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.

I feel bad about this one... Drew it in under an hour. No fricken time.


A couple things I'm noticing about the masking...

1. I need to at least outline with my own scribbles the area in the drawing where I want to mask. Otherwise it does not blend well and creates a lot of loose-ended squiggles.

2. The squiggles in my mask are cleaner and have a bit more personality than my typical line. As of yet, this does not bother me. In truth, I like when my lines go in this direction.

3. When I try to correct things with squiggles using a normal brush in PS, they look horrible. Even at one pixel. I could tone them down, but I don't get very good movement with the mouse pad... a tablet would help this issues, but I should try to limit these to as few as possible.

Yay, I have reoccurring characters.... my two college dude Obama voters. For some reason, they represent a funny viewpoint for me (much better than they typical American couple that many cartoonists draw)...

Still practicing the mask-fills.

This is a version one. When I get a chance I'm going to try masking in some fills, using Tim's method. I have to make a couple more fill-only pages first. Hoping to get time this weekend.

Found a good blog on caricatures by Tom Richmond (a Mad Magazine artist). He has a lot of great suggestions and also points out that head shape is a major factor when doing caricatures. This is something I was on the verge of figuring out with the Al Gore and Hillary fiascos.

Doug also had some good ideas for making a portfolio, including a water-colored Uncle Sam... This will likely have to wait until I get settled into the new house.

Okay... Here is version two... using masks. It will obviously take some practice to get used to doing fills this way. I would spend more time trying to perfect it, but I'm sick of this cartoon. Monet found the high road/low road thing a little confusing...