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Bully

Been talking to 4th, 5th, and 7th graders about complimentary colors and made this oil pastel painting. We need a trust-buster like TR again.

Tortured souls

Talking to 4th, 5th, & 7th graders about Vincent Van Gogh-Go.

• Epilepsy
  
• Manic-Depressive
• ADHD
• Anger Management problems
  
• No real job
• Only sold ONE painting his whole career
  
• Lead poisoning (Cadmium, cobalt, mercury, whatever other ingredients in those paints he kept eating)
• His brother Theo had to pay Gauguin to be his friend
• Cuts his ear off and sends it to his ex girlfriend (a hooker)

Poor guy, if only he had had some Trieptal, some Redilin and some Prozac. And you thought YOU had problems.

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That's Infotainment

Non-issues, non-policy, trivia and hearsay... If I didn't know it was Disney/ABC, I'd have thought it was Fox News. I never have had much use for Charlie Gibson anyway.

About the process

Here is the black and white version that they run in the newspaper.
This week what I had to do was to make copies of my figures in a new layer in Photoshop, use then I used the curves tool to make them into silhouettes. Next, as you see, I hit Ctrl-T to select each one, and went to Edit>Transform to skew them and shear them into reflections/shadows on the surface of the tar.

Of course, the Republicans aren't doomed due to our dependance on oil, because stupid Hillary has "bloodied-up" Obama sufficiently enough to ensure a McCain victory. But whatchyagonnado? Keep on fighting the good fight, I guess.

Sketchbook peek

I based next week's cartoon for the PRESS on a Reuter's photo of speaking at a news conference on the second day of the North American Leaders Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 22., and of course, a publicity shot of the La Brea Tar Pits in beautiful, downtown Burbank.

I still can't believe he denied that we're in a recession and then had the nerve to say it in New Orleans of all places! Then again, this is the guy who was genuinely flabbergasted when a reporter asked him about gas prices climbing to $4/gal. a couple of weeks ago!

Art students watching me do the caricature asked me if I meant to make fun of him, because the ears were kind of big. "Yeah..." I said, "that's kind of the point of an editorial cartoon." I really did try to explain it without sounding condescending because I think they really thought that I was trying hard to do a realistic drawing, but messing up. Sometimes satire is lost on seventh graders.

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At 'Dog & Pony Shows' like this, who's the dog and who's the pony?

Happy 5th anniversary, Warhawks! Happy 4,000 US dead.
Where's Admiral Fallon? Why didn't they want to have him testify?
Come to think of it, why not have Condaleeza Rice and Presidents Cheney and Bush testify? Obviously, we can't seriously talk about getting out in an election year.
The plan, tone things down between August and the election, with hopes that it will help McCain. Then, leave it for the next guy (or gal) to clean up.

New logo

So here is my beautiful new logo for my freelancing designer/photographer/cartoonist business (which hasn't really made me much money yet, but what the heck)!

I've had several people try to encourage me to offer to do Senior Portraits this summer. I realize that it's not the best business model to just post all my cartoons here on this blog and only get paid by one small town newspaper, but I' ll get my butt in gear here and try to send some cover letters and stacks of examples out eventually. School is busy, life is busy, there's still a mountain of neurosis's to overcome...

Some "non-profit" prophets could profit from reading their Bibles more closely

I love drawing Senator Chuck Grassley. We may not see eye to eye on all things political, but we seem to agree theologically. But more importantly to a cartoonist, he reminds me of an ancient tortoise, maybe Chester Turtle from the Bugs Bunny cartoons- slow and deliberate, with real heavy eyelids and a great turkey waddle of a neck.

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Hangin out

Here's a picture of my fellow art teacher, Grant Wood, and I hanging out near his studio in Cedar Rapids. We were painting placid scenes of Iowa prairies when he needed a smoke break. Me, I don't smoke, but I do like to lean against trees in Cedar Rapids.

The jilted lover threatens her ex

Sketchbook

Here's the grayscale version that will run in the PRESS. Below is a composite of the five sketchbook pages that went into the cartoon, and a picture I took of myself shooting myself in the head with a highlighter in order to visualize what taking a hostage might look like.

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