{ Blast from the Past } ~ Mug's Game


Russian President Boris Yeltsin died; a pivotal and colorful figure in that nation's development.
US Amassador to Canada David Wilkins

Dalton McGuinty


Frank McKenna former Premier of New Brunswick

Former Prime Minister Joe Clark on Canadian Alliance and Reform

Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien

Phil Fontaine National Chief Assembly of First Nations

US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

cleaning out the Studio and transferring CD files onto hard drives
uploading some past caricatures
These mark the beginning of the end for me as a Political cartoonist.  

Papers were cutting staff and funds dramatically and stock cartoons were eating into a freelancer's budget.  There were a few papers who continued to pay me very well, most notably the Toronto Star and the National Post, but increasingly the time spent keeping topical {and editorial cartoons is all about being topical} reading papers, following the news, creating witty ideas and executing them on a daily turnaround for the pay alloted was a lost leader.  

As part of my transition away from cartoons and into Illustration, I shifted gears and did a series of 'straight' portraits/caricatures of notables in the news.   All in an attempt to increase the 'shelf life' of these works.  I was largely focusing on the Opinions Page with these, and making them 'neutral' meant papers across the spectrum might find them useful.

Graphite sticks on paper.  Drawn within an hour.  scanned.  Sometimes captions were added using digital software, and then sent to editors.  
These and others that will follow were interesting personalities and faces which I think I did a reasonable job capturing.  Some were printed in various publications and books; others reside in the Library and Archives of Canada as part of their permanent collection.

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