My cartoons begin with rough sketches, done in ballpoint pen at about the size the cartoons get printed. These are shown to Marianne Ratcliff, the Opinion Page Editor, for her okay.


Once I have the cartoon approved, I draw it in pen and ink, using a light box to trace my pencilled version onto the final paper. This USED to become the final "original art," prior to the computer.

Nowadays, however, i scan in the line work (seen above) and open the image in Photoshop, where I clean up the drawing (much better than using white ink!), add my gray tones and sometimes add my type, if i feel typeset letters are better for a given cartoon than hand lettering. The finished cartoon is below.