5/30/12

Makeup artist advertisement

Ad designed for professional makeup artist. She provided the text and the picture of the woman, I provided the layout (and Google provided the roses).

Drawn using:
Adobe Photoshop CS3

5/28/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

Since the EU countries with the worst financial situations are collective known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain), this metaphor-come-to-life was a natural for me.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

5/23/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

chen guangcheng chinese dissidents a drop in the bucket water droplet falling blind sunglasses
The saga of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has temporarily come to an end, with the government releasing him from house arrest to study in America. The phrase "a drop in the bucket" springs to mind all too easily in this case, and I didn't even try to resist it. Plus, y'now, it's kinda fun to draw a water droplet with cute little sunglasses on it.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Black marker
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

5/21/12

Man floating in water and reading a book

This is a pencil drawing of a man floating in water and reading a book:

Enjoy!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil

5/19/12

Something Awful This Way Comes

It has come to my attention that a cartoon of mine has been posted on a Something Awful thread about offensive political cartoons. My thoughts on the matter:
  • Reading through a bit of the thread, I saw some cartoons that were disgusting, some cartoons that were weird, and some cartoons that had simply committed the heinous crime of depicting a right-of-center position.
  • It was amusing to see all the bile spewed at the overwhelmingly conservative selection of cartoons; apparently, liberals can be just as myopic to their own offensiveness as anybody else.
  • The phrasing of the post in question is a little ambiguous: apparently I'm like Dry Bones crossed with J.R. Rose. Dry Bones I'm quite familiar with, naturally, and it's apparently a referral to my political stance; J.R. Rose was unfamiliar to me, but a quick Google search seems to indicate that it's a reference to my drawing style (politically, there wasn't much to indicate Mr. Rose's stance in the samples I glanced through).
  • It seems a trifle odd that the sample of my work chosen for display was this one, since I'm pretty sure that it's a bipartisan consensus that Syria is in the soup and that it's Bashar Assad stirring the pot. All of which leaves me confused as to how I am being "offensive"--unless I'm just offensive overall, but in that case, why choose that one to represent me?
  • It also mentions (disapprovingly... I think) that I published the IP address of someone who "left a negative comment" on one of my cartoons, along with a rage comic reaction. Just to be clear: I don't mind negative comments per se. Heck, I've allowed two very negative comments to be posted regarding my Demjanjuk cartoon. However, if you're going to be negative towards me, (a) back it up with something substantial/constructive instead of just saying insults like "This is pitiful", and (b) at least have the decency to leave behind an ID instead of hiding in anonymity.
In any event:

5/17/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

israeli prison warden anything else we can do for you sir palestinian prisoner nah ill just hunger strike if i need anything television blaring on stool fluffy pink bathrobe manicurist trimming nails barber cutting hair feet up on kneeling man listening to ipod laptop computer open on lap drinking from coconut cup with bendy straw diploma on wall
Oy vey, such tererible conditions those poor poor Palestinian prisoners are in. Admittedly, while this is an exaggeration for the sake of comedy, the main point here is how thoroughly the state capitualted to the strikers. Also, that diploma on the wall? Not made up--these prisoners (many of them hardened terrorists) study and graduate correspondence courses on the taxpayers' dime shekel; and they do get all sorts of other amenities that they quite frankly do not deserve.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

5/15/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

un united nations peacekeepers in suits seated behind desk stacks of paper isnt it great how the syrian civilians want so many copies of the ceasefire agreement injured arab people standing in line boy am i relieved for a while there i thought we were going to have a severe toilet paper shortage
Talk about something not being worth the paper it's printed on...
Fun fact: two of the civilians seen here appeared earlier meeting Kofi Annan. Good job, Kofi!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

5/9/12

Today's J. Post cartoon - and what it replaced

Politics, man... they can mess you up.

shaul mofaz grinning smugly two fingers v vee for victory sign tzipi who scroll list accomplishments unity deal stable coalition tal law alternative committee vice premiership elections on time
This is Shaul Mofaz, smugly accomplishing more in two weeks as leader of the Kadima party than Tzipi Livni did for three whole years. So where does the mess-up come into play?
Simple:

lag baomer 2012 shaul mofaz i brought the hot dogs avigdor liberman i brought the marshmallows binyamin netanyahu and i brought the hot potato tal law bonfire 18th knesset cookout
This was the cartoon I drew one whole day before the other one, when it looked like the country was inexorably headed for early elections, mostly thanks to the "hot potato" topic of reforming the Tal Law, which is about the service of chareidim in the IDF and which I'm sure is of no interest to anybody in the world at large. Also, it tied in to tomorrow's Lag BaOmer celebrations. I really liked this one. I thought it was clever and funny. And then I wake up the next morning and find out that suddently it has become completely and totally irrelevant, and have to scramble to draw a replacement (which fortunately came to my mind almost immediately, which is not always the case).
Politics.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch) (both)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen (both)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen (both)
Black 0.7 mm pilot pen (second)
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition (both)

5/7/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

After the quick rises and falls of so many other candidates in the drawn-out GOP nomination race (seriously, check out the RCP graph and look at all the spikes, it's ridiculous), slow-and-steady Mitt Romney has finally clinched--and now he has to face Barack Obama in the national elections in November (relevant graph here). Oh dear.
UPDATE: A thank-you to the Political Cartoons tumblr for posting this and having it reblogged by a few dozen others.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Black 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

5/2/12

Today's J. Post cartoon

shaky unsafe rope bridge binyamin bibi netanyahu avigdor liberman rasied machete cutting hacking pith helmets
Slowly but surely, the signs are piling up that the governing coalition is about to break up and take the country once again into early elections. Leading the uprising are Avigdor Liberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party, Bibi's biggest partners, who are disaffected with the way he's handling things.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition