And Now for Something Completely Different...

According to a recent survey done by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, atheists are more knowledgable about religion than other religions. I find that funny, but not so much surprising.

Figure Drawing

I finally got a chance to go to an open life drawing session tonight. It was a lot of fun, but I'm definitely a little rusty. I wanted to go with a more exaggerated approach this time around and I think it went well overall. I feel like it helps me understand poses, the human figure and anatomy better by doing this, plus it can create some pretty interesting drawings.

This Gubernatorial Race is Uber ridiculous.

With November and my premature absentee ballot to be filled out this weekend, I can't say that I'm all that excited about the Gubernatorial candidates this election. Both are promising job growth, tax cuts, a solid budget etc.: the usual pandering to voters. In this instance, neither candidate has outlined a feasible plan to accomplish any of it.

Wisconsin Toons!

I'm just working on some more local cartoons at the moment. Below are gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker, and Governor Doyle with a rather frisky DA from Calumet county. I liked how the inks came out on the bottom one so I thought I'd post them as well.

She Wore and Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny....

Long Island City

I've always wanted to do one of those high 3/4 angle cartoony maps, the type you'd find at an amusement park or the like. I just finished up work on this bad boy, a map of Long Island City in New York, and I can safely say that I'll be okay if I don't do one for a little while. It was a lot of work. It would have been a hell of a lot more work if it weren't for google earth and the street view features (which are pretty fricken amazing).

Dig Baby Dig

I had a good rant that I wanted to accompany this drawing, but alas, I have zero time at the moment. Maybe I'll circle back to it in a day or two.

Impassioned Zealots

In the last year and a half, the UW-Stout campus has imposed several new sanctions on tobacco and alcohol. The tobacco referendum started with smoking on campus, which is understandable. Second hand smoke is annoying and unhealthy. Plainly speaking, it affects a lot of people on campus. Drinking can be a problem for most college campuses, but from what I can tell, its more a phenomenon of the age group. However, the college atmosphere does facilitate some bad drinking habits, but they are overdramatized more often than not. In some respects I agree with Chancellor Sorensen: smoking is bad, drinking excessively can lead to academic, health, and social problems, and chewing tobacco is unsightly. The latest ban on ALL tobacco, including chewing tobacco, snuff, snus, and anything else out there, just went way over the top and has been paraded around as some sort of progressive victory over ignorant, unhealthy, simpletons. The reality is that very few students chew on university property, almost never outside of the dorms. Never-the-less, Sorensen brags up the fact that Stout is the first four year school in Wisconsin to be completely tobacco free. With regards to alcohol use, there have already been several house parties busted after only a few days of the start of the semester. All this has been done in the name of good health. As we are all aware of the effects of tobacco and alcohol, the mandated coddling is just insulting.

$50 Billion Job Express

$50 billion for Roads, Rails, and Runways: I can't say that I think any potential or subsequent economic booming will be enough for Democrats to recover any lost ground before the November elections. The GOP's success in the polls, if I can call it that, really can't be attributed to their platform of fiscal responsibility. The Tea Party and the small government crowd support the laissez faire sort of doctrine that not only put the economy in its current state, but would have done nothing to repair it(if left to their devices, republicans may have worsened the whole ordeal). They became the party of "NO," and since a sluggish struggling economy hasn't miraculously bounced back, the democrat majority is going to feel the pinch. In the event that the GOP does win big in November, their partisan political games will be rendered useless, and (fingers crossed) they'll be forced to cooperate with the Obama administration.

Extreme Makeover

The oval office just got a bit of a face lift, which I would classify as piddly, who-gives-a-damn, news, but it took place presumably for Obama's oval office speech addressing the pull out of Iraq. Thusly I thought I could make some sort of connection for a cartoon.

Back To School

Since congress has appropriated $10 billion to save jobs for teachers, cops, and the like, the respective employers either received the funds too late, or are saving the money for next year in the event the economy and suffering state budgets do not recover. That would seem to make sense, but one, I doubt school boards would start a new hiring spree next fall regardless of the budget, and two the funds were given specifically to save jobs now.