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 🙂

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Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2016 – Caricature Art.

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Update:April 14, 2015

The cat’s out of the bag! Hillary Clinton announced her bid for President on Sunday. After a video-collage of Americans (of all ethnic  backgrounds and beliefs (couldn’t spot any Indian in the video though) showing them planning their futures, she said, “I am also getting ready for something. I am running for President.”

Watch the video and read some pro-Hillary commentary on the Guardian site, also check out the coverage by Fox News here.

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Will she…won’t she?

She did…didn’t she?

While Hillary Clinton’s formal declaration on her candidature will be made tomorrow, almost everyone who knows anything about American politics already knows that she’s running for elections. Most of us have been privy to this open secret for years. Consider this caricature that I did in 2013. I didn’t pay a psychic medium, nor did I get a crystal ball to forecast this – I just knew that Hillary Clinton would run for the President in 2016.

Hillary is ambitious, smart, and has been a politician all her life. Before you spring up one of those zillion emails floating around, and tell me that I am a fool to call her smart – I’d reiterate that she is indeed smart. You can’t survive in politics if you are a fool; and she has not just survived – she has thrived. If she wasn’t smart, she’d not have taken the opportunity to be the Secretary of State during President Obama‘s first term. If she wasn’t smart, she wouldn’t have forgiven President Clinton for his Oval-office misdemeanors. She is smart and she knows it.

You’ll also tell me that she doesn’t have a sense for fashion – I’d like to agree but add that this goes to prove that she’s a lot more sensible than the heel-tapping, fashion-conscious women who spend an hour each day, and so about 4% of their lives trying to please the onlookers. I think it’s idiotic…and I feel that nobody with a modicum of common sense would do it. Fashion doesn’t just make you waste time and money, it also makes you stress over stuff that’s done only to please others. Hillary doesn’t need that sort of approval – she’s a confident woman who knows that she has better things to do with her life.

Here’s a closeup:

Will she indeed be chosen by the Democrats as their candidate for the US Presidency?
It’s impossible to say. In the 2008, she had lost to a newcomer in Politics.  As always, the US Presidential Elections would be interesting to watch.

Other Newsy Stuff:

• She’s expected to launch her campaign on social media (twitter) tomorrow and then she’d be kick starting her campaign by going to the early voting states (Iowa and New Hampshire.) She’s set up her base-camp in Brooklyn, New York.
• Democrats close to the Clintons have started calling her the most unknown famous person in the world …which sounds pretty confusing, but rest easy, the campaign will be reintroducing her to the Americans.
• She’ll be 69 next year. There’s been only one other US President who was older than her. Ronald Reagan was 70 when he assumed office.

To sum it up…tomrrow Ms. Clinton will make a formal announcement begin her journey to the White House. Whether or not she will reach there and sleep in the bedroom she used to sleep in 14 years ago, is something that the American voter would decide.

Caricature/Cartoon – Hillary Clinton on her way to The White House

Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton will be running for President in the 2016 Elections. Period.

Here’s my take on the story.

Will Hillary run for the 2016 Presidential Elections?

Here are my reasons for believing that she will.

1. In 2006, she was among the Democratic candidate hopefuls and narrowly lost to Barack Obama. This confirms that she is interested in becoming the President of the US.
2. In 2007, she took up the position of the Secretary of State and happily co-existed and co-managed the international affairs of the US along with President Obama. This kept her in the public eye and made her a much stronger candidate than before.
3. She took a break from a job which she was performing rather nicely. The only reason that makes sense to me is that she wanted to spend her time preparing herself for the next elections.

If the reasons given by me don’t convince you, read 5 Signs that Hillary will run for President here.

Hillary Clinton’s Dressing sense…

…has often been criticized. I’ll forever continue to wonder why it is so easy for men to get away with the same outfit (note that the only thing that ever changes in President Obama’s clothes is the color) while women fret over what they have to wear. I have nothing against Hillary dressing up in oddly constructed pant-suits and even in the outfit that you see in her caricature. I think that she still dresses up a lot better than Michelle Obama.

This deserves a closeup view of her outfit in this caricature.

However, if you like women to look like made-up dolls and have the time and energy to read about Clinton’s fashion faux-pas, click here… or search for “Hillary Clinton’s Fashion Faux Pas”.

About Hillary’s Caricature

(This bit should be of interest to the artists.)

I had been planning on doing Hillary’s caricature for a very long time, but it wasn’t until last week that I really attached myself to my seat and decided to plunge into this caricaturing exercise. This is a digitally painted illustration done for the purpose of print (it measures 12 inches x 12 inches at 300 dpi.) I first did a rough sketch (a sort of doodle), then made a final sketch, scanned it, and then painted it in Photoshop CS6.

I approached this illustration more as an artwork than just a caricature. The somewhat bewildered donkey representing the democrats, at the left; the happy and alert Hillary checking her progress, in the middle; and the wooden signboard at the right – all on top of a hill, with cloudy skies behind – a composition that comes together nicely. The colors balance one another out (check the warmer hues canceling out the cooler ones) except in one place – in Hillary’s outfit, where I used never-wear-together colors, clothes, and accessories. The pearls and the formal jacket (in…GREEN?) create a jarring effect when coupled with her BLUE Jeans and high-ankle leather cowboy boots. It exaggerates her oft-criticized fashion sense, and strengthens the caricature.

Now let us ponder upon a more important question, one that can be answered only by Samantha the Witch.

Will Hillary Clinton become the next President of the United States?

I think the US has tried a “first” by electing a non-white President for the first time in its history and given him two terms to prove that a first works. Whether or not Hillary Clinton will become the first woman President of the US will depend on whether people really gained from their first-first. While I am sure that Hillary has a strong resume, I don’t think people care about resumes. I guess people would want a change – and that could help the Republican candidate (Though I don’t know if there’s any Republican with an image as strong as Hillary’s.)

This is precisely why Hillary is aiming to reach the White House, once again; except that if she succeeds, she’ll not be there as the First Lady (one of the many feathers in her hat,) but as the President of the US. I wonder what Bill Clinton will be called then. The First Gentleman of America? I guess the geniuses of the White House will put their heads together and come up with an answer when such a situation arises.

Wondering…Why Hillary?

A Quick Biographical Sketch of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has many feathers in her cap (and you can see three of those in her caricature above.) She’s been the First Lady of the US, a two-term US Senator, and the US Secretary of State; but there’s more. She’s got a Law Degree from Yale Law School where she met her husband Bill Clinton who she married in 1975. She’s held high-paying jobs all her life and there were times when she earned more than Bill Clinton.

• Interestingly Hillary was born in a family with conservative values and when she was a student she was a Republican.
•  Hillary’s marriage almost fell apart during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
•  You can find a detailed biography of Hillary Clinton here.

And finally,

Hillary in Recent News

• Hillary’s handling of the Benghazi incident led to some criticism, and even though the 2016 elections appear to be far away, some Republicans are already raking up the issue. It appears that everyone including the Republicans believe that she’ll run.
• Recently Obama and Hillary Clinton met for lunch. This meeting is being seen as a sign of Obama supporting Hillary in the 2016 race.
• She said that Huma Abedin, the wife of NYC Mayoral Hopeful Anthony Weiner, is like a daughter to her. While this may not be an important piece of news for you, but I mention it here so that you check out Anthony Weiner’s pole-dance caricature here and leave my blog laughing 🙂