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Blog Syndicate

Marie Antoinette

The riots in France have been fascinating to watch. The “Giletes Jaunes” (Yellow Vest) protests were triggered by increases in gasoline taxes that French President Emmanuel Macron implemented to discourage people from driving, as part of his battle against Climate Change. The protest movement sees Macron, a rich, former investment banker, as an aloof elite. Those yellow vesters can go “eat cake.”

I love those crazy, historic, giant French hair-doos with depictions of ships and birds and crazy, coiffed, exotic stuff.

Poor and rural “Gilets Jaunes” who must drive to work, donned the yellow vests that they are required by law to keep in their cars for roadside emergencies, as a theme for their protests against Macron and the rich elite that they see as out of touch with their reality.  Here’s a class warfare cartoon by my buddy Robert Rousso, the dean of the French cartoonists (“jaune” or yellow, rhymes with “Jones” in French.)

Marie Antoinette is a great cartoon cliché. Here’s a “TRUE!” cartoon I drew back in 1995. This really is true.

Here’s Marie Antoinette as a cow, in a poster I drew for the Press Cartoon Festival in St Just le Martel, France, side by side with a cow sculpture that festival organizer, Blanche Vandenbroucke, dressed to match my poster. I think Blanche did an impressive job!

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Sex 2!

Another new collection of a dozen of my old TRUE cartoons about SEX! Take a look below!

  

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Life Stuff!

This new batch of my old TRUE cartoons is about our crazy lifestyles here in America. Things in our lives haven’t changed much since I drew these – except for the televisions. And phones.

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Crazy Stuff 4!

Here’s a new batch of my old TRUE cartoons. This first one is a self-portrait of younger me, sitting on the toilet, talking on my land-line rotary phone. Looking at the old True cartoons makes me feel young again, until I notice details that make me feel old.

 

 

 

 

 

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Kids 2!

Here’s another batch of TRUE cartoons with facts about KIDS!

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Kids!

Here’s another batch of TRUE cartoons about KIDS!

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Health Statistics 1!

Here’s batch of my TRUE! cartoons, on the subject of Health Statistics!

 

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Blog Syndicate

El Diablo Volkswagen

Here’s my Volkswagen cartoon – this is a simple “name-calling” cartoon; editorial cartooning in its purest form.

I thought about making a Volkswagen car into a devil, but I didn’t think that would be too easy to read, so I went with the logo, which is a little strange looking, but what the hell. And I included lots of hellish smoke. I notice the Yahtzee cartoon for this issue is a Volkswagen logo obscured with smoke, or with a little exhaust pipe and smoke.

My favorite so far is from Danish cartoonist Herbjorn Skogstad, who drew a guy doing a giant Volkswagen fart. I think it is the duty of editorial cartoonists to draw farts, poop, dogs and Statues of Liberty at every opportunity.

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Blog

Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville!

Here I sit in my new Nashville, Tennessee apartment, trying out a new restaurant for every meal, and finally drawing cartoons.  I finished my second cartoon in Nashville today – a busy, crowd scene cartoon about Obama and foreign aid to Egypt.  Here is my rough pencil sketch.
EgyptAidSketch600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

I drew this first with a light, hard, #5 pencil to get the people in the crowd into the right composition, so they are interacting with each other, have expressive body language, their faces aren’t obscured, the feet and arms are on right … all those details need to be thought through for each figure; better to do it in a sketch than on the fly in in finished art.   The line art is below.  I debated whether to go with just line for the black and white version that most people see in the newspaper.

136479 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

Here is the gray-scale version.  I thought it read a bit better with tone.  I do the gray-scale separately.  It isn’t just a gray version of the color cartoon.

136480 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

I usually avoid doing crowd scenes.  When I was an illustrator, I used to do a lot of crowd scenes.  I think art directors would sit in a brainstorming meeting and come up with a list of too many things that they needed to put in an ad – so they would call a cartoonist to jam it all into one piece of art.  Cartoonists get these jobs because the lists are too long, so the art has to be crazy. In fact, crowd scenes are usually not very effective compositions.  The most effective compositions show powerful character and expression, which is better done with large figures and faces.  With too many little figures in a crowd, the power of the expressions and body language are lost to tiny details.  That said, I hate to admit that sometimes a concept calls for a crowd scene.

Here’s the color cartoon …

136481 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

This one suffers from low resolution on the web, and will look much better in print, with crisp lines and texture in the tiny characters.  Here is a detail.

aiddetail Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

One funny thing about cartoon crowd scenes; when readers send me unsolicited ideas for cartoons, the ideas are almost always for crowd scenes.  The reader wants to say so much in his cartoon idea, that he comes up with a list of junk to include, just like the sloppy advertising art directors.  Some ideas I get start with, “draw an army on the left, and another army on the right …” or the reader will write, “fill the sky with helicopters …” Not only am I too lazy for this, all the tiny details would be ineffective in the composition, and the cartoon would be lousy.  For people who think in words, not images, these list-cartoons make perfect sense; to cartoonists, they are nonsense.

The previous cartoon is another Egypt/Arab Spring drawing.  Here’s the rough pencil sketch.  Notice that I drew Obama too low and made a note to move him up.  I make lots of mistakes.  Mistakes are easy to fix.  Better to make lots of mistakes and have no fear of mistakes – at least in cartoons.  I wouldn’t give that advice to my dentist.

AmericanSketch600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

Here is the line art version that most people will see in the newspapers.  No gray version for this one.  I like to keep them as line art if possible – there is something more elegant about not having to rely on tone.

136409 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

And here is the color …

136415 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

This cartoon is similar to one I drew a week earlier, with Obama and the Republicans.  I like the yellow ochre texture background for dirty fighting scenes.

135857 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

 

Obama doesn’t actually wear pinstripe suits.  He wears plain black and blue suits, which are no fun to draw.  So I take some artistic license.  This recent Detroit-in-the-toilet cartoon also uses the yellow ochre, grungy theme that I’m fond of right now.

136000 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

Another recent one I neglected to post is this one about the chilly relations with Russia – not much of a cartoon, just an illustration of chilly relations.

135924 600 Egypt, Obama, Putin, Detroit and Nashville! cartoons

Sorry, with the move to Nashville I’ve fallen behind.  I’ll catch up soon.

Nashville is starting to grow on me.  I’ll get used to it soon – when it cools off and the humidity goes down.

 

 

Detroit in the Toilet

136000 600 Detroit in the Toilet cartoons

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Cartoons

Are we intervening in Syria yet?

Are we intervening in Syria yet? © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,car,kids,children,neocons,Syria,Bashar Assad,GOP, republicans

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Blog

My Rising Gas Price Cartoons

With the cost of a gallon of gas inching closer and closer to $4, many economists worry that the pinch people are feeling at the pump will harm our current recovery.

The rising cost of gas is something that happens every year, but it seems to be getting worse. Gas prices have never been higher this time of the year than they are now, and we can expect even sharper increases at the pump because gas typically rises in March and April.

I’ve drawn lots of cartoons over the years about the rising cost of gas. Here are some of my favorites…