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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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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

 

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Sandy Hook, the Cliff and Unions

 

124345 600 Sandy Hook, the Cliff and Unions cartoonsThe cliff is such a natural cartoon that I have to keep drawing it.  This cartoon (right) was from December 20th, when the fiscal cliff negotiations were going nowhere, and I was drawing John Boehner hanging off the cliff where the elephant is, and my son came by and asked me who that was.  It was fine when I explained it, but he didn’t know John Boehner, and I thought I needed to draw and elephant.  We’ve had lots of Boehner cartoons, even a great Boehner section – but he hasn’t risen to the level where young people know him, and I’ve been sticking to the elephant in his place. I hate that our cartoons are puzzles for schoolkids to suffer through.

I’ll draw Boehner soon enough.

The two cartoons below were drawn about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I hate that I have to draw cartoons about heinous crimes, because we all agree on how awful the murders were and the issues are all side issues … comments about grieving, and cartoons about gun control are appropriate, I just wasn’t inspired for another round of redundant gun control cartoons.  Then I watched a horrendously insensitive interview on Fox News with parents of a surviving child, and a couple other, awful interviews with grieving parents that made me angry. The hype around this was pretty ugly, and inspired the media vultures cartoon below.  I think it is good to bash another bad guy than the shooter in cartoons – best not to mention the shooter at all – the few news outlets that don’t mention the murderer’s name are being responsible journalists.

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The next cartoon is another riff on the same theme. I got a lot of response to these cartoons from readers who were also disgusted by the media reaction to the tragedy.  Ugly stuff.

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The next cartoon was about the passage of “right-to-work” legislation by Michigan’s Republican governor and legislature. I know this cartoon won’t get reprinted much, but when you gotta pee, you gotta pee.

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