new one today on Hong Kong.
Most people will see this in newspapers in black and white – and I think it is better in black and white.
I drew this as a riff on an oldie. I have lots of problems with Chinese hackers attacking my web sites, and I drew this self-portrait some time ago. I don’t think it got reprinted much, because it was a personal cartoon – better as a Hong Kong cartoon.
Here are a couple of recent cartoons that I forgot to post in the blog. Here’s Obama transforming into George W. Bush. I’m a little late on this one; I should have drawn it a couple of years ago. It probably wouldn’t have been reprinted much two years ago. Now that’s we’re back in Iraq, more and more, the transformation is clear.
The media’s march to war also matches the old march to war in Iraq under George W. Bush. People don’t seem to get that every party that is fighting over there is a bad guy, and bad guys fighting other bad guys is something we should leave alone. We have our priorities out of place, which is the point of the carton below.
The new smart watch from Apple looks pretty cool, but the emphasis on counting steps and the anal focus on health apps seems unpleasant. Here’s my take on it.
While I was away at the cartoonists convention in France for two weeks, I re-posted an oldie. This “evergreen” dove-bomber cartoon is appropriate all too often.
Here’s another one I missed – another riff on Obama and his pen annoying the Republicans. That’s the last one. Now I’m caught up!
I just got back from our Cagle Cartoons junket to the cartoon festival in St Just France. I’m way behind on my cartoons, but I knocked this one out from a snapshot that I took in an obscure corner of the Louvre.
This is a painting by 18th century Neo-classical painter Louis-Jacque Durameau about the death of Marie Antoinette. It struck me as a multi-panel cartoon with a big Nobel Peace Prize medal for Barack Obama. I almost put labels on the frames, “Then,” “… and Now” but I decided less is more. This painting is really funny – and all the more so because it takes itself so seriously.
The photo below is our group having dinner in Paris. From left to right is cartoonist Adam Zyglis, cartoonist Nate Beeler , me, cartoonist Steve Sack, cartoonist Monte Wolverton, Janelle Beamer, the charming fiancé of charming, conservative cartoonist Rick McKee, Nate’s wife Eve and Adam’s wife Jessica.
Here’s another group shot, around the cow statue at the editorial cartoon exhibition in St Just le Martel, deep in the heart of France near Limoges. Left to right is Nate, Eve, me, my wife, Peg, Justine the cow, Adam, Jessica, Janelle, Rick and Monte. Steve Sack was with us too; looks like he went missing in this one.
The grand prize winner of the festival (the winner of the cow, the “Humor Vache”) was Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani. The prize is an actual cow. Rayma also got a little porcelain cow.
I’ve long been impressed with Rayma. She drew for the El Universal newspaper in Caracas where she was a brave critic of the Hugo Chavez regime. The government took over her newspaper and she lost her job. Rayma may be moving to the USA next; I look forward to seeing what she draws here.
I won the grand prize cow at the festival last year, and I drew the poster for this year’s salon. As part of the winner from last year thing, the brilliant French caricaturist, Moines, drew my portrait. That’s me, giant me, and Moines at the right. Moines draws on a special kind of scratchboard and he carved each of my whiskers into the board with an X-acto knife. Makes me wanna pinch those cheeks. Moines complains that he’s down to his last couple of sheets of this paper, which isn’t made anymore. Shame.
I did three, charming variations on the same cartoon today for Scotland’s big referendum on independence. The first one is is the most baroque, with a Scotland guy farting in UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s face. What a joy it is to be an editorial cartoonist on a day like today.
Notice that I cleaned this cartoon up a bit by making the fart a clean, white color; even so, I think most editors will shy away from farts. I made an alternative version for timid editors who turn their noses up at farts.
I colored these separately in Photoshop and I see that I forgot the green stripe in the tartan on the next cartoons – oh! That annoys me. Too late to fix now. In any event, the fartless, mooning Scotsman below should make editors breathe easier.
Both of these “under the kilt” cartoons are drawn in advance of the vote, for editors to run if Scotland chooses to secede. I drew another, nicer version, for editors to run if Scotland votes to stay in the UK, with a big, wet, thank-you-kiss.
There are some more graphic variations that come to mind, but I should save those for another day.
Public opinion polls show the vast majority of Americans support our jumping into the war in Syria and Iraq. No wonder. TV news nowadays is constant cheerleading for war. I wonder if cable news is as successful in selling us adult diapers, catheters, supplemental health insurance and gold. See our Obama and ISIS or ISIL or IS or Islamic State cartoons here:http://www.cagle.com/news/obama-and-isis/
The vast majority of hypnotized, zombie, idiot Americans support the war in Syria and Iraq.
President Obama’s metaphorical airline seat is a lousy one right now. Here’s my newest cartoon.
Most people see my cartoons in black and white in the newspapers. I like the cartoons better in black and white – particularly if I do them with no gray tone, just line. Here is what most people see in the newspaper.
I know I should have drawn a Ray Rice cartoon, and I was going to draw something similar to the one that Steve Sack drew below … but I was too slow. And Steve’s cartoon was better than the one was would have drawn, so if I was a little faster, I would have been embarrassed.
The other thing I should have drawn, but I didn’t, was something on Apple’s big product announcement. I put this Nate Beeler oldie up on Twitter and it went viral. Some things never change, from one Apple product announcement to the next.
This is a painting by 18th century Neo-classical painter 
