This was the only place hiring former tug-of-war champions
25. Lee Lorenz
Lee Lorenz had one of the most beautiful and fun styles to my eye. His sharp brushstrokes were so effortlessly witty, capturing an elegance you usually only find in older New Yorker cartoons while interrupting the brush from completing its flow to avoid being staid. I love the air in how he arranges everything—it’s not calculated because he trusts the reader. He’s kind of like a casually, jazzy Peter Arno, and yet at the same time reminds me of Americana, like Lucinda Williams or something, that epic, yet relaxed and trusting rock ’n’ roll sound. The figure on the left is supposed to be tying her shoe while the guy is just kind of floating there.
26. Is this a private joke or can anyone join in?
I liked the idea of having the meaning of the cartoon change by adding my characters, so that Lee Lorenz’s character seems to be referring to my characters joining in the cartoon. I also wanted to go one step further than Robert Weber and have my characters take action. The one on the left is kind of sitting and crossing her arms and the one in the middle seems to be running perpetually. The one on the right just looks happy to be included.
27. Thinking about brushing my teeth
This was the first time I tried drawing a cartoon with a brush I think sometime in Winter 2022.
28. We were unable to locate the body
“Let’s just say that pretty ugly is an aspiring oxymoron.” —Charles Bernstein
This one was published in the New Yorker this week (May 27, 2024) and I’ve come to think of it as a cartoon failing and succeeding at the same time. I wanted to have half of the drawing not just appear ugly, but be genuinely ugly, while the other half is pretty, and confuse what’s ugly and what’s pretty because it fades in and out of ugliness and prettiness to try to make ugliness beautiful.
I wanted to know how it felt to use ugliness as a color on a palette, since we stare at ugly longer than something boringly pretty. I was thinking of Albert Oehlen, but I didn’t want to make something deliberately, aggressively bad, I just wanted to add a smidgen of ugliness to make it human and beautiful. Just a dollop.
This is the last time I am ever attempting something like this. I will forever mourn what this cartoon could have been. My mind will probably never be made up about this one.
29. This was the only place hiring former tug-of-war champions
This one’s just pretty.