Roughs, Volume 243

These are the rough outlines for several of my cartoons, including some rejects

In case you’re new to my work, this is a blog of roughs. These are cartoons drawn in a rough outline. Sometimes I draw these to pitch to an editor, like my editor at the Fredericksburg Advance and my editor at CNN Opinion. Well, my former editor at CNN Opinion.

I would usually do these weekly. Since I got dropped by CNN Opinion, these blogs of roughs will no longer be weekly and will appear when I feel there are enough to create a post for them. Because CNN cut me, I don’t have to draw as many of these anymore. What makes this collection special is that it’s the LAST to feature cartoons drawn for CNN.

This is the 234th blog of these. I drew nearly 3,000 roughs for CNN over the five years I worked for them.

This was drawn on July 3 and submitted to the Fredericksburg Advance. This is the cartoon they chose but honestly…

I preferred this one. I like this concept and how the art worked out in this rough. I like how the squeegee is tucked under the guy’s arm and I love the dirty window. I’m going to use this for something else in the future.

This is the finished version of the one they chose. Which one do you like better?

I drew three ideas on the French election. I was sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Queens on July 8 when I drew these two. This is a rejected idea that I kinda wish I went with.

This is a different version of the same idea.

This is what I went with. I’m not all that in love with it now, but it did get published by many of my clients. Cartoons with Hitler don’t get published a lot.

This was drawn on July 10 for the Advance. It’s a local issue.

Here’s the finished cartoon that was published last Sunday. It was held for a week because of the Assassination attempt on Trump. I didn’t agree with that decision but maybe it made sense in that people wouldn’t pay any attention to it as they’d be too focused on Trump. But it at least made the Advance not bother me while I was in Milwaukee covering the Republican convention.

This was drawn on July 12 on a Friday. I was submitting cartoons to CNN. Little did I know at the time that the newsletter had been killed and I was mostly wasting my time. I hadn’t been told yet that I didn’t have my gig anymore.

This was about George Clooney saying President Biden should resign. It too was sent to CNN.

Yup. Sent to CNN. I liked this one and was thinking, “They need to take this one.” That was before I knew the newsletter was dead.

But I did turn it into a real cartoon the next day for my newspaper clients.

And another sent to CNN before I got the news. I liked this one but other issues got in front of it that prevented me from drawing it. It may come back because Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, including their wives, will remain corrupt.

I liked this one. There’s another on this issue I’m saving and you can’t see it until I draw the final version.

I don’t like this one. Sometimes, a cartoonist has to draw an idea to realize he doesn’t like it or that it doesn’t work.

I liked this one too but it’s as dead as the CNN Opinion newsletter. Did you count all the roughs sent to CNN? It’s seven. I sent seven roughs before I got an email telling me I lost my gig. Seven. That’s pretty much how things worked over the five years I drew for them. Seven.

This was drawn July 19, last Friday around 3 a.m. in the Milwaukee airport. It just didn’t feel right. So I put it aside, checked in, got through TSA, and then I got the idea I was searching for in my head.

This is it and it was drawn on a sticky table in a vending area while a weird girl with nose rings looked over my shoulder. I don’t like the art in the first panel. I should have found another way to do it. I just don’t like it.

I was trying to think of something to do with the global tech outage when President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. This was my first idea and I almost went with it, but I thought this was a great time to NOT go with my first idea.

The first idea for at least 17 other cartoonists, SEVENTEEN, was to draw Biden handing Harris a torch…and they all went with it. SEVENTEEN.

I like my caricature of Harris here and I think it’s better than the one I went with in the cartoon I did go with. I experimented with a different brush in Procreate for this one. I kinda like it. It’s like an India ink type of dip pen.

This was too boring.

This is the one I went with. My caricature of Veep Harris will evolve. I think I had only drawn her about ten times before last Sunday.

So, which of these are your favorites?

Watch me draw these roughs. There’s a voiceover.