Wow. The last post was in August. Boy the world is different now isn't it? So far nothing has really changed in my life on a personal level. I have to paint Donald Trump all the time now. My clients continue to ask for less and less exaggeration in the people I paint. This is depressing. I think it reflects the current temperament of our society. No playfulness in the subject matter, and none from my clients either.

Illustration as a way to extend the idea of an article is becoming scarce. My work isn't super concept driven and because I don't get to work that "muscle" regularly I usually struggle to wake it up! I've always found it the most satisfying thing in illustration. Making a sharp point in a clever way about a subject... nothing better! I did this Trump illustration for Metro news in Silicon Valley on election night. The designer really got it and used a great type for the text on the cover.

This Trump illustration for The Week Magazine has a good idea. Clear and to the point. I just wish I could exaggerate the way I'd like. But that is what my sketch pad is for.

And of course this will be as close as Hillary will be to the White House. My cover for The Week that would get cancelled election night.

It always seems to be the easiest thing to do and yet here it is almost three plus months since the last time I posted anything new here. I guess the "professional" thing to do here is ignore the time in-between posts and hope no one notices. Truth be told, I don't think anyone was crunching numbers with-which to give me a kick in the butt. "Get with the writing and making pictures art boy!" Absence does not mean inactivity so I'll serve some art now... Sorry, no substitutions.

I'm in two gallery shows coming up. One just opened in LA at Gallery 1988. "Bob's Burgers" show. The theme was Bob's Burgers characters etc. open to interpretation. I didn't really know anything about the show. I had to brush up on it. If I had a TV I would probably watch this once in a while.

And the other group show I'll be participating in at Gallery 1988 is called "The Idiot Box". The theme is mostly television from the 90's... you know, the Idiot Box! As a little kid in the 70's, I don't remember my dad calling the television anything else but "the idiot box"! HA!

In the 90's I got hooked on The X Files. Throughout the seasons there was enough variety that I enjoyed it up until Mulder disappeared and the new guy showed up. Of course by the 2nd or 3rd season I wasn't buying Scully's skepticism, but I liked the characters by then. In this piece, I was playing around with a bunch of alien "folklore". Abductees claim missing time, triangle shaped crafts, naked on metal tables, aliens with big eyes operating or experimenting on them etc. And within the show, the ever increasing reliance on using cell phones to help move the plot along. Flip phones were the thing. I titled this one, "It's for you." The big obvious joke that refers to people having unnecessary surgery is Mulder and Scully were abducted and the aliens mixed up their heads when putting them back together since all humans look alike to aliens.

Seriously, what happened to our collective minds? Trump should have been dismissed seconds after he announced he was running for president! I know I never thought he'd get this far. I still don't recognize him as a legit candidate. The things he says that sound "presidential" are mere coincidence. If you vomit enough words out like he does a few have a chance at sounding correct. The problem is the volume of puke surrounding those few! The only good thing he's done is get rid of Jeb Bush. At least there won't be a Bush against Clinton thing. I hate seeing more than one family member trying to be president. It's too close to kings and queens for me. I want them to earn it!

When I was in the office at The Week Magazine to get this assignment, the finished look was already in my head! This one was a slam dunk, fish in a barrel, no brainer, type of idea that I knew was going to be a good image. Trump trying to be "presidential". Or as I put it, "Trumpidential". I raise my paint brush to his failure.