My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon
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Bowe Bergdahl Addition
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Hamid Karzai and His Taliban Pals
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Hamid Karzai and His Taliban Pals
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Zimmerman, Arab Spring and Obamacare!
Here is my weekly post on my new cartoons. My most recent cartoon, on George Zimmerman’s acquittal, was a quickie. Here is my rough sketch – I took a scan of the Community Chest Get Out of Jail Free card, made it light in a print out, and did a rough sketch on top.
Then I dropped in the color. I had it all done in ten minutes, a new record for me. If only all of the cartoons were so quick and easy. Usually I muddle and fiddle for a long time with each cartoon. This one got a lot of attention in social media because it was fast.
The previous cartoon was Obama in the Arab Spring bathtub, with lots of dangerous appliances. Don’t stick a fork in the toaster! Here is the rough sketch – this one took some muddle and fiddle time to get the position and appliances to be the way I wanted them.
Then I did the finished line art, and added a bit of gray to make it read a bit more clearly. The black and white image is what more readers see in the newspapers.
And here is the color that you see on our site, and the newspapers that print in color. I had fun with this cartoon.
The previous cartoon was about the one year postponement in the employer mandate on Obamacare. Republicans “jumped on this” as evidence of Obamacare’s “failure” and “chaos.” Here is the rough sketch.
… And here is the line art, that most people will see in the newspapers that print black and white. I always like to black and white version better. There is something more elegant about black and white. Readers always tell me that color is better.
And here is the color. I did this one a little differently, with quick, transparent colors. I think I’ll probably do messier color like this going forward. I really like Pat Bagley’s sponge texture – that’s the next thing I’ll try.
POSTSCRIPT: Well, after writing that, I couldn’t get the sponge thing out of my head and I added a subtle bit of Bagley texture to the background. I should do more of that. And more boldly. I’m timid starting out. Here’s the revised version, not too different, but nicely textural.
Here’s a detail from the revised version.
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Arab Spring Bath Tub Obama
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Creepy Caricature?
The image at right is Army Staff Sargeant Robert Bales, who is alleged to have massacred 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
It struck me that he looks exactly like the soldier I drew in my cartoon about winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan in light of the killings (below), before Bales’ identity was released.
Psychic caricature. Creepy.
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Best Political Cartoons Of The Week
Every Friday, we collect the best political cartoons of the week and stuff them into one big, glorious slideshow.
So just relax and catch up on a week’s worth of news with our Best Cartoons of the Week slideshow.
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Afghanistan Shootings
The terrible shooting last weekend by an American soldier in Afghanistan, which killed 16 civilians, has revived the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. and revealed a deep level of criticism of the war by the American public.
It’s hard to get a population to love you at gunpoint. We wanted to win their hearts and minds as we ushered in a new era of democracy in the Middle East, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to only have allowed anti-American sentiment to grow. Even now, as leaders debate whether or not this shooting should be a rallying cry for the U.S. to pull out its troops, we really can’t speak to much this 10+ year war has accomplished.
Our stable of cartoonists certainly have their own opinions on our war in Afghanistan. Check them out in our new Afghanistan Shootings cartoon collection.
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Afghanistan Should Love Us
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The Dead Crowd
I’ve been drawing crowds of dead people lately. Like most cartoonists, I hate drawing crowd scenes. Back when I was a cartoon illustrator I drew lots of crowd scenes; art directors seem to love crowd scenes – readers do too. Readers often send me ideas for cartoons, and the typical idea involves drawing a crowd, or opposing armies, or a “sky filled with helicopters” or something similarly painful to draw.
But, if you kill everyone in the crowd, crowds are much easier to draw. There are no expressions, or body language. When I spend too much time drawing a dead crowd, I find myself thinking about the dead crowd cartoons again and again – maybe that’s unhealthy. In January I drew this cartoon about the Marines who peed on dead Taliban fighters. 
This week I drew this one on Bashar Assad …
Now I’m plagued by thinking of “standing in the middle of a dead crowd” cartoons. Like this one …
Now I want to draw President Obama in the middle of the dead crowd saying, “Things seem to have quietened down now, after my apology.” Maybe I will.
I know I’m going to keep thinking about this.