My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon
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Miranda RightsGray ALL OF THEM
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Boston Bomber Miranda Rights
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The Boston Bombing and the Gun Bill
The two big news stories this week were the Boston Marathon bombing and the sinking of the gun bill by Republicans in the Senate. Of-course, the gun bill got lost in the media focus on the Boston Bombing (we have a great collection of cartoons on the Boston Bombing here).
The problem with dominant news stories is that every cartoonist is drawing the same thing at the same time – why? Editors all want the same thing at the same time. Usually I like to steer a little different path then the cartoonist pack, because of supply and demand. There were just too many similar cartoons about the Boston Marathon Bombing this week, with bloody tennis shoes, bowed heads on statues, damaged Boston logos, symbolic metaphors breaking ribbons at finish lines – just what editors wanted, but too much of it for them to use. I tried to take a bit of a different tack with memorial candles, and I wanted to avoid drawing something bloody, still, I’m sure my cartoon didn’t get reprinted much because of oversupply. Here is the rough pencil sketch.
…and here is the black and white line art, that most people will see in the newspaper.
… and here is the color …
If I use colors in cartoons that are too dark, I get complaints from editors, so the color was a compromise. I’m not sure I’m happy with it. Oh well, it is a cartoon I was obligated to draw and the marketplace didn’t need – the story of my career.
The next cartoon was about the Republicans sinking the gun bill in the Senate. Republicans love their guns a bit too much – and that’s all that this cartoon says. Here is the rough sketch.
I found a photo of an assault rifle on Google and printed it out for my rough sketch. For a moment, I thought about Photoshopping the actual photo into the cartoon – it would be a jarring contrast to have the drawing of an elephant with what looks like a real, nasty, assault rifle photo – then I thought about how Bill Day tried that and was pilloried by this colleagues, and my good judgement got the better of me. Gotta watch out for those gun photos, they can get you labeled as a “plagiarist” and make you the wallflower at AAEC cartoonist parties.
Here is the black and white art …
and the color …
Ah! Love in the springtime!
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GOP and Guns
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Boston Marathon Memorial
Here is the back story on my last three editorial cartoons!
With Obama’s “middle of the road” budget that was attacked by both sides last week, there have been lots of budget cartoons showing both the left and the right angry at Obama. This is much the same thing, but without picturing the budget, so it might last a little longer.
Notice that in my drawing, Obama is not exactly in the middle … from the reader’s perspective, Obama is a little to the left of the middle -although, from Obama’s perspective, he has moved a bit to his right.
Maybe I’m overthinking this. Here is the rough pencil sketch, on tab sized copier paper in pencil.
Next I drew the finished line art for the cartoon (below), also in pencil, on drafting vellum. This is what most people will see in the newspapers, that still usually print in black and white.
There is something lovely about a black and white editorial cartoon, particularly if it is only line art, without gray tone. I know that people will choose any color over black and white – but I think it is kind of like a classic sail boat vs. a speed/power boat – the sail boat is slow and classy, the power boat is fast, flashy, and people will choose it over the sail boat – still, the sail boat has more class and is nicer to look at.
Here’s a detail – isn’t the black and white nice? It is saved as 1000 dpi tiff and has a nice pencil line quality, up close.
Then I add the color, for the image most online visitors see.
The previous cartoon was another one about L’il Kim. Here’s the black and white – I thought I had to resort to gray to make the multi-panel format work. I like to avoid gray when I can.
Here’s the color …
The next cartoon was intended to be an evergreen. There was a big, Sunday section front in my local newspaper Health section about “superbugs” – antibiotic resistant diseases that are a new plague in hospitals. The newspaper didn’t run one of our nice cartoons or illustrations with the feature article, they had some lousy clip art; and I noticed that we didn’t have good “superbug” art in the database – so this is an attempt to fill the “Superbug” void in the CagleCartoons.com/PoliticalCartoons.com databases. Here is the rough pencil sketch on 11″x17″ paper.
I know, I know, bacteria don’t look like this kind of bug. Here is the black and white line art.
And I thought it might need a bit of gray tone – I’m not sure on this one.
And here is the color, added behind the line art in layers in Photoshop.
This one was fun to draw. Here is a detail.
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Taxes, France and Boobs
Here are my last two cartoons, the first one is French President Francois Hollande shrinking. He is wildly unpopular in France after being elected recently, and our world cartoonists draw him all the time, so I thought I would give it a shot. That is “Liberty” from Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” who is in the Mom role, measuring Hollande’s growth on the door frame – and that’s a clip of the real Liberty at the right.
Jean Plantu, the cartoonist for Le Monde in Paris, likes to chide me about how I can’t draw bare breasts as an editorial cartoonist in America. Of-course, I am my own editor, and I can draw anything I want – the only problem is getting editors to print what I want. This cartoon has a triple whammy: boobs, foreign subject matter and a character (Hollande) who American readers don’t know, and I drew it on a Saturday, the dead day for editorial cartoons.
Who cares?! I can draw what I want even if no one will print it. Here is the messy rough sketch.
There were lots of corrections I made when I traced over this for the final line art, below.
Here is the color version.
Remember you saw it here first, and you may not see it anywhere else.
The previous cartoon is an evergreen for Tax Day, April 15th. It would be better as an evergreen if the IRS Form 1040 didn’t mention the tax year at the top – I’ll have to make that suggestion to them.
For some reason, cartoonists like to put the year into their cartoons, as part of a copyright notice with their signature, which makes their new cartoons look new but makes their old cartoons look old, devaluing them as evergreens for sale online. I’m always telling artists not to put the year into their cartoons – but do they listen? No. That’s the rough sketch at the right.
I downloaded the tax form from the IRS as the backdrop, and clipped some text in Photoshop. That’s how I feel this time of year. The tax form looks pretty gloomy, huh?
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My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies!
My last two cartoons have been about Kim Jong Un. The first was Li’l Kim making himself into a target. Here’s the rough sketch.
Here he is as line art. Most newspaper readers will see the cartoon in black and white like this.
I thought I would be bold with the color on this one – to make it more powerful with only line art and red. I’m sure some editors won’t print it because of my color choice. Editors like lots of “pretty” and “bright” colors. Editors generally avoid anything that can be called “bold.”
Since North Korea is still dominating the news I drew another one. This one with Li’l Kim as a doggie, with President Obama and the new Chinese president Xi Jinping.
I’ve done a whole lot of cartoons with leaders as doggies. In this case, i thought it would be interesting to have Obama reacting to Li’l Kim’s threatening barking, while Jinping reacts to Li’l Kim’s pee, with exactly the same body language. Here is the line art that most people see. Yes, I decided to move Obama closer, and I realized that I needed a label on Jinping, because he’s new and I didn’t know what he looked like until I looked him up.
Here is the color version – which is never as good as the simple black and white.
We have a wonderful collection of more than 250 North Korea cartoons here! I’ve drawn lots of leaders as doggies in the past. Here’s is Li’l Kim’s dad, Il, biting Obama’s butt from 2010. Things don’t change much.
Here’s one where Obama is the doggie on Wall Street’s leash.
Here’s Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the doggie.
I drew this one back in the 2008 primary season, with President Clinton as the doggie on Hillary’s leash. Ugh, I hate looking at my old, early Obama.
I drew a lot of doggie cartoons with President Bush. The military was W’s doggie.
Drawing Muslims as doggies is deeply insulting to them, which is why so many cartoonists do it, I suppose. Here are the Sunnis and Shiites fighting at the height of Bush’s Iraq Mess, with Iraq’s president Maliki.
I drew lots of W as a doggie. Here he is marking his territory.
And here is W the doggie, during the run-up to war in Iraq.
I’ll bet my cartoons would be much more popular if I drew nothing but doggies. I’ve considered it.
