Wall St. Journal

I've been selling cartoons to various magazines and publications since 1988 - love the business, yet it's certainly changed over the years! The submission process is essentially spec, but I really enjoy the creative freedom. Anyway, my stuff shows up fairly regularly in The Wall St. Journal...here's a recent one...

The Daily Cartoonist

There's a lot of cartooning/cartoonist blogs out there, but one of the very best is Alan Gardner's “The Daily Cartoonist". Any and ALL cartooning related news can be found here, and it covers most of the various disciplines in the field very effectively and professionally, although, oddly, it overlooks the greeting card industry, which employs an astounding number of cartoonists and humorous illustrators. Part of this seems to be a somewhat slavish predilection towards the syndication crowd, who in many cases, dominate the comment sections with flame wars over fairly innocuous issues. Not for the faint of heart, and oftentimes, breathtakingly juvenile and very clique-ish. All I get from that aspect is how socially ignorant many otherwise talented individuals are, who seem to relish their fleeting moments of internet glory. Truly no fun to read and about as insightful as Browns/ Steelers fans screaming at each other in a bar. The only difference is said posters bravely sit in front of a computer taking their shots. Real tough.

As mentioned above, TDC mysteriously overlooks the greeting card industry, and I’m not quite sure why that is. Obviously, I’m somewhat partial here, but as a site dedicated to all things cartooning, from craft and technique to freelance and employment etc., it seems somewhat antithetical to the site’s apparent mission to overlook this segment of the field, which, quite frankly, employs far more cartoonists and humorous illustrators (not to mention graphic designers in general) than every syndicate combined.

All of the above aside, don’t be fooled - TDC is THE best source for most industry-related news, the gold-standard in fact, and is a must-stop for beginners and professionals alike. Visit often and be sure to donate – it takes a lot of work to keep a site like this running. Save yourself the tedium of the comments/posts, though – root canals are way more fun.

http://dailycartoonist.com/

recent band graphics...

As mentioned in previous posts, I do all the graphics for my band, The Rhythm Syndicate, and enjoy putting together fun posters for each gig. I try to have a different one for every appearance - here's a few recent pieces...

Not everything gets published...

Oftentimes, when working on somewhat 'exploratory' programs, I'll do a design that, for whatever reason, doesn't fit the program, but is still a pretty cool looking piece of art.  This is a perfect example - the production piece looks nothing like it (I'll post when it actually hits the market) and I actually preferred this version. 

Rubber City gig...

I do a lot of design work for my band and I try to do different posters for each gig...here's a recent one for an appearance at Northside, a blues club in Akron, Ohio...

some caricature stuff...

I get called on to do caricatures quite a bit. Back in the day, they were rather traditional looking, amusement park type stuff, utilizing markers or even brush work. In recent years though, I've switched over to a somewhat more stylized, vector approach. This method actually captures 'nuance' rather than specificity, and is quite a bit more expressionistic. In any event, I love working in this way - here's a few recent ones of some of my colleagues...

recent stuff

Here's a variety of recent card designs I've done for American Greetings...I like to vary my styles a bit depending on the caption or the tone of the copy...