I drew the above cartoon for this week’s issue of The Economist to accompany the magazine’s weekly column dedicated to American issues titled “Lexington”. The subject is long-time Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens who has gotten himself into a little legal mess with allegations of financial/ethical wrongdoing.

Stevens has a great face for drawing. His age (84 years) has helped accentuate his sallow cheeks and scowling brow. You can see below some of my early sketches of the embattled Senator.

This week I produced a caricature of Obama and Hillary that captures the current news quite well.  I am particularly happy with the Obama caricature.  It always takes a while to get a fix on a new politician’s face and I am becoming more attuned to Obama’s features.  I enclose below some the preliminary sketches for this week’s cartoon as well as my first caricature of Obama from 2007.

This week’s Economist cartoon was a fun one. The 3 characters involved are quite different personalities and I endeavoured to capture their diverse spirits in each caricature.  There were many phases of development that you can see in roughs below.

 

I drew the cover for The Economist this week on the threat of inflation arising from emerging markets (tough one to illustrate, right?!). I worked closely with the cover designer in London and we came up with this solution. I played around with a variety of monsters under the staircase as you can see below. I finished the art using gouache and india ink. I’m looking forward to seeing it in print!

I had a second idea of having the creature hidden in a different way which you can see below. Maybe we’ll use it another time!

  This is the first post of my new sketchblog. I will endeavor to regularly post examples of my cartoon sketches and finished artwork with comments here.     This a cartoon I drew for The Economist back in March with its preliminary sketch. I’ll try to get some more up to date art up here soon.