I love my job. Drawing cartoons and writing the captions are a lot of fun! It can almost seem like playing until I'm asked to come up with ideas with certain constraints.
Obviously, since most of my cartoons are used in publications that are considered pretty tame as far as tone and subject matter is concerned, my cartoons must reflect that same non-edgy approach. That's the first constraint.
Secondly, the cartoon must be in the same ball park in terms of the mission statement of the publication. If it's a magazine that's published for car mechanics, they want to see wrench cartoons, not cartoons featuring fairy tale characters. Also, it's not advisable to draw cartoons that make fun of the readership. A cartoon about unreasonable customers would be better than a cartoon about an over-charging automobile service technician in a mechanic magazine.
Lastly, the the magazine will often have a specific theme for each issue. Like the Food Issue or the Traveling Issue. In those cases, the editors will ask for cartoon ideas that go in tandem with that issue's theme.
That is the case with this cartoon. I was contacted a few months back by the fine folks at Chicago Health Magazine about some cartoon ideas to go along with their Fall 2016 issue. The theme for the magazine was dealing with the very serious subject matter of aging, memory loss and the devastating Alzheimer's Disease. It took quite some time to finally come up with some sketches that walked that very fine line between funny and serious. Here is the result. I hope you like it!
Here's a link to the magazine's website that has a few other cartoons I've had the pleasure to do for them.