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See Daryl Draw the Republican Candidates!

The new cartoon today is Donald Trump and all of the other GOP candidates on the teeter-totter, with Trump outweighing them all. With eleven caricatures, this one was more ambitious than my typical cartoon, and you can watch my whole eleven face journey below on YouTube!

Try watching the video below at double speed (one of the nice YouTube settings options). Everyone thinks drawing this stuff is quick and effortless – which is nice, but watching the video gives more realistic picture.

If all goes well, I think I’ll do all of my cartoons as a live stream. Please let me know what you think, and what you would like to see me do differently!

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Trump, Polls and the GOP!

I drew today’s Trump cartoon live on YouTube. Here is the finished color version.

trump-polls

That’s the GOP’s tarnished image at the right, as Trump rockets up in the polls. To really be going up in the polls, he should be facing to the right instead of the left – and I thought about that for a bit, as you can see in the video, but having Trump go the wrong way is better.

Today’s Trump news, about how he would ban Muslims from coming into the USA until we figure out “what the hell is going on” is great fun, because Trump’s supporters love what he has to say, while mainstream Republicans and the media are offended, demanding again and again that Trump leave the race. That tarnished GOP brand is starting to look pretty crusty.

Living here in red-state Tennessee I see angry Republicans are all around me; they live in their own news bubble, with their own history of the world, reinforced by their communities of like minded, angry, evangelical conservatives. The typical Republican voters are much father right than their knuckle-dragging candidates. Trump has plenty of room to his right to be even more outrageous.

Oh! Today I learned that the government of Pakistan is no longer blocking access to Cagle.com within Pakistan! Welcome to all of our new Pakistani readers!

COME WATCH ME DRAW THIS THING!

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Blog Cartoons Syndicate

My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon

Breaking news can make a cartoon go missing. I was finishing up the color on this Donald Trump immigration cartoon last Friday afternoon when the news about the Paris Terror Attacks broke. Clearly, newspapers would not me interested in Donald Trump for at least a week. I notice that it is only today that the Donald is creeping back into the news with word that he is now leading all the polls again.

I thought this cartoon would be provocative, I didn’t guess that it would be ignored. I guessed wrong.

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Dr. Ben Carson is NOT a Liar!

I think Dr. Ben Carson is NOT a liar. Now, given that, I need to decide if that is a good thing.

carson-on-caglePeople always say, “Daryl, with this presidential election you must be having so much fun! And you must be soon busy!” Actually, newspapers don’t use any more editorial cartoon when times are fun, so it never gets busier. And having the campaign dominate the news for a year doesn’t make a cartoonist’s life more fun. A little variety adds spice.
But, Ben Carson is fun. We have a wonderful and growing collection of Ben Carson cartoons on Cagle.com Come take a look! My talented buddy Taylor Jones drew that Carson in our promo.

Here are a couple of my recent favorites, this first one is by my buddy, Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World-Herald:

This one is by the brilliant Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer:

This strange one from Randall Enos made me laugh out loud – it is a linoleum block print that Randy carves with a knife, inks and prints on paper, then scans, showing Jesus carrying a sleeping Carson at the head of the presidential race – I think that says it all.

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Ben Carson and the Media

Dr. Ben Carson seems to have a thin skin when it comes to the media.

Editorial cartoonists have a wonderful advantage versus other journalists; we can put any stupid words we want into the mouths of any public figure. Regular journalists have a slightly higher bar – they have to act like jerks to try to coax a testy quote out of a public figure. Carson’s calm demeanor likely encourages the press to prod him even harder.

Carson say plenty of stupid things without prodding. He holds some of the most knuckle-dragging views on the neanderthal right. What worries me most is the crazy religious views that color right-wing views of reality, like Carson’s rejection of the theory of evolution. His belief that the pyramids were built to store grain at the direction of Joseph (the many colored coat Joseph) is funky a one. Where this becomes dangerous is when right-wing candidates believe that we’re at the “End of Days”, and the turmoil in the Middle East shows that the apocalypse and the return of Jesus Christ is imminent – that can lead to some ugly decision making.

If not for the nutty religious stuff I might be a Republican myself.

Well, maybe not.

Here’s a very close-up blow-up of Ben Carson’s tiny face. From this you can see that I really do draw in pencil and crank up the contrast to make it look like ink. I use yellow Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, with little pink erasers on the end (I always use up the pink erasers). Pencils are forgiving to indecisive cartoonists, like me.

CarsonDetail

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Blog

Jeb Can Fix It!

I’ve been seeing a bunch of very complicated cartoons about Jeb Bush’s attempt at a Jeb!2.0 campaign – with Jeb fixing cars that are hopelessly broken, Jeb as a plumber failing as the plumbing floods – and the like.

For my Jeb cartoon I started with the idea that I wanted to do something simpler, and I really wanted to do a plumber’s butt crack. There’s a famous story about cartoonist Steve Kelley who was fired from his job at the San Diego Union-Tribune for drawing about this much of a butt-crack. I think Steve’s experience motivates all of the cartoonists to draw butt-cracks.

jeb-can-fix-it

 

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Carson Tortoise and Trump Hare

Bombastic Donald Trump is falling behind Ben “slow and steady wins the race” Carson, which sounds to me like the Tortoise and the Hare fable.

Both of these guys are gifts to cartoonists. People find it disturbing whenever I mention this, but I like Donald Trump, compared to the other Republican candidates – it sounds crazy, but I think he’s more reasonable and moderate than Carson. It is only Carson’s demeanor that implies moderation.

Notice that I avoided drawing a tail on the turtle (most turtles have nice little tails). Given the position of the running turtle, there was no position I could find for a tail that didn’t look like a turtle penis. Self-censorship – its an ugly thing.

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Carly Fiorina – Look at my face!

This is my first Carly Fiorina cartoon. It looks like I may be doing more over the next year. She’s actually pretty easy to draw, with her eyes that tip up at the edges of her face, the long nose, pointy chin and skinny neck. It is fascinating to me how objectively bad her business record was, and still she runs on her business record as her qualification to be president. When she launches into a moralistic screed it makes my skin crawl – I think she is my least favorite Republican, but this cartoon goes easy on her.

Of-course, the cartoon refers to her spat with Trump about her “face” – as long as people look at her face – or look at anything but her record, she’s on her way up in the polls.

This Fiorina cartoon by David Fitzsimmons is my favorite. It conveys some information, something I usually try to avoid doing in cartoons (it takes too many words), but it works here …

 

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Hillary and the Email Storm

Hillary is a gift to cartoonists. The fact that she is humorless makes her all the more fun.

International cartoonists make a lot of use of the “@” sign to represent email in their wordless cartoons, something that is not seen so often in American cartoons. (They also go crazy with UPC codes in their cartoons, representing commerce or general, modern commerce.) Wordy American cartoonists could do with fewer words.

Most newspapers print my cartoons in black and white. The black and white version below is just line art, which I think is more elegant, but I find that newspapers prefer to take my color cartoons and grayscale them rather than use the more simple and elegant line art. In this case, that will give them more emails, I suppose.

I drew a similar, symbolic Hillary/email cartoon some months ago, with the “@” symbol as a ball and chain. Some readers didn’t get this one – maybe because the “@” needs a gap at the end of the curl, maybe because the idea of an “@” as email is just too obscure, and “@” rain will go over their heads too. I’ll find out soon enough.

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Marco Rubio Bites his Mentor in the Bush Butt

Florida Senator Marco Rubio announced that he is in the presidential race a couple of days ago. He’ll be running against his old mentor, Jeb Bush, so, here is Marco as a doggie, biting Bush in the butt.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that almost everyone running for president this time around is really easy to draw. A couple are duds, Scott Walker and Martin O’Malley have lousy faces, but hopefully I won’t need to draw them.

I like the line art better, and I send it out to newspapers as the black and white version, but I’ve notices that papers are more often printing a grayscale version of the color cartoon. Frustrating. Editors like the tone and color, even though simple lines are more elegant.