SELL THE HOUSE: TOP TEN CARTOONS OF THE WEEK
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Anothony Weiner INFINITY
I just finished my new Anthony Weiner cartoon, “Weiner FOREVER” and I thought I should give some explanation. That’s my rough sketch at the right. The color version is below. I duplicated the infinite number of little Weiners in Photohop.
Weiner is an atrocious, self-absorbed nut-case, but he is a gift to cartoonists. We have a wonderful collection of Weiner cartoons here – take a look!
I have to credit my ultra-right-wing cartoonist buddy, Sean Delonas with the Weiner as a little dick idea, from his cartoon (below). I thought the never-ending/infinity aspect to my cartoon was different enough to justify a new cartoon, but I have to acknowledge that I ripped Sean off.
Thanks Sean!
Here’s Sean’s cartoon that I ripped off.
Here’s a Cagle/Weiner oldie.
Here’s my weekly batch of new cartoons. The first one is my “Stand Your Ground” cartoon. Any cartoon about guns gets a lot of crazy response – as this one did. People are such nuts. Here is the rough pencil sketch.
Next I did the finished line art. I dragged three different speech balloons into position in a layer in Photoshop, rather than actually drawing all the speech balloons.
I had mixed feelings about whether to leave it as line art for the black and white version. There is something elegant about line art with no tone – but I couldn’t make up my mind, so I did a gray version, and I made both versions available to the syndication customers. Interestingly, half of the editors downloaded the line version, and half went for the gray version. Go figure.
Here it is in color. I added some subtle texture to the ground.
Here is how it looked the next day in my local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Lots of cartoonists were drawing cartoons that were critical of the media attention paid to the new baby future king of England. I thought I would go with cute rather than critical. I don’t have any angry feelings about this subject. Cute is fine with me. Here is the line art that most people will see in the newspaper.
And here’s the color. I’m trying to do more color that looks like I’m using a sponge, as I used to do back in the days when i painted with gouache.
We almost saw the “Nuclear Option” happen in the Senate, when Senator Harry Reid threatened to get rid of the filibuster rules that Republicans were using to block Obama nominees. There was a compromise, but I suspect we’ll see this Nuclear Option thing happen again soon. Here’s the gray version, with sponge texture (the line art was too spare on this one, it needed gray tone).
Yes, that’s a very Herblockian “Mr. A-Bomb.” Gotta love Herblock. Here’s the color version, with spongy texture.
Most of the country had a crazy heat wave last week, which is always a good excuse for a trite, Global Warming cartoon. This one was fun to draw, and I went with the line art – no gray tone for the black and white version of this one.
And here’s the color version …
That’s it! I think I’ll draw Detroit tomorrow.
Congress is busy working on leaving “No Child Left Behind” behind. Teachers hate that “teaching to the test” stuff, so I drew this today.
The Bush era law mandated that all school kids should be reading and doing math at their grade level by now – well, that won’t happen – the solution? Throw out the law requiring such crazy stuff. But keep all the crazy testing. hmm. I draw something like this every couple of years when this topic gets hot, as it does bi-annually. Here’s a nice one on standardized testing and employment that I drew back in 2007.
Things don’t change much. President Bush just loved the standardized testing. I drew this when “No Child Left Behind” passed …
Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, love standardized testing just as much as George W. Bush.
We’ll surely get rid of “No Child Left Behind” but we won’t be rid of standardized testing. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I suppose I’ll draw this again in a couple of years.
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Zimmerman, Arab Spring and Obamacare!
Here is my weekly post on my new cartoons. My most recent cartoon, on George Zimmerman’s acquittal, was a quickie. Here is my rough sketch – I took a scan of the Community Chest Get Out of Jail Free card, made it light in a print out, and did a rough sketch on top.
Then I dropped in the color. I had it all done in ten minutes, a new record for me. If only all of the cartoons were so quick and easy. Usually I muddle and fiddle for a long time with each cartoon. This one got a lot of attention in social media because it was fast.
The previous cartoon was Obama in the Arab Spring bathtub, with lots of dangerous appliances. Don’t stick a fork in the toaster! Here is the rough sketch – this one took some muddle and fiddle time to get the position and appliances to be the way I wanted them.
Then I did the finished line art, and added a bit of gray to make it read a bit more clearly. The black and white image is what more readers see in the newspapers.
And here is the color that you see on our site, and the newspapers that print in color. I had fun with this cartoon.
The previous cartoon was about the one year postponement in the employer mandate on Obamacare. Republicans “jumped on this” as evidence of Obamacare’s “failure” and “chaos.” Here is the rough sketch.
… And here is the line art, that most people will see in the newspapers that print black and white. I always like to black and white version better. There is something more elegant about black and white. Readers always tell me that color is better.
And here is the color. I did this one a little differently, with quick, transparent colors. I think I’ll probably do messier color like this going forward. I really like Pat Bagley’s sponge texture – that’s the next thing I’ll try.
POSTSCRIPT: Well, after writing that, I couldn’t get the sponge thing out of my head and I added a subtle bit of Bagley texture to the background. I should do more of that. And more boldly. I’m timid starting out. Here’s the revised version, not too different, but nicely textural.
Here’s a detail from the revised version.
