Super quick one.... I really need more time.

It's been impossible to find time to draw the last few days. Leaf has been sick and we got dumped on with snow. I spent this morning shoveling. I scribbled the above cartoon together in less than an hour. Not good. I would love to find time to redo it.

As for the State of the Union, it was so benign, that I had a hard time thinking up something to draw. GW was all chummy at the end and it was really fascinating watching the cameras follow him as he signed autographs.

Half-way quick one... I would have liked to redrawn it, but eh.

Musharraf again... This guy and what he is dealing with in Pakistan is really unbelievable. There should be an additional big cat in the picture, and it should be the U.S.

Going through a lot of pens lately... I must find reusable ink that I like. Also I started creating a font. Hope to have it done by next week.

In sticking with the trend of drawing fun things, I decided to draw a stereotypical French guy. The French are always free game, right? Just like Americans...

With this story, I first thought about drawing the "rogue trader" who pulled off the scheme and adding details to the story.. but then figured, eh, it's much funner to draw a goofy looking French guy. The funniest thing I found about the story was that some media in Europe were blaming the market collapse on this fraud... this seemed a bit paranoid and ego-driven... and this is where I came up with the message of the cartoon.

Here are some I ideas I've had to make the cartoons message clearer:
(1) Make the symbols obvious. The message can be complex... but the symbols must not be ambiguous.
(2) Be funny... to do this, I think drawing what's "fun" helps. Also mulling over the quotes. Also, also, reading Matt Davies.
(3) Think up front about composition! Set up the power relationships and final message to be blatantly displayed in the illustration. The drawing must properly show the relationships between the symbols and ideas. I think I did fairly good job in the last cartoon (Uncle Sam and the mad dog soldier), but in others, I obviously failed (e.g. the one previous to that... Ben Bernanke as a butterfly.. was too big... taking up the whole page and not letting the message develop).

Another funny about the above story was that the trader did not make any money on it. Corporate sabotage!