Luckily, my limited attention span is well suited to the velocity of the news cycles. There's an assault of stories coming at you on even a slow-ish news day, but certain things just tend to stick out. Certain stories just seem to have an odd sort of electricity. It does get tricky when you're pitching an image that won't hit the newsstands for another week. Not only can other, bigger stories break in the mean time, but other daily cartoonists, can also come up with the same idea - this is the most depressing thing - and put it out there so yours looks old by the time it's published.
Barry BlittI felt it was more fun to knock people down than to build them up. I seemed to get a better reaction from my peers and from my friends when I was mocking stuff - which isn't necessarily anything to be too proud of.
Barry BlittThe magazine business is dying. It's a hard time for publishing. It does seem that everyone is much more opinionated now. I think there's probably more room for making opinionated illustrations. There was a time when Time magazine and Newsweek would have a realistic painted cover. A friend of mine used to do a lot of those paintings and he was told by the art director at one point, we are switching to photography. It seems that if someone saw a painting on a cover, it took a while to do, it must be old news. Photography became more immediate.
Barry BlittI don't have a philosophy of caricature. I'm not even sure I am a caricaturist, in the strictest sense of the word - I don't really exaggerate much. For a while, recently, I was thinking of attempting a reverse-caricature of Donald Trump; he certainly already appears to be a caricature of himself. I wondered about de-caricaturizing him, scaling back his whole face and hair and visual excess, and attempting to shed light on him that way.
Barry BlittJust look at the back of Donald Trump's head, any angle. There's some angles that his chin is just, what do I mean? I mean he's sculpted out of some kind of pudding, I think. It looks like his face is sort of melting slowly. I should talk because my face is melting quickly. He's some kind of bizarre sculpture. There's no one really who looks like that.
Barry BlittI'm not a good businessman and I don't promote myself particularly well. It's best I don't talk to anybody lest I alienate myself.
Barry BlittThe back of Donald Trump's head is fantastic and his eyebrows are amazing. His overbite and his series of chins and the color of him and the texture. It's amazing! He's like an artifact. It's an amazing head to draw and I have to think it's got to be part of his success. It's ready-made for public consumption.
Barry Blitt