Obamacare Website
GOP Caduseus Nooseus
Government Go Boom
Obamacare Pull the Plug
Here are my new cartoons! The most recent one is about Obama’s response to the crisis in Syria. Drawing Arabs as dogs is deeply insulting – I suppose that just puts dogs onto cartoonists’ palettes of cliches. I may get some angry mail for this one. I’m annoyed by Obama’s worthless response to Syria, at the same time, I’m happy that Obama isn’t jumping in to chew it up in this Syrian dogfight when both sides look to be bad guys.
This one is a drawing of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He’s a pretty easy caricature, and I think I nailed him.
… still, I hate to put labels in cartoons – particularly when the label is to identify someone who is drawn with an identifiable caricature, something lousy cartoonists do when they can’t draw good caricatures. Sometimes I just can’t depend on the readers to know what the guy will look like and I have to put in a label – still I hate it, so I distributed a second version of this one without a label. I suppose this would work as an illustration for an op-ed piece about the turbulence in Turkey. He’s a fun guy to draw. I love the shape of his head. I also like his middle name – it sounds like something Paris Hilton’s dog would say.
This one is about the split in the Republican party on immigration Reform. I suppose we’ll see if any reform-candy comes out of that pinata next week.
The next one is a Muppet cartoon, with Cookie Monster the Republican enjoying all the White House scandals.
Regular readers here know that I worked for the Muppets for the first half of my career and I’m a big Muppet fan. I draw a Muppet themed cartoon about once a year – this is a good excuse to show a few more …
I drew this one back in the George W. Bush days when we were all talking about torture and water-boarding.
I once illustrated a whole childrens’ book about Elmo – who claims a permanent space in my brain – oh! I hear the voice! I drew the one below when we got the news about the CEO of Chick-fil-A opposing gay rights, and the Muppets spoke out against it and in favor of gay rights – makes me proud of my Muppet roots.
This one was when congress was threatening to cut funds to public broadcasting – and Sesame Street.
When the Sesame Street people decided to make Cookie Monster love vegetables, and made cookies a “sometimes food” I drew this one.
I drew this one when there was a scandal at Goldman Sachs, and it was revealed that greedy, Wall Street types derisively call their clients “Muppets.”
IRS Scandal and Obama
Texas Gov Perry Sympathy Card
Teas Gov Perry Sympathy Card
The Boston Bombing and the Gun Bill
The two big news stories this week were the Boston Marathon bombing and the sinking of the gun bill by Republicans in the Senate. Of-course, the gun bill got lost in the media focus on the Boston Bombing (we have a great collection of cartoons on the Boston Bombing here).
The problem with dominant news stories is that every cartoonist is drawing the same thing at the same time – why? Editors all want the same thing at the same time. Usually I like to steer a little different path then the cartoonist pack, because of supply and demand. There were just too many similar cartoons about the Boston Marathon Bombing this week, with bloody tennis shoes, bowed heads on statues, damaged Boston logos, symbolic metaphors breaking ribbons at finish lines – just what editors wanted, but too much of it for them to use. I tried to take a bit of a different tack with memorial candles, and I wanted to avoid drawing something bloody, still, I’m sure my cartoon didn’t get reprinted much because of oversupply. Here is the rough pencil sketch.
…and here is the black and white line art, that most people will see in the newspaper.
… and here is the color …
If I use colors in cartoons that are too dark, I get complaints from editors, so the color was a compromise. I’m not sure I’m happy with it. Oh well, it is a cartoon I was obligated to draw and the marketplace didn’t need – the story of my career.
The next cartoon was about the Republicans sinking the gun bill in the Senate. Republicans love their guns a bit too much – and that’s all that this cartoon says. Here is the rough sketch.
I found a photo of an assault rifle on Google and printed it out for my rough sketch. For a moment, I thought about Photoshopping the actual photo into the cartoon – it would be a jarring contrast to have the drawing of an elephant with what looks like a real, nasty, assault rifle photo – then I thought about how Bill Day tried that and was pilloried by this colleagues, and my good judgement got the better of me. Gotta watch out for those gun photos, they can get you labeled as a “plagiarist” and make you the wallflower at AAEC cartoonist parties.
Here is the black and white art …
and the color …
Ah! Love in the springtime!