I got a few cool cartoons drawn by some of the cartoonists who I accompanied on the recent cultural exchange trip to Cuba:

Image © 2010 by Brian Narelle

Brian Narelle drew this one on some note cards he’d brought for doing doodles on. The joke is that the one souvenir I wanted from Cuba was an EMPTY cigar box. I wanted one of the authentic wood boxes to use in the studio for pens and stuff. I had a hard time finding one, so I bought a box of 10 cigars (Partigas No. 4s) which we smoked throughout the week and brought the box back with me. In fact, one of our tour guides gave the group a present of a partial large box (for 25 big cigars) of Montecristos and specified while the dozen cigars inside were for all of us the box was for me, and our tour organizer Paul Bardwil also gave me a small empty box of Cohiba Cigraillos as a gift. So I ended up bringing three different sized empty boxes back with me. However…

Image © 2010 by Brian Narelle

I made the mistake of being honest with the customs people, and they confiscated all three of my empty boxes. I asked them if it was illegal to import GARBAGE from Cuba, and all I got back was a smart-assed answer that anything made in Cuba, garbage or not, was illegal to bring back to the U.S. I should have torn the tops off the boxes before I allowed them to toss them in the garbage, because you can bet those cigar boxes went home with some customs agent. Anyway, Brian sent me the cartoon above to commemorate the occasion.

Another thing that happened while I was in Cuba… my kids and The Lovely Anna bought a dog. That’s right, I came home to find a new puppy in the house. Hillary (Rhymes with Orange) Price gave me this cartoon on our return:

Image © 2010 by Hilary B. Price

She also sent me a box a week later containing… an empty Cuban cigar box! Apparently she has a neighbor who does a lot of traveling to Cuba or something, because it’s a real one and now resides in the top drawer of my studio cabinets next to the drawing board and contains all my pen nibs and holders! Thanks, Hilary!

I did a few caricatures when in Cuba as well of a number of the cartoonists we met as well as of our two tour guides, Ludwig and Mayen:

They were a lot of fun. Check out a bunch of great cartoons telling about the trip from Lex Fajardo.

Here’s a little video from our recent visit to Cuba, courtesy of Lex Fajardo, creator of Kid Beowulf, artist/director at the Schulz Studios and one of our group of traveling cartoonists. It’s a short clip of me and one of the Palante! cartoonists drawing one another.

Follow this link to read Lex’s thoughts on the trip.

You can also listen to another cartoonist from our trip, MythTickle‘s Justin Thompson, talk about the experience on the latest episode of the podcast Comics: Coast to Coast.

To say the last nine months of my life were filled with a lot of travel would be an understatement of epic proportions. Since April of 2009 I have gone on personal trips to New York, Orlando and London, England and professional trips to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Sandusky OH and New Jersey here in the U.S. as well as to Colombia, Germany, Kuwait, Iraq and Australia abroad. Whew. After officially signing on to be a speaker at the Stanley Awards in Sydney I was thinking that I wouldn’t be taking any more major trips for a looong time.

However some things are just too good to pass up.

I was contacted several months ago by Jeannie Schulz, the widow of the great “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz, and asked if I’d participate in a cultural exchange trip with a group of cartoonists and representatives from the Charles M. Schulz Museum to Havana, Cuba. The trip would last 6 days, during which time we’d meet with a number of newspaper cartoonists, animators, fine artists, students and art teachers in Havana. The idea was to learn about cartooning, animation and art in Cuba while we shared with them what we do back in the United States. There would of course also be time to see Havana and experience some of the culture of Cuba.

How do you say “no” to THAT?? (more…)