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New Cartoonist: Ed Wexler

I’m happy to announce that we’ve added a new editorial cartoonist to Cagle.com and our newspaper syndication package – Ed Wexler. Here’s Ed’s first syndicated editorial cartoon …

In this stodgy old profession it is rare to see new face that looks so polished. Ed has been a creative director at Disney Television for decades and the recent caucus politics inspired his leap to the editorial pages. Ed also had a long stint as an illustrator of US News and World Report (replacing our own Taylor Jones). Here are a few of my favorite Wexler oldies. The first is Reince Priebus surfing with his GOP buddies …

Ed draws everything on his Wacom tablet. Here’s our new Energy Secretary, Rick Perry …

Here’s Washington in action …

Looks a little like Ed Sorel, huh? Wexler studied under Sorel at Cooper Union. This Ronald Reagan portrait impressed me …

Cool stuff. Welcome aboard, Ed!

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Democrat Guernica

There is horror and anguish in the ranks of the Democratic Party these days. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is probably the best known visual icon for horror and anguish.

Here’s a detail …

democratguernicadetail

Eight years ago I drew a similar cartoon when Democrats won the presidency and congress – to the horror of Republicans.

I’ve had the GOP version up as the top image on my Facebook page for years, And I’ve gotten lots of complaints about it, usually from very literal conservatives who write things like, “Guernica is about the Spanish civil war – it has nothing to do with Republicans!” I also got lots of criticism from conservatives who wanted to point out that I’m not as good an artist as Pablo Picasso. Here’s an image of the real “Guernica.”

guernica750

This David Fitzsimmons oldie about George W. Bush painting Iraq is a nice one.

fitzsimmons-guernica

Worldwide cartoonists like to use flags in their cartoons – the problem is that the American audience doesn’t know their flags. Here’s our Greek cartoonist, Michael Kountouris drawing a combination of the Syrian flag and Guernica.

Here’s my Cuban cartoonist friend in Mexico, Angel Boligan, with Violence in Video Games …

Here’s another nice one from Boligan, simply titled, “Insurance.”

boligan2-guernica

Gotta love Guernica.

 

 

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Scalia’s Empty Chair

I don’t like Antonin Scalia and I was originally going to draw Lady Liberty and Lady Justice dancing on his grave – but that was nasty and I went a softer route with the empty chair. I understand that in the upcoming Supreme Court cases his chair will be draped in black. The idea that Scalia was a doctrinaire “originalist” who was dedicated to the constitution over his own conservative views flies in the face of his Bush vs. Gore decision. Scalia was a hypocrite.

This is a revision of a cartoon I did some years ago, about the Supreme Court being partisan. I think it is better with the empty chair.

Here’s the video of my day drawing this cartoon and the one after this one! Sit back and take a look.

 

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New Years BITE

Happy cartoon New Year! I was busily drawing my New Years Day cartoon, with Obama going out and coming in for the year, and with little biting GOP elephants, when the news started blaring about North Korea calling Obama a “monkey.” I am a slave to the news, so I had to do a second version with L’il Kim. Here’s the GOP …

And here is the L’il Kim version …

L’il Kim may be a plague to the world, but he is a gift to cartoonists.

The “Father Time and Baby New Year” thing is standard cartooning fodder. Here’s my New Year cartoon from last year …

Back in December, 2012, all the talk was about the “Fiscal Cliff” budget fight in Congress; it looked like doomsday. I drew this one …

At the end of 2010 the house had fallen under Republican control, and it looked like the GOP was eager to jump into more war – instead, Congress didn’t do much of anything, and Obama got us into more war. Oh well …

At the end of 2008: Obama won the presidency, George W. Bush was out of a job, and my drawings of Obama needed some more time to mature.

As 2005 turned into 2006 George W. Bush’s Republicans had lost the mid-term elections, but Bush was doubling down on the Iraq War anyway. There was lots more war to come.

Back in 2001 all the news was the 9/11 attacks as our troops poured into Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

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“Like a Red Flag in Front of a Bull”

Today’s cartoon is inspired by a quote from incoming Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who said that if President Obama does immigration reform with an executive order, over the objections of Republicans, that would be like, “waving a red flag in front of a bull.” Kind of obvious, but it was fun to draw McConnell and Boehner as bulls.

The drawing was a bit more difficult than usual. I think this is the first time I’ve ever drawn McConnell and I’m not really comfortable with him yet. My rough sketch is below.

MatadorSketch600wide

I was going to label the “red flag” as “immigration reform” but I decided that was unnecessary. I struggled with McConnell and I did a little patch to draw his face over until I was happy with it. Those marks between Obama and the bulls remind me to reposition them when I do the finished line art.

I also struggled with how to draw the bulls’ penises in a way that editors could stand, without killing my cartoon. I like how bull penises seem to come out of the middle of their bellies, and I tried to be discreet.

I like to do line art for the black and white version of a cartoon, without gray tones. There is something more elegant about lines – although it is hard to call this cartoon “elegant.” Here is the color version …

I played a bit with making Boehner orange, and with making the bulls have more light and shadow, but whatever I tried was too busy and I ended up with dull bulls. I’m not really happy with the color on this one. In fact, I’m usually never happy with my color.

I’m looking at doing a video of my drawing my cartoons to post on the site, or possibly to do live as a rather long and boring podcast. It is cartoons like this one that give me podcasting pause, because I fiddled around with it for a long time before I was happy with the caricatures – and cartoonists like to give the impression that drawing everything is quick and easy. I’ll have no secrets. On the other hand, the videos may be so boring that no one will notice.

I looked around for some other bulls and I found this one by Georgia cartoonist, Mark Streeter, who beat me to the matador punch.

Here’s an oldie by RJ Matson.

There was a big Yahtzee of matador cartoons about the European Union, back when Spain was having big financial problems and needed a bail-out. Here’s one I drew then.

This is a nice bull-fight cartoon from John Cole that is probably better now than when he drew it back in 2006. I like the blank, Orphan Annie eyeballs.

There are a whole lot of matador cartoons out there, but there’s always room for more.

And thanks to Jerry Moore for sending me this nice shot of the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times today.
Cagle-LAtimes-Bullfighter-Cropped

 

 

 

 

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Big Election for Republicans and Tic-Tac-Toe

The big election wins for Republicans gave us an elephant cartoon festival that continues today. Here is our great new collection of cartoons on the GOP sweep.

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.

 

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Obama Anchors the Mid-Term Elections

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 …

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Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot

Here’s my weekly batch of new cartoons.  The first one is my “Stand Your Ground” cartoon.  Any cartoon about guns gets a lot of crazy response – as this one did.  People are such nuts.  Here is the rough pencil sketch.

SketchStandGround600wide Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

 

Next I did the finished line art. I dragged three different speech balloons into position in a layer in Photoshop, rather than actually drawing all the speech balloons.

134920 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

I had mixed feelings about whether to leave it as line art for the black and white version. There is something elegant about line art with no tone – but I couldn’t make up my mind, so I did a gray version, and I made both versions available to the syndication customers. Interestingly, half of the editors downloaded the line version, and half went for the gray version. Go figure.134921 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

Here it is in color.  I added some subtle texture to the ground.134922 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

Here is how it looked the next day in my local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

NewPressStand600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

Lots of cartoonists were drawing cartoons that were critical of the media attention paid to the new baby future king of England. I thought I would go with cute rather than critical. I don’t have any angry feelings about this subject. Cute is fine with me. Here is the line art that most people will see in the newspaper.

134962 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

And here’s the color.  I’m trying to do more color that looks like I’m using a sponge, as I used to do back in the days when i painted with gouache.

134967 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

We almost saw the “Nuclear Option” happen in the Senate, when Senator Harry Reid threatened to get rid of the filibuster rules that Republicans were using to block Obama nominees.  There was a compromise, but I suspect we’ll see this Nuclear Option thing happen again soon.  Here’s the gray version, with sponge texture (the line art was too spare on this one, it needed gray tone).

135011 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

Yes, that’s a very Herblockian “Mr. A-Bomb.”  Gotta love Herblock.  Here’s the color version, with spongy texture.

135021 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

 

Most of the country had a crazy heat wave last week, which is always a good excuse for a trite, Global Warming cartoon.  This one was fun to draw, and I went with the line art – no gray tone for the black and white version of this one.

134866 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

And here’s the color version …

134879 600 Stand Your Ground, Baby King, Nuclear Option and Soooo Hot cartoons

That’s it!  I think I’ll draw Detroit tomorrow.

 

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Superbug, Obama’s Budget Battle and more L’il Kim!

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.

MiddleSketch600wide Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

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.

130233 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

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.

detail Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

Then I add the color, for the image most online visitors see.

130234 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

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.

130080 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

Here’s the color …

130081 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

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.

SuperbugSketch600wide Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

I know, I know, bacteria don’t look like this kind of bug. Here is the black and white line art.

129945 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

And I thought it might need a bit of gray tone – I’m not sure on this one.

129946 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

And here is the color, added behind the line art in layers in Photoshop.

129947 600 Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

This one was fun to draw. Here is a detail.

BugDetail Superbug, Obamas Budget Battle and more Lil Kim! cartoons

 

 

 

 

 

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Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso

Here is my latest cartoon, about the Republican infighting while Obama just sits back and waits for a deal.

BattlingGOP 600wideCOLOR Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

 

This Fiscal Cliff mess came about because of the failure of the “Super-Committee.” I remembered a drawing a did of the Super-Committee some time ago, with a nice fight scene between super donkeys and elephants …

98752 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

I liked that Super-Committee cartoon. Super political stuff is always great for cartoonists, especially when super-politicians fail. It occurred to me that I could use the fight scene again, if the donkeys were elephants, so I printed it out lightly and sketched in some rough changes, adding Obama and making the donkeys into elephants in the same, fighting positions …

Sketch600wide Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

… and then I drew over it for finished line on vellum.  This black and white line drawing is what most people see in the newspaper …

BattlingGOPlineart600wide Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons
… and then I colored it in layers on Photoshop. The line drawing is always better than the color, but readers and editors never seem to think so.

The previous cartoon was also about GOP angst, this time in the form of Picasso’s Guernica (below).

guernica600wideforweb Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

Oh the GOP suffering; oh the humanity!  I did pretty much the same thing with this one. I printed out the Guernica painting and traced a nice line drawing on vellum.

124469 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoonsI wanted it to look like it came from my hand, which is why I did all the cross hatching and un-Picasso like line quality.  Then I added the gray tone …

124470 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

Oh!  Those poor Republicans! My most recent one was the New Years Fiscal Cliff cartoon below. This one probably works better on the Web because you have to scroll down to get to the gag.

124677 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

My wife thought this one was too cruel to babies. She told me I shouldn’t draw it. My Australian cartoonist buddy, Peter Broelman did a similar one today, without being cruel to the baby – and his will get reprinted more because it isn’t in a vertical format.  My wife likes Peter’s better too.  Oh well.

124642 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons