Cartoon for the Sep 25, 2008 PRESS

One of the things I love to do is to use politicians own words against them. All of what Hoover is saying here is from two different McCain quotes. Like everyone else, I'm scared of a new Great Depression. Syndicates DEFINITELY won't be hiring cartoonists, and schools won't be needing Art teachers.
Here is how it will look in black and white when they run it in the Mapleton PRESS next week. And below is the original caricature from my sketchbook.

And in case anyone wants to save this sign and send it to all your Republican friends or turn it into a bumper sticker or post it on your MySpace of FaceBook-

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.

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.

The Legacy

I love this cartoon. Can cartoons make their Daddies proud? Below are some of the sketches I did. You can't believe how hard this thing was to draw and finally put together.

Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa's 5th District strike's again!

Last night on the local news, my idiot Congressman ACTUALLY said pretty much just what I wrote above about Barack Obama. I was so incensed that I HAD to draw this cartoon. Of course, due to plumbing disasters, we're temporally living with my in-laws while our home undergoes repairs, so I am without PhotoShop till I go back to school on Monday, so I'm posting it pretty raw. If I use it for the PRESS for March 20, I'll obviously rework it some- but then the incident will also be 2 weeks old, so who knows if I will or not.

Read more about this dweeb at http://www.kingwatch.org

Hawk & Dove

Here's my cartoon for the Feb. 7 Mapleton PRESS. I wish Anderson Cooper would've asked a question that addressed this issue.


Dr. Ron Paul,; old guy courting the youth vote. Dudes, libertarianism is not as cool as anarchy is, and anarchy is only cool if your angry, stoned, or stupid. On the other hand, I like his stance on Iraq.

DONG DONG! (just like on Law & Order)

You would not believe how hard Fred Thompson is to draw. I wound up stretching his head out a little in PhotoShop. But man, you gotta admit that his wife is a hottie!
Some politicians are harder to draw than others. Top left; Tried upside down, Top right; Starting with the ear and working from the outside of the head to the inside, Bottom left; Tried doing the old draw an oval with an eye axis and a prime-meridian first... And finally Bottom right; started with an eye and worked from the inside-to the out.

I think I still need to work on a caricature though, and exaggerate either his sleepy eyes or forehead instead of his ears or nose. Truly, he'd make a really good hound dog, maybe a basset hound.

So when I got my drawing into PhotoShop, I did go ahead and "warp" his head a little bit. Over all, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Roid Monster

So, first I drew each of the baseball legends. Ruth as a little frumpy and tubby, Aaron as pretty much a nice guy, and Barry -as Bob Costas recently described him, "super-human."
Next, I put them together in PhotoShop and saved it as a TIFF to use in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and Schleswig LEADER.

Finally, I went back to PhotoShop and added color so that it would be a little more fun on by blog and other webpages. Then I emailed it to my favorite baseball fans. Who no doubt, will chastise me because I used the Atlanta Brave's logo rather than the Milwaukee Brave's logo and I got the Giant's uniform all wrong. But hey, like I said on my column blog, if he played for Oakland, he'd be green like the Incredible Hulk that he is.

Gulliver's travels

Here is my comic for the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and Schleswig Leader for July 5, 2007

And by the way, here's the sketchbook page that I originally scanned into PhotoShop

The Tantrum

This week, I took so dang long to create my cartoon that I've decided to show you step-by-step what the process is like.First, I drew the President as a little kid throwing a tantrum. This is actually my second try. His face was too fat and the mouth just didn't look. His eyes were open too and frankly, he just looked possessed!
Next, I drew the sandbox. Okay, I'll confess, I pretty much traced some piece of clip art, but I made the shovel bigger and I changed the truck into a tank.
Then, I drew the "Mom & Dad," Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Ried. I started with him first and was a little worried that he looked too much like former Defense Secretary Rumsfield. In the end, they remind me a lot of Grant Wood's Farmer & daughter in "American Gothic." Of course, he always did- he's just too square to represent Las Vegas. As you can see, I had a little trouble with Madam Speaker's hair. For one thing, she has it fixed different in different photos. I also had some trouble finishing her body. She's a very lovely woman, but being in her sixties, I didn't want to overdo her femininity. I think I probably did over do the mascara and the smile, but maybe that will make my Republican readers happy. I had meant to give her a forced grin like June Cleaver when she's really lost her patience with the Beaver, instead it's bordering on clownish. This is when I pretty much decided to put the parents in the foreground, so I could cut off most of their bodies.
I love how this turned out. I wanted to show a child's scream and I knew that neither my pen or any computer font would do it. I thought about a Sharpie marker, but I decided that that would be too smooth. So, I went with a charcoal pencil. PERFECT.
Believe me, this is about as good as MY handwriting gets.
Oops! I can't believe I forgot to just draw a baloon around that. Oops! I hate how I never remember how to spell "b-a-l-l-o-o-n."

Spasms

I know that the real prominent feature on the Secretary is the gap in her teeth, but I think she has mean lookin' eyes- so that's what I went with. Here's the original sketch-

Corollary to the First Amendment

Above is a cleaned up version, like it may have appeared in 'the Shadow,' and below is a raw scan with non-repo blue and wax and age discoloration and the whole 9 yards.
Back when I was editor of my high school paper, the Supreme Court ruled on the Hazelwood case declaring that the principle of a Missouri high school was essentially the publisher of the student newspaper and therefore entitled to censor content.