Fine Tuning

At the beach and in art

Today, my drawing is The New Yorker’s Daily Cartoon! I hope you are going to go somewhere that has water, perhaps an ocean, this holiday weekend.

I have a little art behind-the-scenes story about this drawing, if you are interested.

Initially, the sketch was done on my iPad, that’s how I send in my weekly sketches for consideration. This idea is one I resubmitted a few times because I really like it. But when I looked at it last week before resubmitting it, I decided to change the caption. Originally, I used the words “hit” and “scream,” and realized that those words made for unintended tension in the idea. Here is that first submission.

So I rewrote the caption with the intended meaning and tone. Voila! They wanted to buy this version. Every little word counts!

As usual when the magazine wants to publish one of my drawings, I redraw it with crow quill pen, ink and watercolor, scan it and sent the jpeg in. That version is below.

Because it was to be for the Daily Cartoon, however, and would be displayed digitally on all sorts of platforms, it had to be formatted to be 1500x1500 pixels, square. This is not done for the print magazine’s art.

I tried to reformat it, this is what happened:

Then they tried, and in every instance the drawing came out elongated. So, because I’m not in my studio and only have my iPad, I went to photoshop and added some elements to the drawing on the top and bottom: an extra cloud, an extra blanket and of course a seagull! I also darkened the speaking characters clothing just a little. All this to make the drawing square for technology.

I actually like the added elements. I think it makes the children who are the central figures, stand out more. Go figure!

Have a great holiday weekend!