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GOP Grave Dance
When I was at the festival in St. Just, France I had the opportunity to interview Doaa el Adl. She is a rare female cartoonist in Egypt, and she has been persecuted by by the Morsi regime for drawing a cartoon that featured Adam and Eve, an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to chill her speech. Editorial cartoonists are very important voices in Egypt, with their cartoons routinely running on the front pages of the many, vibrant newspapers in a culture that still reveres newspapers.
I think Doaa is a hero, for standing up to the regime, speaking truth to power, and putting herself at risk in doing so.
Interestingly, Doaa had some strong objections to my own cartoons. Here are a couple of my cartoons that she disliked the most …
Doaa says “Yes, Obama does that – but you draw him as an angel – he is no angel! He meddles in everything! He wants to control everything!”
To this one Doaa says, “Obama is not like that! He is in there fighting with everyone, making trouble, trying to run everything!”
Obama has managed to make all sides in the Middle East see him as the bad guy.
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Daryl Has a Cow
Here I am with my cow, Josette. I’m holding the St. Just porcelain statue depicting their logo that they give to grand prix winners.
I just got back from the grand editorial cartooning festival in St. Just le Martel, France where I won the grand prix, the “Prix de l’humor Vache” award, which was an actual cow, named Josette.
The “Salon de St. Just, ” in its 32nd year, draws cartoonists from around the world to a tiny town near Limoges. The townspeople have adopted the cartoonists and hold a party that stretches over two weekends, in a grand cartoon museum they built in the middle of cow country. Most of the cartoonists stay in the homes of volunteer villagers – the entire event is put together by townpeople Cartoonists usually come for only one weekend of the festival, splitting the crowd between what becomes two different weekend groups of roughly 120 cartoonists each.
This was my second “Salon,” last year I went with our knuckle-dragging, conservative, “Tea Party” cartoonist, Eric Allie, who was a strange beast to the French. This year I went with three liberal cartoonists, Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant for three days of open bar and schmoozing with our international colleagues.
Here I am with my Cagle Cartoons colleagues, dubbed “Cagle Cowboys”, from left, Josette, Pat Bagley, Me, Bob Englehart and Steve Sack below.
My festival friends tell me that a cow is usually a placid animal, but sometimes the cow will get annoyed and give a swift, painful kick as a surprise to an unlucky bystander; this contributes to the idea that the cow is a little sneaky, nasty and unpredictable. The “Prix de l’humor Vache,” the grand prize they gave me, is described as an award for “caustic humor.” “Humor Vache” (funny cow) rhymes with “Amour Vache” (love cow, or more accurately “rough love”) a French idiom for a love affair that is nasty, consisting of harsh words and arguments. In France, to refer to someone as a “vache” (cow) is a little bit nasty. In contrast, on the first Saturday of the Salon, they give out the “Humor Tendre” (Tender Humor) award, which is a sheep, given to a sweet cartoonist such as a children’s book illustrator.
The Limoges area is proud of their cows, which are raised for beef and are all a warm brown color. The cow is the symbol and mascot of the Salon. Every year, the “Prix de l’humor Vache” cow is named “Josette” and is actually given to the winning cartoonist. At the ceremony, the mayor of St. Just, Gerard Vandenbroucke, awarded Limoges porcelain cows to my three American compatriots, dubbing them “Cagle’s cowboys.” Bob, Pat and Steve, who can also claim to have won cows (although, not real cows) took their little cows around to all the other cartoonists at the Salon to sign; it was charming.
Typically, the winning cartoonist is expected to take a cash award (I still don’t know how much) in lieu of actually taking delivery of the real Josette, who would be difficult to check on a plane and would likely be an unpleasant roommate in my tiny, Nashville apartment. But, they make it clear that the cartoonist really won a cow and could actually take the cow if he or she chooses to, and there are stories of cartoonists in past years choosing to take the cow. I’m told that are some amusing movies of a past winner taking his cow to Paris, trying to bring the cow on the Metro, and taking the cow up the Eiffel Tower. If anyone can find these movies online, I’d love to take a look.
Part of winning the grand prize cow is the obligation to do the art for the poster for the next Salon. The poster this year featured a lovely Degas-like ballerina cow. The festival people then dress a cow sculpture, in the entry to the museum, to match the cow on the poster. My plan is to give the cow on next year’s poster a very elaborate costume that will be a unique challenge for a St. Just volunteer to create for the cow statue. Right now, I’m thinking of doing the poster cow as Marie Antoinette with a huge, elaborate, flowing gown.
Here’s Bob Englehart with the cow statue at the entrance to the exhibition. The cow is dressed to match the poster which is a ballerina this year. Next year I’ll be doing the poster and I plan to put the cow in a very elaborate costume that will be a challenge for St. Just’s volunteer seamstresses.
The whole event in St. Just is a lovely boost for our beleaguered editorial cartooning profession which is suffering in France as it is here and around the world with newspapers declining everywhere. I’d love to see some of the great French attitude about the value of editorial cartooning rub off on other parts of the world, like America, which treats cartooning as a second class art form. I can’t imagine a whole town in the USA choosing to build a municipal cartoon museum, opening their homes, and pitching together to cook dinner for hundreds of editorial cartoonists – and, of-course, a nine day open bar would be unthinkable in America.
From left to right, Bob Englehart, Stave Sack, St. Just’s Mayor Gerard Vandenbroucke in the red shirt, me holding my “Prix de l’humor Vache” porcelain statue, Josette, and Pat Bagley in the lower right corner.
Below is a scan of the Limoges newspaper front page and interior story from the day after I had a cow.
I am saddened to write that Cartoonists Rights Network reports that Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan has been executed by the Syrian regime after a sham trial.
Click on the photo to see a larger view. That’s me sitting on the stage at the lower right. Such sad news for the cartooning community.
Just last week, at the Humor Salon in St Just, I joined a nice assembly and demonstration by world cartoonists in support of Akram – at the time we all thought Akram was imprisoned, but he had already been murdered. Akram’s crime was to make people laugh at the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad in his cartoons.
Truly tragic news. From the Cartoonists Rights Network report:
We’ve learned that on July 26, Akram Raslan and other prisoners of conscience including journalists, artists, singers and other intellectuals were secretly put on trial with no witnesses, no defense attorneys, no appeal, and no hope for justice. From unconfirmed and sketchy reports we learned that they were all condemned to life imprisonment.
Somehow, along the way to prison young 28-year-old Akram Raslan (and possibly others) was peeled off, taken out and executed. He is reported to be in a mass grave somewhere near Damascus. Our reliable but for obvious reasons anonymous sources further allege that the murder of Akram and other condemned prisoners was carried out by Mohammad Nassif Kheir Bek, currently the Deputy Vice President for Security Affairs in Syria. He has already been sanctioned by the European Union for the use of violence against protesters and the Syrian civil war.Akram Raslan was the winner of the Cartoonists Rights Network International, Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning for 2013. Past award winners have hailed from Malaysia, South Africa, Turkey, Palestine, Iran, and India, including last year’s winner, Ali Ferzat, also from Syria.Here in the United States we are experts in the knowledge that editorial cartooning is a dying art. In other areas of the world, however, it is an art that people die for.CRNI has been monitoring and assisting political cartoonists in trouble for the last 20 years. They are often victims of failing regimes stamping out criticism, drug cartels squashing investigations, corporate interest protecting money and political manipulation, and religious zealots stamping out thinking.About nine months ago young Akram Raslan was abducted from the offices of his newspaper and “disappeared” into the Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad’s prisons for the next six months. Readers might remember the case of Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat who in 2011 had his hands broken by the Syrian regime’s thugs. As they finished the job they told Ali that his broken hands would prevent him from disrespecting their master through his cartoons. Ali Ferzat was lucky. He survived the beating and eventually found safe haven in another Middle Eastern country. His revenge was to live to draw again.The hue and cry over this attack that grew from the world’s journalists and cartoonists must have made an impression on Bashir al-Assad. This time, a beating wasn’t enough. This time he decided to “disappear” the cartoonist permanently.
Here are a couple of Akram Raslan cartoons that likely angered his murderers, from the Cartoonists Movement site …
Here is my last week of cartoons. Today I’m headed out for the editorial cartooning convention in St. Just, France, with my brilliant cartoonist buddies, Steve Sack, Bob Englehart and Pat Bagley.
Here’s my most recent cartoon, with the GOP all tied up in a knot. They seem to be pretty dysfunctional right now, gumming up the government for everybody. (I was just drawing the heels of his shoes with the old fashioned nails and gripper on the back, I wasn’t think of his heels having happy faces. I guess I have to think of everything.)
I did a second GOP knot cartoon this week, which makes the point more about the split in the Republican party.
I’m trying to do more texture in my cartoons. I’ve been asked why I do the yellow backgrounds so often in my cartoons. I like the yellow because it is intense and light so that it doesn’t draw away from the line art.
I drew a THIRD Republican knot cartoon this week. This is my knotty Republican week. Here is the GOP hanging himself on the medical Caduseus (Obamacare).
Enough of knots. When Ted Cruz was doing his useless filibuster, reading from Dr. Seuss, and the other cartoonists were all making Dr. Seuss metaphors, I was rather more annoyed with Cruz, so I drew him as a monkey throwing his poop.
I know that there won’t be many newspapers that will print this (if any will at all). I guess that is one of the perks of being my own editor – I can draw whatever I want even if nobody wants to see it. This cartoon is actually a homage to the great, British cartoonist Steve Bell, who drew a famous image of George W. Bush in a similar pose. I’m a big Steve Bell fan.
The last one for the week is this Republican suicide bomber cartoon. I’m leaving for the convention in France at a difficult time, with all the wonderful, crazy politics going on now. I won’t be drawing new cartoons for a week or so, but when I come back I expect to have some pent up angst, ready for the drawing board.
Categories
Syria and Twerking!
Here are my new cartoons for the week! Even as Americans rage against their government and everyday injustices here at home, I think we have it pretty good. There are few places in the world where I could annoy politicians, in the way I do, with the impunity I enjoy with my rights as an American (yes, England, Australia, Canada, France, some other places) but, by and large, even though I have nothing good to say in my cartoons, I’m in a good place in the USA, and I appreciate that.
All the news is the run up to war with Syria – except that we had a charming interruption with Miley Cyrus and her twerking. I may draw another Miley cartoon – she is a gift to cartoonists.
The next one is a little trite, but accurate, I think. There are no good guys in Syria, and I’m not sure it is a bad thing if Assad wins his civil war over the other devils. Presidents always feel the need to meddle in these things. It is a presidential disease.
Here’s my most recent one, with Obama ready to take a blood bath. There have been so many cartoon about Syria and blood, I had to join in.
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Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville!
Here I sit in my new Nashville, Tennessee apartment, trying out a new restaurant for every meal, and finally drawing cartoons. I finished my second cartoon in Nashville today – a busy, crowd scene cartoon about Obama and foreign aid to Egypt. Here is my rough pencil sketch.
I drew this first with a light, hard, #5 pencil to get the people in the crowd into the right composition, so they are interacting with each other, have expressive body language, their faces aren’t obscured, the feet and arms are on right … all those details need to be thought through for each figure; better to do it in a sketch than on the fly in in finished art. The line art is below. I debated whether to go with just line for the black and white version that most people see in the newspaper.
Here is the gray-scale version. I thought it read a bit better with tone. I do the gray-scale separately. It isn’t just a gray version of the color cartoon.
I usually avoid doing crowd scenes. When I was an illustrator, I used to do a lot of crowd scenes. I think art directors would sit in a brainstorming meeting and come up with a list of too many things that they needed to put in an ad – so they would call a cartoonist to jam it all into one piece of art. Cartoonists get these jobs because the lists are too long, so the art has to be crazy. In fact, crowd scenes are usually not very effective compositions. The most effective compositions show powerful character and expression, which is better done with large figures and faces. With too many little figures in a crowd, the power of the expressions and body language are lost to tiny details. That said, I hate to admit that sometimes a concept calls for a crowd scene.
Here’s the color cartoon …
This one suffers from low resolution on the web, and will look much better in print, with crisp lines and texture in the tiny characters. Here is a detail.
One funny thing about cartoon crowd scenes; when readers send me unsolicited ideas for cartoons, the ideas are almost always for crowd scenes. The reader wants to say so much in his cartoon idea, that he comes up with a list of junk to include, just like the sloppy advertising art directors. Some ideas I get start with, “draw an army on the left, and another army on the right …” or the reader will write, “fill the sky with helicopters …” Not only am I too lazy for this, all the tiny details would be ineffective in the composition, and the cartoon would be lousy. For people who think in words, not images, these list-cartoons make perfect sense; to cartoonists, they are nonsense.
The previous cartoon is another Egypt/Arab Spring drawing. Here’s the rough pencil sketch. Notice that I drew Obama too low and made a note to move him up. I make lots of mistakes. Mistakes are easy to fix. Better to make lots of mistakes and have no fear of mistakes – at least in cartoons. I wouldn’t give that advice to my dentist.
Here is the line art version that most people will see in the newspapers. No gray version for this one. I like to keep them as line art if possible – there is something more elegant about not having to rely on tone.
And here is the color …
This cartoon is similar to one I drew a week earlier, with Obama and the Republicans. I like the yellow ochre texture background for dirty fighting scenes.
Obama doesn’t actually wear pinstripe suits. He wears plain black and blue suits, which are no fun to draw. So I take some artistic license. This recent Detroit-in-the-toilet cartoon also uses the yellow ochre, grungy theme that I’m fond of right now.
Another recent one I neglected to post is this one about the chilly relations with Russia – not much of a cartoon, just an illustration of chilly relations.
Sorry, with the move to Nashville I’ve fallen behind. I’ll catch up soon.
Nashville is starting to grow on me. I’ll get used to it soon – when it cools off and the humidity goes down.
Categories
Cagle in Nashville
I’ve been off the grid for a few days, driving my car to Nashville, Tennessee, which is a pretty foreign place. I’m struggling to set up my apartment here. My wife got a teaching job at Vanderbilt University and I’m coming along as a good spouse. I can draw cartoons anywhere. Here are some first reactions to Nashville …
The newspaper, Gannett’s “The Tennessean” is little, light and slight – like a ghost of what it surely once was. I can crumple the whole newspaper into a little ball with one hand. I saw bigger, thicker, healthier looking newspapers in smaller towns on the drive out. On newstands I see an altie paper called, “The City Paper” with a black front cover and reversed type displaying the headline “Why Nashville Needs Newspapers.” I arrived for “The City Paper’s” angst-filled last issue as they are going out of business.
I’m in a giant apartment building in “Germantown” which is near downtown, and seems to be newly gentrified with yuppies and lots of construction of other, giant apartment buildings like mine. There are plenty of payday loan/check cashing stores, bail bondsmen, fast food fried chicken and a dearth of supermarkets here, so the gentrification has a way to go. I guess it’s fine.
My apartment has a view of a truck yard with rusty roofs and burly men who work very hard washing and loading heavy construction equipment onto trucks. It is a view I would have enjoyed when I was five years old.
This is the view of the truck yard from my apartment window. Click and you can see all the details.
I also have a view of impressive thunderstorms, which seem to pass through here every day. As I write this, there are booms of thunder. The humidity is fantastic; I feel like I’m swimming everywhere. And the plants are all healthy. Even the weeds that battle with the concrete and asphalt are a healthy, bright green. When the zombie apocalypse comes, the plants will claim Nashville back from the concrete in just a few months.
In California, the weeds look unhealthy. When I neglect my lawn in California, it turns into a blotchy beige. Here, when people don’t tend their lawns, the lawns just get bigger and bushier and even more bright green. This place really wants to grow. I’ve read that this is the worst place in America for hay fever.
I’ve spent my life as an urbanite living around New York or Southern California, so there is some culture shock. People here are unusually friendly. There seems to be a lot of smokers here. There are certainly a lot more trucks and ads for gun shows. Everyone wants to recommend restaurants to us, and the recommended restaurants are really quite good.
There is a music theme to this place, with guitar logos everywhere. There’s a huge, ugly, convention center that looks like it is styled after a colossal guitar. The music is a part of the culture that I don’t really understand or appreciate, but I can ignore the music. I guess I can ignore the truck yard too. It is harder to ignore the fried chicken.
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.