A few weeks back, I made the decision to start blending my politics with my art, which resulted in guvsux.com. Because, well, government sucks. I've always doodled, but never really tried cartooning. There's a difference. Doodling has no point... it's just goofing around with a pencil. Cartooning propels a confident point. It has purpose. It seeks to communicate. My work on faces has strengthened. Where drawing someone's face used to involve a lot of erasing for me, now my lines are strong and I rarely erase. Like the Nancy Pelosi I drew yesterday...   But all of my faces are straight-on, for the most part. Mostly bust shots. Little or no background. Part of the problem is that I'm not great at turning the head of a person in my mind. And most of the examples I can find on the Internet are facial portraits, and since I'm limited to drawing what I see, I can't manipulate the angle much - yet. The same with full-body shots. Clothing folds, hands, things like that, they remain tough for me. Just not enough experience and practice. And then the background. I think I get so tickled that a picture I drew actually looks like the subject that I don't want to mess it up with a background. But with time, I'll get bolder. My storytelling... I need to remember that in a few panels, I don't have much room to set the scene and convey the point/punchline. Yesterday's toon with Pelosi and Harry Reid would have been better, for example, if I had opened it as a Pelosi / Reid presser. Or put her into the second panel instead of jumping - without warning - to Reid. (Where'd he come from!) But I got so excited that the sketch of him had strength that I lost track of my need to convey my intent in the most efficient way. In a nutshell, I'm learning. So forgive my awkward steps. Thanks for the encouragement from all of you. I'm having fun with it, and I hope you are too... | 
