Editorial cartoonists are usually noted for their point of view and their ability to point out the foibles and absurdities of our political and social institutions.
I also take particular note of them, however, just for their drawings. Some editorial cartoonists are among the best cartoon illustrators we have.
A case in point is David Horsey, the editorial cartoonist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer. He certainly has a point of view and insight into the political process (he has a masters degree in international relations), but beyond that his drawings are just terrific.
Horsey is an excellent draughtsman and a superb caricaturist, but what I really enjoy is his handling of pen and ink. He does wonderful pen and ink renderings of buildings, trees, interiors and people with just enough cross hatching and judicious applications of half tone to make them a visual treat.
I don’t know his actual influences, but when I look at his drawings I see stylistic similarities with master caricaturist Mort Drucker, the relaxed exaggeration of Jack Davis and the wonderful attention to background texture and detail of New Yorker cartoonist Charles Saxon.
The David Horsey page on the Seattle Post Intelligencer site includes an archive of his cartoons (searchable by date, topic or person), a series of illustrations he did to accompany a story in which the cartoonist traced the path of Lewis and Clark, a feature on the cartoons that won Horsey and the P-I the 2003 Pullitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and Empire Rising, a satirical comic strip history of American politics circa 2003-2004 cast as Imperial Rome.
His cartoons are syndicated to numerous newspapers, and four collections of his cartoons have been published. I think the most recent is From Hanging Chad to Baghdad.
In case you’re inclined to think he only picks on the current president, there is an archive of older, Clinton era Horsey cartoons on the Newseum site. There is also a more current, and more extensive, David Horsey cartoon archive on Daryl Cagle’s Cartoonist Index.
