Happy St. Paddy's Day!
My cartoon for The Hamilton County ReporterThey say
“They say there are only two kinds of people on St. Patrick’s day: the Irish, and the people that drive them home.” - Conan O’Brien
If you fall into the latter category it’s going to cost you a wee bit more to drive those Irish lads and lasses home on Tuesday night. Gas prices are up and will most likely continue to rise as long as we keep dropping our munitions in this war, conflict or excursion that Trump claims has already been won.
When I started thinking about what topic I wanted to comment on for my local paper it didn’t take long to decide. I had just put gas in my car and like most of us I was not happy with significant and rapid increase in price.
I also realized that the paper was going to come out on the day before St. Paddy’s Day and I knew that my publisher would be pleased if I could bring that into the panel in some way. I’ve never been big on celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Many years ago I worked a second job managing an Irish restaurant and the week of March 17th was always a chaotic marathon of corned beef, beer and bagpipes. That said, I know lots of people that absolutely love St. Paddy’s Day. If you’re one of them I hope you wear something green, toast the day with friends and have the most wonderful time. Most of all I hope you please, please, please get home safely. You’re much more valuable than any old pot of gold.
As I mentioned above I wanted to figure out a way to comment on the rising price of gasoline and somehow tie it to St. Patrick’s Day. I began by drawing a few leprechaun images and thinking about other visuals that are associated with the holiday: shamrocks, green beer, etc. The most logical connection was the pot of gold connected to leprechauns. It only took me a few moments to come up with the idea of the gold being his gas money for the week and that he was going to take an attitude and be very protective of it.
I played around with a few leprechaun sketches, his beard, proportions and so on. I also wanted to push the visual contrast of scale. Our hero needed to be very small in relationship to the pot of gold. This helped to push the idea of gasoline being very expensive and also made the leprechaun more fun as the little tough guy guarding his treasure.
Final drawing…
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