Too little time to do much more. No touch up in PS. Also, er, no joke? Where is the joke? Sort of like the McCain one I just did... no joke there either. I need to stop thinking about the art so much and try coming up with less half-baked cartoons.

This is the first drawing I tried with the Copic pens... and the last. They dry out too fast (already half the pens are dead), are too pricey, and drawing like chicken scratching...

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'm working on a bunch of iconic drawings of people, so I can make a portfolio page. I think this means nailing some of the people I've been drawing, giving less immediate context, and capturing something essential about their personality.

I need a better dark masking page... Losing some depth in the drawings. Also, my Artline pens are now completely dead (except for the .8 and .5). I'm going to dig out the next set of pens now.

Quick one this morning.... McCain's verbal gaffs were very amusing.

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.