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Cartoons

GOP and Civil Servant Pensions

GOP and Civil Servant Pensions Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Pig, Elephant, Republican, Civil Servants, Wall Street, Pensions, budget, taxes, spending, shoe, stomp, pocket, cigar

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Cartoons

Drowning Tax

Drowning Tax Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Pig,Rich,Middle Class,anvil,drown,floatie,donkey,elephant,democrat,republican

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Cartoons

Chasing Wall Street

Chasing Wall Street Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Pig, donkey, elephant, Wall Street, business, finincial reform, pitchforks, torches, republicans, democrats, Goldman Sachs

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Cartoons

Deep Pockets on Wall Street

Deep Pockets on Wall Street Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Donkey, Jack Ass, , elephant, republican, democrat, pig, financial regulation, Obama, Congress

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Cartoons

Wall Street Walks Obama

Wall Street Walks Obama © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,wall street,banks,dog,Barack Obama,pig,banker,goldman sachs,financial reform

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Blog

More “How to Draw Like Daryl”

People seem to like it when I show my sloppy drawing process, so here it is again with my last three cartoons.

The most recent cartoon has Obama in the pocket of greedy bankers.  I draw with a hard pencil fairly quickly on 11″x17″ paper.  I like a hard pencil because it encourages me not to render and get bogged down in details.  I first thought I would have Obama shaking his fist, and that didn’t work – in fact, my first Obama attempt didn’t look good at all and I drew over it with a sharpie marker (which is quicker than erasing).

Next I did the finished line art, in pencil on a piece of vellum over the rough sketch.  The black and white line art is how most people see the cartoon in the newspaper.  One thing I notice with student cartoonists that that they shy away from using a lot of black.  Heavy blacks stand out on the page and are lots of fun – don’t be afraid of black.

Then I color the image in with Photoshop, with the black lines as a layer over the color layer.  This is for the few newspapers that print color on their op-ed pages and for the web.  I try to keep my colors bright and simple – when I do anything with textures or colors that aren’t clean and bright, I get complaints from editors who say the cartoons look muddy when they are printed.  Newspapers have lousy printing and the cartoons have to work for the worst of them.

I drew the cartoon below when Scott Brown won the senate seat in Massachusetts – an unpleasant day for Obama and the Democrats.  The first decision I had to make was whether to draw Obama or a Dem donkey under the Massachusetts rain cloud – either would be fine, but since Obama’s agenda was taking a hit, and I like to bash Obama, I went with the president.  Here’s the rough sketch.  I printed out a map of Massachusetts that I found on the web and taped it to the paper.

Then I traced it with pencil on vellum, scanned at high contrast so it looks like I drew it in ink.  This is what most people see in the newspaper.

And here is the color version from our site.

This last one, from last week, is bashing the media in Haiti.  I wasn’t happy with the vultures in my rough sketch, and I drew over them in purple Sharpie Marker, quick and dirty.  Nobody is supposed to see this.

Then I trace it nicely on vellum and scan as line for the newspapers.

And I color it in Photoshop …

Categories
Cartoons

Obama vs the Bad Bankers

Obama vs the Bad Bankers  Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Barack Obama, banks, bankers, Wall Street, finance, economy, tarp, pig, greed, pocket, fight, regulation

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Blog

How to Draw an Ugly Health Plan and Make it Pretty

I know how you all like to see my sketches and I get lots of requests to explain my cartoons, so here is the latest one.

The goal with this one was to comment on the speculation that the Democrats would use sentiment about Teddy Kennedy’s death to push health care legislation, possibly by attaching Kennedy’s name to the bill.  I started by making the health care character a generic ugly creature, but it occurred to me that a warthog is a better choice, because a warthog is understood to be ugly and it has the aspect of being a pig, to signify waste. Making the health plan a female is a little sexist, I suppose.  I think of a woman wanting her photo to look pretty, so making the wart hog a female made the gag work a little better for me.

Next I had to deal with the mask that actually makes the warthog pretty, and I thought that using a photo of Kennedy rather than drawing his face made the cartoon more interesting.  The mask was a little tricky because it had to have some perspective and Kennedy’s face is defined by its width, so squishing it makes it look less Kennedylike.  I found this photo that seems to be everywhere, and it looks pretty good, even squished, so that was the first hurdle to cross.  Nice photo, I like his eyes.

I did my usual quick pencil sketch.  The donkey didn’t look good so I drew a new one on top with a Sharpie marker.  That usually works for me; if I don’t like what I do after a Sharpie marker I’ll start over.  Here’s the sketch:

After that, I drew the finished line art on a vellum overlay.  In Photoshop I squashed the Kennedy photo into the sign, and drew outlines around it with a wider facing edge to make it look more two dimensional.  And I added gray tone to the rest of the drawing, so it would live in the same world as the photo.

That’s how to draw an ugly health plan, and make it pretty.

Categories
Cartoons

Wall Street Bailout Pig

Wall Street Bailout Pig © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Pig, Uncle Sam, Wall Street, bailout, money, President bush

Categories
Cartoons

Palin Pig Pit Bull

Palin Pig Pit Bull © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Sarah Palin,pig,lipstick,pit bull,dog,governor,campaign 2008,preidential,vice president,vice presidential