Drawing in my sketch pad at a bar. Not the greatest lighting conditions. I'll call him "Jimmy"... because that was his name. He owns a bar. I was in a different bar when I drew this. I'm working on a project with a friend at The Week Magazine. Ii like to collaborate with people. New York is full of dreamers. I've met them since the first time I set foot here. I don't think they are any different than the dreamers I've met in other places but there seems to be a lot more of them here. The range of the dreams is long too. From main stream-lets-take-over-the-world!!! to obscure meteorite orbiting a small-barely-a-planet in a tiny galaxy in a remote corner of the universe dreams.

I used to get bogged down in other people's dreams. I have a friend, Steve, who put it in perspective. Something like, "why am I spending so much energy and time working on other people's dreams when I could blow all that time and energy on my own projects??" Ultimately that is more satisfying and rewarding. So I collaborate on projects I like. Of course if there is a paycheck involved, I'll do that too! Rent is pretty over the top in NYC!

Just a rule of thumb. The last few presidents in the US have had light to almost no eyebrows. President Obama was the first to go hard against this trend. Front runners in the field right now based on eyebrows, and what more valid way to pick a president? are: Gov. Jindel, Bernie Sanders, and now Trump. Jeb Bush seems to have fair to light eyebrows but he hides them behind his glasses. Smart move, and glasses have a tendency to make you look smart. Notice Gov. Perry has been wearing them more. Hillary has distinct eyebrows so she'd lose for sure. You might also notice that President Obama's eyebrows got thinner throughout his presidency. Also the big growth he had on his nose has almost completely disappeared.

Donald Trump has been losing eyebrow prowess for years. My initial caricatures of him from 15 years ago always involved the crazy free radical randomly rebellious depiction of his eyebrows. I thought he could do a comb-over with his eyebrows alone! They are still a little unruly but they got lighter and you really need to look harder for the really extra long hairs. Let's just call them eye-whiskers. He needs them that long so he doesn't bump in to things like a cat.

So here is the process of this past cover for The Week Magazine.

Under drawing. I started the first pose in the office. They asked for the fellow biting Trump's leg and the first try made it look like a compromising situation was in progress so I tried to make it clear that he was not in between Trump's legs.

Using Photo Shop, I through a little color over the pencil drawing for the editors to see where it was going. I had a lot of dead areas in the composition because the boiler plate cover design is a weird place to squeeze a composition in to. Saving room for type, and other spots. I figured I'd use some artistic license and inject the papers flying around. I'm sure they don't use paper on television anymore and just use teleprompters so there would never be this much paper on set.

Raw scan color corrected. My first thought on how to handle the woman was blow out her face with light so she seems as flat as I could get away with. I didn't think editorial would go with it. All three faces have so many signs of plastic surgery and false hair. I really don't like doing their portraits because who knows what they'll look like in a year and then everyone will look at your art and say "that doesn't look like them now".

Laying in one layer on the computer.

The finish.