Political cartooning, like printed newspapers, continues its long, slow decline. (Sometimes not so slow.) One of the greatest practitioners of the art was Pat Oliphant. Now retired, much of Oliphant’s work has been collected at the University of Virginia, which is now holding an exhibit.
Even without Oliphant’s consistently original ideas and humor, I have always admired his art. His ink line, for all these years, appeared to me as having come off of a brush. The late Jeff MacNelly, who died 20 years ago in his early 50’s, used a brush, but to my surprise, as this video shows, Oliphant inked with a pen. Even more surprising, he used acrylic ink, not India ink.
