Iran, NASA, Melania and Trump! Top ten cartoons of the week
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Police Get Out of Jail Free
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The National Conversation About Race
We have a great collection of cartoons about the Grand Jury decision not to indict policeman, Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri – come take a look!
Here’s the rough sketch for my “National Conversation About Race” cartoon.
I draw pretty quick and messy in pencil on 11″x17″ tab size paper. Then I trace it neatly for the line art which most people see in the newspaper.
And here’s the color version for the Web and newspapers that print in color.
Somehow I think we’ll be drawing cartoons on this topic for quite some time.
Here is how the cartoon looks this morning in my local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.
So dark! I anticipate that all of my cartoons will darken when printed, but somehow I’m always surprised by how dark they get.
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National Conversation About Race
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Variations on Ferguson Protests
I hate drawing cartoons about crime; I don’t feel like I have an opinion that is worth drawing – crime is bad, police violence is bad, victims are to be grieved – nothing really for me to draw that says more. With so many young black men killed by police in America, it is disappointing that the case that catches the public and media attention isn’t more clear cut, without conflicting evidence, with a more sympathetic victim and a police officer who is clearly guilty. It would seem that there are plenty of better cases to choose to rally behind, but the issue is saddled with the randomness of the media and what catches fire with the public. I can always draw a cartoon about the media, and how they are drawn to violence, so I went with that.
Here’s a detail in black and white, what most people will see in the newspapers.
Then I got to thinking that the cartoon was too wide and complex, and it really didn’t need the media – just the juxtaposition of the protestors and the opportunistic thieves was enough. I cut the cartoon back to this …
This one makes a different point without the media in the middle. I like that it is simple and a more standard size that newspapers will likely print bigger. Sometimes I get too baroque and complex when I should just pare it down.
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Protesters and Opportunists
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Ferguson Media Priority
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Ferguson Media Priority
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Bill Cosby RIP
Readers love celebrity obituary cartoons, and until now I’ve waited for the celebrity to die before I drew an obit cartoon. Bill Cosby seemed like the perfect opportunity to make an exception to that rule.
Drawing celebrities is easier now than in the old days. I used to struggle to build a “morgue” of photos of everyone I might have to draw on short notice. I had a lot of file drawers dedicated to scraps of paper with little photos of everyone who might find their way into a cartoon. Those days are over, now every cartoonists simply goes to Google, does an image search and a page full of wonderful photo scrap comes up. Easy research!
In fact, since everyone does the same research now, I’ve noticed how common it is for caricatures to resemble one another. Here’s a recent Bill Cosby cartoon by my buddy, Taylor Jones.
With a Google Images search it usually turns out that one photo is better than all the others – and cartoonists often pick out the same one to work from. Here’s a link to the Cosby photo from the Google Images search.
Taylor’s cartoon is better than mine; Taylor wins. But I have the satisfaction of making Cosby go to Hell.
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Bill Cosby
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Bill Cosby
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Worms in the Common Core
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Ferguson Grand Jury Time Bomb
