Historian Howard Zinn Dies

This is a quick caricature of Howard Zinn, who has been teaching, writing about history, and advocating for truth and fairness for many years. His book A People's History of the United States shows history as seen by some of the people who have been on the losing end such as American Indians.

Digital Caricature sketch of Jack Bauer

This drawing of 24's Kiefer Southerland as Jack Bauer was done on the computer using a Wacom tablet and Painter X. 24 is one of a few shows I watch, and presently the only drama. It really is a live action cartoon. He heals almost as fast as Popeye or any other cartoon character. Even though it's goofy and often predictable it still is entertaining.

Custom caricature comic books

When our friend T. McLaughlin turned fifty I made a short comic book of some events from his life using caricatures of him and other.. This is a great way to commemorate stories about a colorful character. They don't come much more colorful than T.

Gift Caricature from photos

This is an example of a detailed gift caricature done from photos. When doing such a drawing I find it best to have a few photos of the model, from different views, and with at least one close up (just a face) showing a good expression characteristic of that person. Caricatures from photos are more difficult than those drawn live, but they can still be fun because you can add lots of details that can't be put in at a party.

Party caricature

This is an example of my party caricature style. When I draw at parties or other events I normally draw about 12-15 people per hour in black and white and about 6-8 per hour in color.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

This portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was done with acrylics to commemorate King Day at Camden NJ High School in the late 80's when I was teaching art there.
Yesterday's (January 17, 2010) Philadelphia Inquirer had a commentary by John Timpane titled The Sermon We Ignore.
His premise is that we celebrate "I have a dream," but our society ignores or suppresses the idea that King advocated that we need to reform our economic and social system.
On philly.com I couldn't find the link to this article, but the newspaper version mentions a link to a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam" (http://go.philly.com/beyondvietnam).
Dr. King says in this speech "We must begin the shift from a 'thing oriented' society to a 'person oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Yesterday's article cited an April 21, 1967 editorial in Life magazine that called the sermon "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." That type of criticism sounds like the Bush/Chaney Axis of Weasel nonsense that anyone criticizing them is un-American. This fear tactic is what caused the spineless Democrats to join the rush to war without questioning the false reasoning and phony rational. Warmongers always seem to try and paint anyone against war as weak. We need to tell our leaders we do not want our money going for the destruction of other people and places.
If instead of going to war we sent teams of educators, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc to Iraq and Afghanistan we could win the hearts of the people and do some real good. Right now our military is having a hard time helping the Afghans to defend themselves because so few of them are literate.