Not much time to draw... had to do a bunch of demo on the new house.

Bernanke is fun to draw.. Anybody who is a bit shaggy is great for this style. As for the topic, I thought it was funny that Bernanke in his squeaky voice, suggested mortgage companies lower the principal on upside-down loans... like they will ever do this.

Here is another attempt at this silly red-phone cartoon. A couple things I think I did better:

1. A slightly improved caricature of Hillary. It is weird what tweaks one has to discover to make a face look closer to the real person. Often, they are not obvious. For example, with Hillary, moving the round cheeks up and to the right seemed to help a lot. Do her cheeks actually do this? Not really.... but it helped. I think other artists tend to draw her cheeks low because of how they meet her mouth, which is fine for somebody like Ann Telnaes, who can draw in fourteen lines something better than I can do in ten thousand, and likely in a significantly shorter amount of time... but, eh, you take the cards (or squiggles) you are dealt. Regardless, this brings up a very interesting nuance about doing caricatures... how do you find those fourteen lines (or for me, ten thousand) that make a matchable face, and why are they not always readily apparent? I think there is something much deeper to making a good caricature than finding the one odd-ball feature on a person and exaggerating it (although at times, not much more.... for example the pointed ears on George W. Whoever figured this out is a genius... you can add pointed ears to a smiley face and it looks like George W). I think finding the fourteen lines has something to do with how we as humans fundamentally recognize and differentiate each other's faces... I really do. I think it is low level lizard stuff, and often times, not conscious. Anyway, I'm enjoying exploring this sort of art.

2. Added some space, shrunk the figures, and made the cartoon breath. This is a basic composition issue. I need to give the reader time to walk their eyes across the drawing without immediately bumping into another bombardment of squiggles.

.... in other news, Tim is giving me some PS pointers for speeding up my fills using masks and all sorts of other fancy tricks. I hope to figure some of them out this weekend.

Not much time to draw... This is actually one of my better Hillary's. She is very difficult to draw... I tried to get some clues from from Ann Telnaes' work (the only person I think who does a fairly skilled Hillary...). Unfortunately, her style is a world away from mine... so not much help).

Tim suggested I do squiggle baloons, which I think is a smart idea.

Not very happy with this one. I think my caricatures are getting better and the Obama looks pretty good, but the idea is a bit half-baked. Making another list, how to stop the half-baked ideas:

1. make a couple versions before I start drawing.
2. get a second opinion.
3. think through what I really want to say.
4. time, time, time

Very funny site popped up. One of the political cartoonist is ranting about other cartoonist and their lack of talent. Unsure how long he can carry on with this tone, but still, his observations are keen and it is nice to hear a voice that is not cagle-rific. http://badcartoonist.com/

This time I lowered the Levels of the font in PS, instead of the image.