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Obama and Aid to Egypt
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Anti American Arab Spring and Obama
Here are my three most recent cartoons! I just finished this one on the Republicans’ 40th vote against Obamacare and their recent attempt to shut down the government over Obamacare. They will be run over each time. They don’t learn.
Since you folks like to see my messy, rough sketches, here you go …
The next one is the Arab Spring in Egypt. Here is the line art that most people will see in the newspapers.
I try to do enough line work in these that I get some dark and medium areas to anchor the composition. I wouldn’t worry so much about that if I knew it would only run in color. The color version is below. I’m trying to use more texture in my color now, mostly with a rubber stamp pattern in Photoshop that looks like a sponge.
And I did this cartoon about teachers, then and now …
This is a refurbished oldie which has been a big seller in pay-per-use. I noticed another nice book sale on this one in our system last week, and I thought the cartoon needed to be freshened up. Here’s the original …
I always tell cartoonists not to put the year in their cartoons. For some reason artists like to put the year after a copyright circle ©, which just makes the old cartoons, that should sell as evergreens, suffer for their age. Now this cartoon isn’t dated, and I think it is greatly improved with the black and white in the first, 1960 panel.
I noticed after I posted this last week that almost every newspaper subscriber was downloading it, even though I marked it as a revision. Some cartoons strike a chord. I got this idea from my Israeli cartoonist buddy, Uri Fink. Thanks again, Uri.
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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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Egypt! Snowden! DOMA! Oh my!
It has been too long since I have posted new cartoons here! I took time away for the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention in Salt Lake City. (You can see me opine on the convention with Rob Rogers and Pat Bagley here.) Then it was the end of the quarter and I had to pay the cartoonist royalties, another three days lost. So I’m late. But here are the missing cartoons!
I drew this one of Edward Snowden a couple of weeks ago.
It wasn’t long before Ecuador was no longer talked about as a possible asylum for Snowden, so I drew a revision.
Today it looks like Venezuela will be the lucky winner in the Snowden derby.
The next one is Obama sweeping some crud under the constitution rug. I thought about labeling the crud “NSA,” and I could have labeled it “Guantanamo,” but I decided labels are for sissies. Given the e-mail I get from readers, I probably should have labeled the constitution also.
Next is Mohammad Morsi in his prison garb.
This one is actually in response to a reader comment. I had posted this oldie of Morsi on my blog …
Thanks to Cheryl Akins, who posted a comment that I should draw Morsi in prison garb now – and, of-course, she was right. I made his face a little cuter the second time around. I probably should have stuck with the uglier version.
With Egypt falling into chaos, I reposted one of my favorites from earlier this year.
Which brings us back to the Supreme Court’s DOMA and Prop 8 decisions. I drew this one.
We had a nice bunch of DOMA decision cartoons, but the best one came from by buddy Nate Beeler, who drew this big wet kiss that went viral on Facebook.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an outpouring of love for a cartoon as I witnessed for this Beeler beauty. Nice work, Nate.
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Pharoah Morsi in Jail
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Egyptian Lemmings Reposted
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Cartooning for Peace
Le Monde’s editorial cartoonist, Jean Plantu, and his trademark mouse.
I’m a big supporter of French cartoonist Jean Plantu’s Cartooning for Peace organization. It sounds a little silly, because all of the cartoonists are in favor of peace, and the nature of cartoons seems to be frivolous, while peace is a serious topic.
That said, Cartooning for Peace does a lot of great stuff; they organize meetings of editorial cartoonists and hold impressive exhibitions all over the world. I’ve made a lot of worldly, cartoonist friends through Cartooning for Peace. Plantu is the star cartoonist of France – that’s him at the right, with his trademark mouse that appears in the corner of every Plantu cartoon.
One of Plantu’s recent projects is a weekly page in his newspaper, Le Monde, with cartoons from around the world about a topic in the news. Plantu does a great job with it, soliciting the newest cartoons from member cartoonists every week. I have pasted some pages below. They look great and show the power of editorial cartoons at their best.
We syndicate a bunch of international cartoonists to about 850 newspapers, and they tend to be less popular than our American cartoonists. Americans aren’t much interested in events outside of the United States, unless we’re at war or threaten to be at war with someone. Passionate cartoons about water issues or the European Union don’t generate much reader passion in the USA.
On the topics that penetrate our borders and generate interest here, collections of international cartoons are a wonderful way to show a variety of world opinions at a glance. My local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press does an international week in review with world cartoonists regularly. I would urge more editors to consider doing it.
The page below is “Egypt: an explosive cocktail”. It includes the Adam and Eve cartoon by Doaa El Adl, that has led to her prosecution by Islamist authorities. I’d love to see newspapers all around the world reprint Doaa’s cartoon.
Gay marriage has recently been a hot topic in France.
Here is the most recent one, on International Womens Day.
Lemmings jumping en-masse off of a cliff are one of the great chichés that editorial cartoonists rely upon – like the Iwo Jima memorial, clown cars, the Statue of Liberty, movie posters, peeing dogs – it is no surprise to see a new lemming/cliff cartoon and it is fun to see the familiar metaphor with a new twist. I end up doing a new lemming cartoon once every two or three years.
My lemming cartoon yesterday was about the ongoing tumult in Egypt, and protesting Egyptians running their country off of a cliff.
Back in 2009, during the Obamacare debate, I drew the Democrat/lemmings jumping off of a political cliff. Of-course, their cliff was on the left.
Back in 2007 at the onset of the mortgage collapse, I drew house/lemmings jumping off of a cliff …
Way back in 2003 unemployment was on our minds (things never change much) and I drew this graduation lemmings cartoon.
The lemming metaphor is popular around the world too. Here is how my graduation cartoon was plagiarized by a cartoonist at a top newspaper in Saudi Arabia.
It amuses me to see how the positions of all of the characters in the Saudi cartoon match my own drawing.
Here are some lemmings by some of my favorite cartoonists. This one is by Mike Keefe from back in 2007 …
Here’s Colombian cartoonist “Matador” (Killer) with the Eurozone countries as lemmings.
Joe Heller did the lemmings as a Martin Luther King Day cartoon …
This lemming/shoppers cartoon by Andy Singer made me laugh …
This mortgage crisis cartoon that I drew back in 2007 is a twist on the lemmings …
I did a search on the word “cliff” in our cartoon database and came up with 440 results. Yipes! There are cliffs everywhere!