Thursday, April 2, 2015

Q Toon: Honi Soit Qui Mikey Pence

I usually use these blog entries to explain my cartoons; but since the news about Indiana's "Religious Liberty Protection Act" has blown up all over the news, I'm going to assume that most readers are well acquainted with it.

When drawing a first cartoon about someone, particularly someone with as bland a face as Indiana Governor Mike Pence, I usually sketch a few trial runs first, and perhaps look up whether any local cartoonist has drawn cartoons about the person. In this case, Indianapolis is home to an excellent caricaturist, Gary Varvel.

Varvel's Pence has puffy cheeks and, other than the nose, round features. It's an easily recognizable caricature, but as you can see from my pencil sketches, I went in a different direction entirely. In the end, I think I made his face too long and thin, although I still like the quick sketch on the left.

One of the newspapers that prints my cartoons often reduces its height to fit in available space; that might actually improve this week's caricature.
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Time will tell whether I have any opportunities to refine my Pence. The Governor is rumored to have presidential ambitions, but has stumbled all over himself defending his RLPA, whining that the media are misinterpreting it, and trying to hide behind Bill Clinton's having signed a federal RLPA (back when it was an issue of whether Native Americans could be fired for smoking peyote as part of a religious ritual.)
Q Syndicate✎ Apr 2, 2015

Having seen the tectonic shiftstorm slamming Pence, other Republicans are scrambling. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson was expected to sign his legislature's RPLA this week, but as NPR's Mara Liasson so tactfully put it, "He sent it back to the legislature to see if there is some way — and many legal scholars doubt that there is — to pass a law that allows private businesses like florists and wedding cake makers and photographers to refuse to do business with gay couples but somehow not discriminate against them."

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