This was printed up as a USO Autograph Card for giving out on tour

Visting FOBs

NCS Osama Watch- No sighting. Pastis claiming 65% of any reward if we spot him

Originally each group was supposed to visit up to 6 forward operating bases (FOBs) over the three days we were spending in the Kandahar area, but due to the flight snafus we were only scheduled to visit two each. Considering how long it took us to actually GET to Afghanistan it was really too bad our time there was so short that we could’t visit more sites, but co-ordinating and promoting our visits were not easy to do, so we just made the best of the time we did get with the soldiers.

Jeff Keane and Stephan Pastis look thrilled to be back in a Black Hawk

Like our visit to Iraq last year, we flew helicopters from KAF to the various camps and FOBs. Some of our flights were in Blackhawks like in Iraq, but a number of them were in the much larger CH-47 Chinooks. These are twin rotor troop and cargo transport helicopters, and hold about 60 or so soldiers as well as room for palettes of supplies. One of the coolest moments of the trip was when we were on our way back from our first FOB visit in a Chinook, with the back door open and a rear gunner on it. We were being escorted by two Huey helicopters that criss-crossed about our larger helo… if I would have had “Ride of the Valkyries” cranking in my ear it would have been like something out of “Apocalypse Now”.

This is what Afghanistan looks like…

The helicopter flights over the Afghanistan landscape really showed how truly desolate this country is. With the exception of a few craggy hills, most of what I saw of Iraq was flat and sandy, with a fair amour of scrubby brush and vegetation. Afghanistan, at least the areas were flew over, are so lifeless it looks like it could be the moon. Looming, knife-edge mountains seem to violently burst from the endless dust with little or no foothills as warning. The earth seems to go on forever with almost no sign of a tree or plant growth whatsoever. Small villages made of mud huts scar the landscape here and there, and are the only sign of any life amid the sprawling arid miles. You can’t even really call what coats the earth here “sand”… it’s better described as a dust so fine it makes talcum powder seem like coffee grounds, and lies a foot deep in places. We got lucky with the weather, which was calm during our stay. I was told the ever-present haze can turn into a complete brown-out in the blink of an eye when a wind storm whips across the horizon.

A small Afghan village… (more…)

In honor of the premiere of the newest Harry Potter movie this week, here’s a study of Bellatrix herself, Helena Bonham Carter.

The view from one of the few windows in the C-17

Kandahar, Afghanistan

One of the things that the U.S. Military and the USO take seriously on these tours is security, so we were not informed of any of our actual destinations until we were ready to depart. Therefore none of us knew until the tour commenced that we were headed to Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan (after Kabul) and the location of the Kandahar Airfielf (KAF) the largest military base in the southern part of the country and second largest in Afghanistan after Bagram. It’s also a NATO base, with 27 nations represented there as part of the International Security Assitance Force (ISAF). Of course we never saw the actual city of Kandahar… we were on either the base or on route to/from or at nearby forward operating bases.

Afghanistan from the air

Our C-17 landed just before noon local time at KAF, and we were met by our local liaisons/guides, DOD civilian contractors Tammie Van Diest and Joe Pettoni from the base in Bagram and Sgt. Deb Valdez and Capt. Charri Leonard who were stationed at KAF. They escorted us to our lodgings, a square of one story fiberglass buildings containing 15 or so rooms each and bathroom facilities. While austere they were quite comfortable and clean, and we bunked three to a room. These lodgings are for VIPs, and we were told they are like 5 star resorts compared to typical soldier accommodations. The bathrooms had real toilets, sinks and showers with plenty of hot water… something you don’t see a lot of on the bases in Afghanistan, especially the plumbing. Lacking any kind of real sewage system or infrastructure, most of the toilets there are porta-potties or “honeypots” as they are known there.

Speaking of sewage, one of the most famous (or infamous) landmarks in KAF is the “Poo Pond” or “Stinky Pond” or in less delicate terminology, the “Shit Pond”. KAF has no septic or water treatment facility, so all the human waste is dumped into one large, man-made central “pond” which serves both as a gigantic DNA record of anyone and everyone who has ever visited KAF and the source of one mother of an enormous, eye-watering stench. I got a few souvenirs while in Afghanistan, and one of them was this t-shirt:

Sunbathing on the beach and swimming there is discouraged.

Supposedly in June of 2001 the Stinky Pond will be replaced by a new water treatment facility. I say “supposedly” because few of the soldiers that mentioned this say they will believe it until they see it. In the meantime the popular saying there is “I love the smell of Poo Pond in the morning”.

Some of the gang outside our lodging

We had a few hours to get settled in before out first drawing session, so after getting our gear stowed we went to grab some lunch. While we were cleared to use the base’s dining facilities (D-FACS) we elected to visit another of the landmarks of KAF: The Boardwalk.

The KAF Boardwalk

The Boardwalk is a a half square mile of covered, raised decking that surrounds a large dirt courtyard and is lined with shops, restaurants and food stands a little like an outdoor mall. It’s an oasis of home in the middle of the Afghan wilderness.

Huh? Really??

It is pretty surreal to be having lunch at a TGIFridays in Afghanistan, but that’s what we did. We could have opted for KFC, or italian at Mama Mia’s, or New York Style Pizza or a few other food stands. Some of us were looking forward to trying authentic kabobs from one of the food stands but rumor of the establishment’s nickname of “Protezoa House” caused us to second guess that idea.

Some of the vendors on the Boardwalk

Huh? Really??

The Boardwalk also contained a telephone center and internet cafe, coffee shop, several store with local goods and souvenirs, a few PX stores from some of the countries of soldiers stationed there like Germany, France and the Netherlands, a stage where visiting musical acts perform and a hockey rink, of all things. Construction was going on for a concrete running track along the perimeter of the courtyard.

The stage for USO concerts

The Boardwalk was also like a mirage, in that it was a thin veneer over the reality of being in a very desolate land. The restaurants are often out of this and that, and when they are out of something that’s it. There was no creamer for the coffee at “Green Beans”, the local coffee stand. That is hardly a big deal, but it does drive home how isolated you really are in that place. Back home, if you want to get creamer for your coffee and a place is out of it you just go to the next place. If you want a Diet Coke you are only a short trip away from somewhere that you can get one as long as you have a buck or two. Here, if they don’t have what you are looking for it doesn’t matter how much money you have… you aren’t getting it. Standing at the crossroads sign in the corner of the Boardwalk you see and understand you are some 11,000 miles away from home, where creamer and Diet Coke are plentiful and you are not hitting the deck when the air raid siren goes off signaling a possible rocket attack on the base. It’s no wonder these soldiers are so appreciative when we do our silly little drawings for them… it’s just another piece of home they can grab ahold of.

A long way from anywhere

The Rocket Attack

Note to self- the next time I go on one of these USO tours to a war zone, DO NOT tell The Lovely Anna if there is a rocket attack on our base until AFTER I get home.

Yes, the sirens went off about two hours after we arrived at KAF signaling that everyone should take cover due to a possible rocket attack. I was fast asleep in my bunk taking a nap while my roommates Garry “Doonesbury” Trudeau and Mike “Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist” Luckovich were out on the boardwalk. We had been briefed before that while there was a bunker just outside the entrance to our lodgings, our building was in fact a bunker itself being surrounded on all sides by 12 foot tall concrete “T-Walls”, so it was not necessary to head for the bunker unless you really wanted to. We were, however, supposed to get on our IBAs (body armor) and lay flat on the ground. I was flat on my bunk about 2 feet from the ground so I thought that was close enough. Guide Joe, Jeff “The Family Circus” Keane and Stephan “Pearls Before Swine” Pastis left me for dead and headed to the bunkers to save their own skins… I’ll remember that the next time I consider throwing myself on a live cup of spilling McDonald’s coffee to save them being scalded. Anyway we never even found out if a rocket landed anywhere on the base, which is so huge a dozen rockets could land there and we’d never even hear them. No cartoonists were injured in the attack, but Stephan may have soiled his underwear.

Drawing at KAF

Later that afternoon we did a drawing session on the base. One of the unfortunate but necessary things about the tour was that we split into two groups for most of our time in Afghanistan… it’s better that way so we see more soldiers and can cover more ground, but it’s a lot more fun to all be together. My group consisted of myself, Jeff Keane and Stephan Pastis aka the “A team”, since we were clearly the better drawing, appealing and looking team than those slouches Trudeau, Luckovich and Rick “Baby Blues” Kirkman. we drew at the Moral, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) center while Team Bravo aka the “Junior Varsity” went to the brand new USO center.

The A Team at the MWR Center

Myself, Jeff and Stephan doing our thing

Most of the soldiers we drew were stationed at KAF or in transit to or from FOBs in the south of Afghanistan. It is always incredibly interesting to hear the stories of the people we meet… where they are from, what their job is and what they think of their tour of duty. I drew an artillery supplier, several mechanics that worked on helicopters and F-18 fighters, communications specialists, convoy security escorts and a number of civilian contractors there doing things like building bunkers and shelters, translating the local dialects of Pashto and Dari and other jobs. One of the ones that stood out was K-9 unit  Jason and Isaac, a black lab that sniffs out IEDs. They had just completed a mission where Isaac had found an IED factory, causing the shut down of the face;lit and saving the live and limbs of who knows how many soldiers. There guys are heroes.

Jason and Isaac

Drawing at the KAF MWR Center

Busy drawing the troops

After our drawing session our team had dinner at a Dutch restaurant called Echoes, adjacent to the Boardwalk. I call these places “restaurants” but they are really places where you can get a small selection of foods different from the D-Facs for which you pay. The base takes American dollars by the way. I had a giant plate o’meat called the “mixed Grill” and it wasn’t too bad. Like Iraq and Kuwait, there is no alcohol for US forces anywhere in Afghanistan so I order a “near beer” which was definitely NOT good. Ah, the realities of war.

Me, Stephan, Garry and Mike and an M-WRAP

Thursday: Part three- The FOBs

Click for a closer look: L to R: Stephan Pastis, Mike Luchovich, Jeff Keane,
Rick Kirkman, Garry Trudeau and myself in Kandahar, Afghanistan

Some Background

The annual member business meeting of the National Cartoonists Society takes place early on Saturday morning at each NCS Reuben Awards weekend, and it’s usually filled with equal parts routine and contention… but every once and a while something is brought up that ends up being something special.

At the meeting in 2007 in Orlando, cartoonist Jeff Bacon stood up and what he had to say started something very special.

Jeff is a retired Navy captain and the creator of the cartoon “Broadside” for the Naval Times. His question was “what is the NCS doing to show support for the members of the U.S. military serving in the war zones and elsewhere?”. He and some local cartoonists had organized some trips to draw for wounded veterans at stateside military hospitals and rehab centers, but he wanted the NCS board to get involved and get some groups to do a little bit more.

NCS president Jeff Keane, with his usual shrewd insight, put the ball in Jeff’s court and told him to “go ahead and work on that”. Unlike a lot of people who have no problem suggesting ideas as long as they don’t have to spend time implementing them, Jeff did just that.  Finding private funding and enlisting the USO to guide it, Jeff brought a proposal for a trip with 8 NCS cartoonists to visit the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and Ramstein AFB in Germany to draw for wounded warriors and hospital/CASF staff. I was lucky enough to be a part of that group, and we were such a hit with the troops the USO offered to pick up the tab and start funding multiple trips a years for cartoonist groups to go overseas and entertain military servicemen and servicewomen.

Last year in October we took the next step and I was a part of a group of 10 cartoonists who went again to Germany but this time also to Kuwait and Iraq to draw for soldiers in the war zone. During that trip there was a lot of discussion as to where we could go next, and the next logical step was into the more active war zone in Afghanistan. It was obvious to the group that things were escalating in that area of the world… unlike the previous year when the answer most soldiers gave to where they had been injured was “Iraq”, most of the wounded soldiers we drew in DC at Walter Reed or the Bathesda Naval Hospital and Landstuhl were hurt in Afghanistan. It was thought that the troops stationed there were probably in need of a few smiles. The ball was already rolling at that point for a trip into a much more active war zone the next year.

The Tour Begins

On November 5th, a group of six NCS cartoonists met up with two USO guides and a USO photographer in Washington DC, and headed out on a week long trip with a stop again in Landstuhl before going on into Afghanistan. The group included Jeff Keane (The Family Circus), Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) Mike Luckovich (Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) and myself.

The number one question I got asked about the trip was “am I nervous about going?”. My standard answer was “If Jessica Simpson can do it, I certainly can.”… and in reality I wasn’t nervous in the slightest. Yes, we are issued body armor and briefed on security issues, but we are really never in areas that are not extremely secure… not to mention we are surrounded at all times by several thousand troops with automatic weapons. Really the only times we are exposed to possible harm is when we are in transit between bases via helicopter, and again the locations we are traveling to and from are not front line or high risk areas… at least that’s what I tell my wife. Besides, I always make sure all the other cartoonists are wearing brighter colors than I am just in case.

Landstuhl, Germany

Our intrepid band of cartoonists arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on Nov. 6th and traveled an additional 1 1/2 hours to Landstuhl via bus. Once there we almost immediately headed to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to draw wounded soldiers and hospital staff. Most of the group had been there twice before, and I have written extensively out those trips here and here, so I won’t get too detailed about our third visit this time. The time we spend drawing the injured soldiers is by far the hardest and most gut-wrenching of our tours. Some of these kids are hurt badly, and will be facing life long challenges because of their injuries. We are there to try and bring a smile to their faces, but it’s sometimes hard to feel funny when you are staring these kinds of realities in the face… literally. We toured several wards as always and met and drew a lot of brave men and women, but two stood out on this trip.

Rick “Baby Blues” Kirkman and I draw for U. S. Army
SGT Jason “Ten Second” Gilbert of East Lake, OH

One was U. S. Army SGT Jason Gilbert of East Lake, OH, who had been injured, like so many others we saw, by an improvised explosive device (IED). He had injuries to his right leg and face… not too severe as he still HAD a right leg unlike a lot of less lucky soldiers. He was in good spirits and enjoyed out visit. Speaking of lucky, SGT Gilbert told us his nickname was “Ten Second Gilbert” because he had a propensity for running into IEDs almost immediately upon going out into the field. When asked how many IED explosions he’d been involved in, his answer was staggering.

Seventeen.

SEVENTEEN?!? Are you kidding me?? Don’t you think after three or four you’d be pushing papers at some desk somewhere? The fact is that most of these soldiers would rather be back there with their buddies and unit doing what they were trained to do. Many of the wounded we meet on these tours only want to get patched up and get back to duty… they look on their absence as letting their pals down by not being there with them. Incidentally while I was drawing him I considered telling a joke about his nickname involving a different reason for being called “Ten Second Gilbert”… but I elected not to go there. Probably a good thing because he might have had to kill me.

Drawing for a Wounded Warrior (Well Stephan’s still drawing, the rest of us are done)

The other soldier we met that sticks out in my mind was a 22 year old man who had been shot through the lungs, ruining one and damaging the other. His life was saved thanks to a recently developed portable extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine that was invented there in Landstuhl and was used for the first time on him. The machine literally replaced the functions of the lungs by processing the blood through a membrane adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide, and then reintroducing the blood into the body, totally bypassing the lungs. The wounded soldier was unconscious while we visited, so I just drew a caricature of a sibling of his from a picture while we chatted with his mother who was by his side. It was an inspirational story, and hopefully this young man will be okay.

Meet the Cartoonists!

Later that night we drew at the Warrior Center nearby, and the next morning we drew at the fantastic Kaiserslautern Military Community Center (KMCC) adjacent to the Ramstein air terminal.

Me drawing a family at the KCMM at Ramstein

(Mis)Adventures with Afghanistan Air

We were originally scheduled to fly out of Ramstein AFB early in the afternoon on Sunday, Nov. 7th, but military flights are ever changing, canceling and rescheduling. The term “hurry up and wait” certainly applies, and to say our getting out of Germany and to Afghanistan was chaotic would be an understatement. Our original flight was rescheduled in advance to 9:30 that evening, which allowed us some time to draw at the USO center in the air terminal. About 10 minutes into our 4:00 pm signing one of our USO guides stopped the event because our 9:30 flight had been changed and we were now leaving in half an hour! So we quickly packed up, gathered all our stuff and our armor gear, went through security screening, loaded up on a bus, went out to the C-17 we were taking for the 7 hour flight and strapped in. 45 minutes of sitting there later we were informed the plane had an electrical problem so we got off and schlepped all our stuff back to the terminal.

Little did we know we’d not be taking off for 7 hours during this safety briefing…

We stuck around waiting to see if the needed parts could be found and the plane fixed in time for the flight to leave by the 10 pm flight cutoff time (The German government requires a special waiver approval for US military flights to depart later than 10 pm). Eventually we were called back as the plane had been fixed and we were ready to depart. So, we once again went through security screening, loaded up on a bus and went out to the C-17. We were still sitting on the bus when we were informed the flight crew could not take the flight as their duty time would be exceeded if they took off so much later than scheduled, so the flight was scrubbed.  Once again we schlepped all our stuff back to the terminal, and this time took off for our lodging as the likelihood of getting a replacement flight crew lined up AND the special waiver for late takeoff was remote. We took all of our luggage back to our rooms and boarded the bus to go get some dinner, when a group of soldiers came out of another lodging building and began to board a bus with a bunch of flight gear. One of the cartoonists went over to talk to them… turns out they were the unlikely replacement flight crew for our flight. So, we ONCE AGAIN got all our bags from the rooms, went back to the terminal and checked in for the flight. This time we had 50 minutes before we were going to be boarding, and we all needed a beer… BADLY. We headed across the street to a sports bar at the KMCC, and ran into the original flight crew enjoying a few beverages of their own.

Some of our original flight crew in Kaiserslautern

Eventually we actually did take off for Afghanistan.. at about 1 am. Our 7 hour flight put us in Kandahar at about 11:30 local time.  The flight over in the C-17 was pretty uncomfortable… no pretzels or drinks at all. Also it was about 45 degrees in the cavernous cabin, and we were unprepared both for the cold or for trying to sleep on the metal deck of the plane. I found a wool blanket wedged between two seats but that was the only one anyone could find. I used it for about 2 hours until I took pity on “Pearls Before Swine” cartoonist Stephen Pastis who lay shivering on the freezing metal floor, and gave up the blanket. It eventually got passed around to a few of the cartoonists, but nobody got much rest on that flight. Or pretzels.

Jeff enjoys first class in the C-17…

Tune in tomorrow for part two of our series: In Afghanistan!

Q: Can you take us through your process for a typical illustration job, from start to finish?

A: Fortuitous timing on that question, as the editor of an article in School Library Journal that I did an accompanying illustration for recently wrote a blog post describing some of the process. You can read her article here, but I will elaborate a bit more from my perspective using this recent job as an example of a typical project’s process.

The basic anatomy of an illustration job:

1. Initial communication with client & agreement
2. Discussion of the project details with the Art Director
3. Research
4. Initial concept sketches
5. Review and direction by client
6. Revised rough sketch (if necessary) and subsequent review
7. Final pencil sketch
8. Review and direction/approval by client
9. Execution of finished illustration
10. Delivery and invoicing

1. Initial communication with client & agreement

Every job starts with the initial contact. The client may have found you in many different ways (exactly how, BTW, is important to find out for marketing purposes) but in the end they have contacted you with a proposed job. This stage simply involves your reviewing what it is the client wants and deciding on if it is something you feel you can deliver to the client’s satisfaction (sometimes you get a call to do something so outside your area of expertise it’s not wise to accept the job). Important issues are the terms of the copyright use, time frame needed for delivery of final work and of course the amount of money you’ll be getting paid. The dry, boring but important stuff.

In my example here I received a call from art director of School Library Journal Mark Tuchman with whom I have done work before, looking for an illustration to accompany an article. They wanted a caricature illustration of the subject of the article, delivery in about a week and their budget was adequate for what I typically charge for a full page illustration. The only problem on my end was time, as I was currently slammed with a big MAD parody job, work on an episode of the Cartoon Network MAD show and another poster illustration. However the deadline was far enough away that I could squeeze it in by working on it while awaiting approvals and such for my other projects.

2. Discussion of the project details with the Art Director

The next step is all about communication. You need to carefully understand what it is the client is looking for, and what needs need to be fulfilled with the illustration. Most art directors will describe the job in detail and what they are looking for, but some are less specific leaving either more for the artist to work with creatively or more to guess at. I always ask for a copy of the article I will be illustrating and if possible the basic layout as it will appear in the magazine. I also ask a lot of questions to get as strong a grasp as I can on what it is they are looking for in the illustration.

In our example, Mark wanted a full page illustration with bleed depicting college professor and gaming expert Kurt Squire, who is associated with games like Madden Football and is the subject of a Q & A style article about his career and involvement in gaming. In our conversation we discussed several possible concepts including incorporating some Madden-style images and playing up the “computer nerd” aspect of Kurt against the macho football player dynamic. Mark is a great AD to work with because he gives me the essential elements of what they need for the illustration but allows me a lot of creative freedom to come up with my own solutions.

3. Research

In most cases this just involves actually reading the article to be illustrated. That sounds like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many illustrators don’t bother to do that and just do a drawing based on the description of the AD. Big mistake. There are almost always subtle or important points/themes that the article will suggest that should or could be incorporated into the illustration. At the very least you might avoid doing something with the image that doesn’t belong based on the text it accompanies. Other research might involve finding references for various objects or environments that will be part of the illustration.

In our sample project, I was provided several pictures of Kurt for the caricature but did a Google search on him anyway and found a couple of other references that helped out. I also looked up details like what an xBox and controller looks like, etc.

4. Initial concept sketches

I always try and provide three different solutions to the illustration “problem” for the client to review… and I try to make them as diverse as I can. It’s easy to come up with a single solution and just go with it, but by forcing yourself to brainstorm other ideas you sometimes find a better idea emerges, or at least elements of a different idea that can be incorporated into your first one to strengthen it. It sometimes seems like a waste of time trying to come up with other ideas when your first one was working well, but it’s a good practice as it gets the AD and client involved in the decision making and again can lead to a better illustration. 4 out of 5 times they go with your initial idea anyway because it often is the strongest one, but again sometimes another concept pops up and is better than the first one or elements of others become incorporated into your main idea.

These sketches are loose and not meant to represent any form of finished drawing. They are concepts only and the client should understand this.

Here are the three rough sketch ideas I submitted for this project. I often accompany each sketch with a written description of the important elements and my thinking behind them, in case that is not readily apparent in the sketches:

Comments to AD: “This basically shows an image “inside” the game with Kurt as a QB surrounded by falling game DVDs and an XBOX and Playstation with requisite controllers. In the background I though we could do a cascading pattern of “1″s and “0″s aka programming code ala “The Matrix”. We can play up the “nerd” part with accessories like tape on the glasses and a pocket protector with pens, possibly adding some books on computer science amid the gaming equipment.”

Comments to AD: “This has both a nerdy Kurt playing the game, possibly with lots of books piled up around him, with the light coming from the screen showing his digital self tossing a football. We could play up the nerdy vs. the jock by making him buff as the QB…. This is again a sort of play on “The Matrix”.

Comments to AD: “This is a straight action shot of Kurt bursting from the TV screen, with light rays and glass about him vaulting over a gaming console. We again could play up the “nerd” aspects of Kurt with the tape-repaired glasses, making him skinny with big hands and feet, and with a pocket protector and/or slide-rule.”

5. Review and direction by client

After submitting the roughs I wait to hear back from the client with direction. This could range from a quick approval of one of the sketches “as is” to approval of one of them with some changes to wanting more concept sketches. A lot depends on if one of the ideas is an obvious home run or if there are too many questions about the messages and the effectiveness of any of the sketches to deliver it.

In our sample project, Mark and the clients liked the third sketch best (my initial idea, BTW… 4 out of 5 strikes again) but with some changes. First, they decided to downplay the “nerd” references, and figured my making him a skinny guy in the football gear and in caricature would be enough. Second, they wanted to incorporate some elements that spoke of his college professor persona and location. We discussed and settled on adding a textbook and coffee cup with the logo of his college, the University of Wisconsin- Madison, on it.

6. Revised rough sketch (if necessary) and subsequent review

This stage is usually only needed if you have not worked with an art director before or the initial sketches were a long way from what they were looking for. Rather than waste time working on a final pencil that may end up being changed drastically or scrapped, you would instead do another round of roughs based on whatever direction you had received from the first round’s review.

In the case of our illustration here, the third sketch was close enough to what they wanted and the changes were minimal enough that a second rough was unnecessary. Plus having worked with Mark several times before, he and I knew what to expect from each other.

7. Final pencil sketch

This stage represents a tight pencil drawing of the final image. Nothing should be left to the imagination here… except for the finished painting/rendering techniques the complete illustration and all elements therein should be present and well drawn out.

8. Review and direction/approval by client

You should still be prepared for some changes at this stage. That’s the purpose of the final pencil. However if the first stages were done thoroughly the changes should be nothing more than tweaks. Still, the client needs to see and approve the illustration at this stage, because any changes after the art is completed will be a lot tougher to do. The client should understand this as well… this is their opportunity to make any fundamental changes.

In this case no changes at all… on to the final.

9. Execution of finished illustration

Here’s the final art:

Click for a closer look…

I used my colored line style on this piece, which was what they were looking for as a finishing technique.

10. Delivery and invoicing

Finally, you deliver the final in whatever manner the client requests. In this case I placed the image in my client FTP folder and supplied Mark with a user name and password to retrieve it. Of course the important thing is that the final is delivered on time and on deadline.

I then submit an invoice to the client for payment. Job over.

This is just a very basic example of a typical illustration job, and there can be a lot of different circumstances and departures from what is described here. For example, with a new client I may require a partial payment after the approval of the rough or even an advance prior to starting work at all. There may be (and often is) an actual contractual agreement that needs signing at the start f the project, which details the copyrights involved. There may also be multiple rounds of roughs that might require additional payment or be expected in advance due to the nature of the job. Every project is a little different.

This illustration should be in the next issue of School Library Journal. after which not doubt Kurt Squire will be wondering what he ever did to me to deserve what I did to him in the caricature.

Thanks to Brent Lemke for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Now that we have left the area we are allowed to say our cartoonist’s USO tour spent three days in Afghanistan, specifically Kandahar and FOBs in the southern part of the country.

The picture was taken at the Kandahar Air Field prior to one of our trips to outlying camps to draw for the deployed troops. I thought maybe the soldiers might get a look at me in the gear and think I was Special Forces, but it turns out they thought I was Special Ed.

A full description of the trip is coming next week.

Rick “Baby Blues” Kirkman and I draw for U. S. Army
SGT Jason Gilbert of East Lake, OH

Our band of cartoonists are still drawing away at an undisclosed location in the war zone in the middle east, and as US Military rules won’t allow me to say where we are or when we return, I’ll have to wait until I get back to share our experiences… which have been amazing.

The above picture is courtesy of the USO, and can be seen here along with several other images and a brief story about the first stop on our tour in Landstuhl, Germany.

Sorry, but I can’t figure out how to scan or upload a sketch this week from here in the middle east. I can barely find internet access to communicate back home. This is an old one from the tour we did last year to Iraq and Kuwait. I’ll make up for it next week…

Being on this USO tour I am missing the annual Convention and Competition of the International Society of Caricature Artists. going on this week in Las Vegas. I wrote about they event a few weeks ago… I cannot recommend the ISCA or it’s convention more highly for anyone who does caricatures professionally, either live or for some other purpose like print illustration or animation.

I am wishing the best for the ISCA convention attendees. They are sure to be having a great time.

Now that we’ve moved on “down range” I can say that our group of cartoonists spent Saturday and Sunday at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and the Ramstien Air Force Base in Germany drawing for wounded soldiers, hospital staff, service men and women stationed there and their families. More details after I return.