Another one I drew in Tucson. The way the Republicans played ot the media on their first convention day was pretty funny. I especially liked Bush sitting at a table with bottled water... I think we need a new verb for it... maybe gustaving?

Fun drawing a militant bear. I was going to make the obvious point of Russia being ten-times bigger than Georgia, but this seemed obvious. I thought the timing of the attack (attack - counter-attack?) was more interesting...

A generic cartoon, that likely could have been drawn anytime in the last three years... I notice a lot of cartoonists throw these into the mix, and some seeme to specialize in them (Clay Bennet)... The news lately has been full of natural disasters and it is hard to find something to poke fun of. A few cartoonist did manage to capture the irony of existence when tens of thousands of people are dying in other parts of the world. Mike Keefe did a nice one of a Job-like guy pleading to nature (5/15 at http://www.intoon.com/index.cfm)... a little to direct for me, but at least the guy made an effort. Another cartoon, can't remember who drew it, had a picture of the earth with a bunch of band-aids, which I thought was sort of clever.

I'm starting to like the bold, brush tip now... it takes a little more prudence, but I like the effects when it is used sparingly (used in Uncle Sam's jacket above). I'm avoiding doing the PS masks until I get better control of my own shading. I ordered some Artlines, which has been my favorite pens so far, and will dump the Fabers as soon as they come in.

Yay.. I have a bunch of new pens to test out.... The above was done with Artline's "Drawing System." The sizes range from 0.1 to 0.9 (mm?). The finer points are really fun to draw with. They do have increased friction (like dragging a pin across the paper), but they also allow me to enter into areas I was previously more tenative to enter (mainly places on the face or smaller, detailed objects). I did this drawing kind of quick, using four different pens. I'll stick with these and see if I get the hang of them...

I ordered three different sets of illustrating pens from Dick Blicks website.... All look pretty nice with a variety of point sizes. I'm eager to start drawing with them. In the mean time, I will stick with the Uniballs (this is how I drew the above).

Had no time to draw this week. I've been itching to do a Castro drawing because I knew it would be fun. By the time I was ready to draw, I noticed every political cartoonist had already done their "Castro retires" cartoons.... many the same. Showing cigars fading or both Fidel and Raul in wheel chairs. Most of them pretty stupid. Not that mine is any better... I gave up on being too creative, and just tried to get back into drawing.