Trump Gets Me Going

After ignoring this blog for way too long I've decided to put up quick sketches since I often fail to finish them for one reason or another. I've also always wanted to do editorial cartooning and have submitted some to newspapers in the past and never had any success.

 All this birther madness is really ridiculous but it's also very serious. It's an unethical political tactic that works, and those who practice it know this. The old maxim of no such thing as bad publicity is their mantra. They also know (and several of our recent presidents were masters at this) that if you repeat a lie enough many people will end up believing it.

So anyway, this is my first published drawing of the Donald.

First of the top ten faces of the year (according to the International Society of Caricature Artists)

Alex Reid may not be well known in America but he's a big star in the U.K. for kickboxing. He's also done some acting, including porn. He's married to Katie Price who is famous on her own (although I'm not sure what for) and the two of them are in the tabloids over there a lot. I've had trouble getting the image to show here but clicking this link will show it.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs719.snc4/63896_1690316093117_1094174440_1912008_4190836_s.jpg

Ellen Degeneres Caricature

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This caricature of Ellen Degeneres was drawn in response to her showing several caricatuers of her she did not like. The ISCA put out a call to send drawings of her. This was first drawn in marker on 8 1/2"11" paper and scanned. Color was added in Corel Painter.

Check out Ellen's response to published caricatures of her:

Ellen's Newspapers Caricatures & "What's Wrong With These Photos?" on TEDS (2010-03-18) [Part 2/5]

Color Digital Group Caricature

I don't know what I did wrong but I had a hard time loading this from my computer. It was saved as a jpeg which I put on a usb and had printed at Staples. Debbie the copy person there was very helpful but she said she could only save as a bmp so I went to a private copy shop and they scanned my line drawing and saved it as both a bmp and a jpeg. I'm sure it was the jpeg that I worked on to add the color. It printed fine and loaded to Facebook with no problem but when I tried to load the file I got failed in the blue box.

My first large group digital caricature from photos

This is the outline for a group caricature drawing which I colored in  Corel Painter. The group is all the groomsmen, bride and groom and groom's father. They all grew up on or near the same street. This will be used as gifts for the men in the wedding party.
For some reason I can't upload the color version so for now this will do. Since this is the first large thing I've done in Painter I had some problems and didn't really have time to figure it all out digitally since I was on deadline. After getting the likenesses to my satisfaction I printed them out small and pasted them up the old fashioned way following my rough sketch. I then copied it and drew the bodies on the copy.
I think my main mistake was making the faces all different files instead of layers in the same one. Also had a problem combining the text layers so I ended up printing the lettering out and tracing it by hand onto the drawing paper. Then I had someone scan it since I don't have a big scanner yet. Then I finished it in Painter. The coloring part went pretty fast. I didn't have time to be real creative with the color but I'm still pretty happy with the result and the client was happy.
For now you can see the color version on my Shorty Robinson Facebook account.

Relaxing in the (first) Bizzard of 2010

On Superbowl Sunday 2010  (whoops, Big Game Sunday) the sun shown bright over New Jersey after about two feet of snow on Saturday. Attached is a photo of me sitting in our flower bed in the snow. After this I rolled around in the snow and then jumped in the warm  pool.

Employee Appreciation Wall of Fame

These caricature drawings were done as part of an employee recognition gallery at Americhoice Health Insurance in Philadelphia. When I came to draw I sat in a conference room where I was easily seen by passersby and since people had to sign up for a time there were employees from all over the building stopping in and getting a few laughs. These were done in about seven to ten minutes each.