Hello Mr. President!

Back in early 2015 I was in my final few months as president of the National Cartoonists Society, and planning my last “Reuben Award Weekend” to take place in Washington DC in May. The Lovely Anna was in charge of the decor at the big awards dinner (actually she was in charge of everything but I enjoyed pretending to be doing something) and at her command request I did a series of black and white pencil sketch caricatures of all 44 U.S. Presidents for centerpieces for the banquet, George Washington was Table #1, etc.. They were small at about 4 x 6. and the originals were all put in different decorative frames as part of the centerpiece decor. As usual, Anna outdid herself… although she didn’t have to draw 44 caricatures.

As Grover Cleveland was both president #22 and #24, I tried to sneak this one past Anna for table #24:

That did not fly, so I had to do a second caricature of Cleveland.

Anyway doing those sketches ended up being a worthwhile venture. People seemed to like them so I made a poster:

I sold them for awhile, although they didn’t sell all that well. What was really surprising is that over the years I ended up licensing them out to several clients including for a kid’s book on U.S. Presidents for Papersalt publishing. For them I did color versions and did one of Donald Trump as well.

In December, Papersalt called me to do one of our then president-elect, now our 46th president, Joe Biden. That is it at the top of the post. It’s still very small, prints at about 2 x 3.

I took great pleasure in doing this one.