Here’s my King Trump …

This is Donald Trump as King Henry VIII, from the famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, shown in the image at the right. That Henry was quite the dresser. Notice that Trump, and Henry VIII have tiny hands and a little purse. I may do a series with more famous king portraits as Trump.

One thing that I have to keep in mind as a newspaper cartoonist, is how the color cartoons look when printed in the papers – the cartoons darken up, with heavy details filling in and cyan (or blue) coming in heavy; this is why I lighten and warm up the colors, which is especially apparent in Trump’s brown, furry vest. I also feel I need to make the flesh tones lighter and I’m always getting mail about how I should make Trump look more “orange.” I added a little white feather on Trump’s cap, which wasn’t in the painting – surely this was an oversight by Holbein the Younger as the feather seems to be necessary!

This isn’t the first time for me with Holbein the Younger and Henry VIII. Ten years ago I did a similar take on George W. Bush as Henry VIII in the 2006 cartoon below. I see that I took even more liberties with the king’s outfit in this earlier, cartoonier version.

There are always a lot of cartoons depicting presidents, and presidential candidates as kings (or queens). During the Obama years the few conservative cartoonists enjoyed drawing Obama as a king as their vision of Obama was vain, self-absorbed and autocratic.

At the beginning of the last campaign there were lots of cartoons with Hillary and presumed GOP frontrunner Jeb Bush as dynastic royalty, including this one I did below …

We saw lots of “Trump Card” cartoons, but Trump was always the Joker in those cartoons, not the King.