Caricature/Cartoon – Melania Trump – USA’s new First Lady.

BREAKING NEWS!

Melania Trump, the new First Lady of the USA, visits the caricaturist’s blog!

Slovenian Beauty Captures the American White House.

The Micro-bio of Melania Trump:

Born Melanija Knavs, the current First Lady of the US received her Green Card in 2001, and became an American Citizen in 2006. Previously, she worked as a model, a profession that she had joined at the age of five. She speaks six languages, loves powder-blue (in the caricaturist’s opinion,) and she applied for a US Green Card as a Model of “Extraordinary Ability.” (Information excavated from Wikipedia and must be consumed by the reader at her own risk.) She got married to Donald Trump in 2005. Soon after their wedding, in 2006, she gave birth to little Barron William Trump – the cute kid who wore a suit and sat through Donald Trump’s oath-taking ceremony with patience and panache.

About this Caricature:

Ah, well. 
Other than the fact that Melania Trump has an extremely caricaturable face, what inspired me to find my way back to my tablet and paint this caricature, was another caricature of the lady.
If you’ve read my book “Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures” or you’ve read my past posts, you would know that I am a caricaturist who balances exaggeration with funny/cute. I am also someone who believes that a woman’s vanity must never be attacked, even through a caricature – and so as far as I can, I try to keep a woman’s caricature in the realm of cute. Any exaggeration that yields an ugly picture, isn’t for me – and I follow this philosophy regardless of my personal preferences/prejudices.

It so happened that this fabulous caricaturist painted a rather unflattering caricature of Melania Trump. Note that “unflattering” here, is a euphemism. The caricature made me sad. Features that had no business being exaggerated were pushed and pulled with impunity – it made me think that the caricaturist disliked the subject immensely.

So I thought that I should draw a caricature with an element of funny/cute in it, without, of course, killing the likeness – and so I did this.

About Melania’s Features – Note for the Caricaturists.

If you are a caricaturist, you may be interested in understanding Melania’s face, especially her eyes. Her eyes are different from most other eyes, in that they slant upwards on the outside corners, and they are rather small. In fact, tiny. When she smiles the slant increases. She’s got a sharp nose and a mouth with thin lips. Yes, I mean really thin lips. She uses a lipliner outside her natural lip line and fills up her lips. But the point to note here is that her upper lip is slightly heavier than her lower lip. A characteristic feature of her face is the way her cheeks are structured. Note the two vertical crescents that shine upon her cheeks. Then of course, you have her hair. My exaggeration of her features is slight and I’ve used the relativity of her features to caricature her face. For instance, I pulled her nose some, stretching her cheeks, so that her small eyes, automatically looked smaller. The upper lip became thicker, and the lower, thinner. I exaggerated the strands of her hair – but most of all, I used the big-head small body trick to get the toony look right.

Note the size of the buttons, the hoops of her earrings, and the swirl of her jacket – and of course, the confident stance. Becoming the First Lady of the US is no mean feat. She is winning, and the caricature shows it!

• Melania Trump’s Facebook Page.
• Melania Trump’s Twitter.

 

 

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Caricature-Cartoon: Carly Fiorina Leads in the First Debate.

Carly Fiorina’s Caricature Finally Leaves the Attic 🙂

Cara Carleton Fiorina or Simply Carly Fiorina has emerged a winner in the first Republican debate of today. Others who shared the stage with her were Bobby Jindal (Yes, the unhyphenated American,) Rick Santorum (with secrets and secret compartments in his closet,) Rick Perry (the bespectacled Bush-istic one,) George Pataki (Gosh! I wish I knew more about him), and Lindsey Graham (the lonely gentleman whose phone number was given out by Donald Trump).

While all these other gentleman have a lot of political experience on their side, Carly Fiorina has overcome substantial odds in the past. I’ll tell you about the insurmountable odds she surmounted, but in a minute.

First I must present the subject of this post:  Carly Fiorina’s Caricature.

Carly has been a top-shot in the corporate-pot, but the only other time she tried to get into the political-garb, she failed. It probably didn’t fit.

From what I read and hear, it’s possible that some of the other candidates who participated in the debate, Rick Perry in particular, was charmed by Fiorina’s good manners, her quiver of polished arrows, and her corporate background (which is dotted by at least one stark failure.)

Here’s a quick overview of the corporate journey undertaken by the only Woman Republican Candidate vying to be the President in 2016.

• Carly started as an executive at AT&T (See? She started just like you and me.)
• Then she was the CEO of HP from 1999 to 2005. (See? This is where she could do what you and I couldn’t.)
• Next, she spearheaded the merger between HP and Compaq (and that is the reason I could never get a new battery for my first laptop (a fantastic Compaq machine.) (I think I’ll pin the blame on her.)
• Then, she laid off 30,000 American workers. (I guess she did, because the HP mini that have is an abomination…and despite the company still being in business, their distribution is atrocious – and getting it a new battery for my mini took me a couple of years.)
• She was still the head of HP when in 2005, HP’s stock had dwindled to half its value.
• Finally, HP woke up and filed a mercy-petition with Carly. She obliged and resigned.

What does she do now?
I guess a lot of things – but she mostly involves herself with charity and works for the betterment of women. The caricaturist in me would like to work backwards and say that long ago she knew that she’d one day be running for the President of United States and she was gradually getting her heeled feet accustomed to her new running-shoes.

 

Cartoon: Gay Marriage Legalized – Republicans Bristle, Democrats Giggle.

Now is the time for the elephant to pull himself up, dust himself off, and get to work on larger issues.
Cartoon: Gay Marriage Legalized – Republicans Bristle, Democrats Giggle..

Caricature – Bobby Jindal: Beautifully Brown and Seriously Smart – Announces Presidential Run.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced his candidacy for the US President on June 24th, 2016 and I am glad he did because I got the opportunity to paint an Indian face. It’s funny how skin color actually matters in art. Here’s a portrait of Bobby Jindal that made people wonder if he was actually a white. The artist either wanted to make a point (that the color of our skin doesn’t matter) or he just didn’t want to go out and buy new tubes of burnt sienna and yellow ochre, and so painted with whatever colors he had in his inventory.

Anyway, the great thing about painting portraits and caricatures digitally is that you never run out of colors…and a brown-skinned man remains brown-skinned 🙂

Wha…? “Am I not white?”

Now a teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy biography of this “Indian-American” who detests this particular hyphenation. But I’ll let the cynics know that it doesn’t matter if he wants to disown his Indian roots, Indians will always know him as his own…as long as he looks Indian and bears an Indian name, he’s an Indian for Indians. Still clucking? Check the Indian Newspapers.)

Piyush Jindal (ok, he likes to be called Bobby) was born to a Punjabi-Indian immigrant couple in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was a very smart kid, who grew up into a very smart young man, and got admission to Harvard Medical School as well as to Yale Law School. He also won the Rhodes scholarship and so pursued his higher education in Oxford.

He got married to Supriya, whose parents too had migrated to the same city around the same time as his parents. The couple happened to go to the same school too. Now they have three children, none of them have Indian names/surnames (smart move, going by the remarks that some Americans (of Indian and other origins) have been making on Twitter,) and Bobby Jindal is onto his second term as the Governor of Louisiana.

And yet,

Should Bobby Jindal have really run for the President at this point in time?

While his first term as the Governor was considered a super-success (he was re-elected by a huge margin) his second term is considered a super-failure. Why? Well….he tinkered with the budget for education…and a few other things too.

He is a conservative (sounds odd that being a child of immigrants he is a conservative, but then so is Marco Rubio) and he leans to the far right. He isn’t keen on being reminded of his Indian heritage because he rightly believes that his parents went to America to be Americans and that if they wanted to remain Indian, they’d have stayed back in India; and he’s not a Hindu (as his name would mislead you into believing,) he converted to Christianity when he was a teenager.

Though this might not be the best time for him to run for the presidential election and though I don’t agree with his views on Abortion and Gay-marriages, I still wish him the best 🙂

Jeb Bush: Will the eagle soar despite his name? (Cartoon)

On June 15th, Jeb Bush or “John Ellis Bush” Bush announced that he is a candidate for the President of United States. As a candidate, the biggest problem that Jeb faces is that of his surname. Before him, two Bushes (George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush) have been Presidents, and there are enough Americans who aren’t keen on seeing another Bush in the White House. The comments that I see on Jeb Bush’s Facebook page, his announcement to run, and his recent interview with Sean Hannity, inspired this cartoon.

Will he break free?

I’ve just finished watching Jeb Bush’s Interview with Sean Hannity (Fox News.) I enjoyed the interview – and though it wasn’t as entertaining nor as un-diplomatic as Donald Trump’s announcement, it left me wondering whether his name could be the only thing that might stop him from becoming the Republican nominee.

As a two-term Florida Governor he has credentials to show. His political outlook is moderate conservative and he might have a certain appeal for the hispanic and the Asian voter. in fact, his viewpoint on certain topics (for instance, gay-marriages) has been moving toward moderate in the recent past.

And yet, there are voters on both sides of the fence, who don’t want to send another Bush to the White House. Jeb is perpetually on the receiving end of pokes and barbs about his name. In all probability he understands the liability of his name better than anyone else – he stood in front of a red on white board with “Jeb!” printed in red. No Bush, only Jeb.