Chuck Hagel's Non-announcement
Editorial cartoon for the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and the Schleswig Leader Thurs. March 22, 2007
How about that?! I CAN draw a whole cartoon without using photos off of the internet or computer fonts. Not a bad Hagel charicature either, even if I do say so myself- makes me hope he runs and wins, just because I can actually draw him. Last week, I think my Cheny was lousy and my Scooter Libby looked a little like Al Gore. Of course, by the tim ethis runs it will be 2 and a half week old news, but whatchyagonna do?
I used to teach cartooning as a class, sometimes as a unit in an Art class. Sometimes my students would ask me why I'm not a professional cartoonist instead of a teacher. Well, it's a pretty elite field that is next to impossible to break into. There are less than a hundred accross the country who can do it full time and more and more Papers are cutting their's loose because it's cheaper to either run syndicated editorial cartoons or none at all. Enterprise Publishing pays me like $6 per week to draw them for the two tiny small-town newspapers that they run me in, so it's really more of a hobby. I know I'm no Brian Duffy of the Des Moines Register, but I kinda think that I'm at least as good and most weeks better than that Ed Fisher guy that Denison and other papers around here run.
I wondered about trying to sell my cartoons to more local community newspapers around Western Iowa and Nebraska, so I asked my publisher for advice. He told me that the Missouri Valley uses Ed Fisher like Denison. They pay $4.75 a week and get 9 cartoons to pick from and use. Usually 2 or 3 of them are geared to Minnesota since that is where he is based, so being in Iowa our pool to pick from is more like 6 or 7. Being twice weekly we will use up to 4 each week, at least one per edition.
So as they say on American Idol, I decided to "keep my day job."
If you're interested in seeing any of my other cartoons visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2 there are over a hundred there, including plenty from my college and high school days.
How about that?! I CAN draw a whole cartoon without using photos off of the internet or computer fonts. Not a bad Hagel charicature either, even if I do say so myself- makes me hope he runs and wins, just because I can actually draw him. Last week, I think my Cheny was lousy and my Scooter Libby looked a little like Al Gore. Of course, by the tim ethis runs it will be 2 and a half week old news, but whatchyagonna do?
I used to teach cartooning as a class, sometimes as a unit in an Art class. Sometimes my students would ask me why I'm not a professional cartoonist instead of a teacher. Well, it's a pretty elite field that is next to impossible to break into. There are less than a hundred accross the country who can do it full time and more and more Papers are cutting their's loose because it's cheaper to either run syndicated editorial cartoons or none at all. Enterprise Publishing pays me like $6 per week to draw them for the two tiny small-town newspapers that they run me in, so it's really more of a hobby. I know I'm no Brian Duffy of the Des Moines Register, but I kinda think that I'm at least as good and most weeks better than that Ed Fisher guy that Denison and other papers around here run.
I wondered about trying to sell my cartoons to more local community newspapers around Western Iowa and Nebraska, so I asked my publisher for advice. He told me that the Missouri Valley uses Ed Fisher like Denison. They pay $4.75 a week and get 9 cartoons to pick from and use. Usually 2 or 3 of them are geared to Minnesota since that is where he is based, so being in Iowa our pool to pick from is more like 6 or 7. Being twice weekly we will use up to 4 each week, at least one per edition.
So as they say on American Idol, I decided to "keep my day job."
If you're interested in seeing any of my other cartoons visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2 there are over a hundred there, including plenty from my college and high school days.
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