A bit over a decade ago, I interviewed Daniel Boris for the Washington City Paper. He recently reached out to talk about his fledgling political cartoon career.
As I believe
you already know, I've loved cartooning since I was a kid and my
childhood dream was to be a syndicated comic strip artist. I graduated
from art school and have been a professional graphic artist for most of
my life. I was also a finalist in the 2010 Washington Post's, "America's
Next Great Cartoonist" contest, with a comic strip I called "Hoxwinder
Hall."
Several years ago, after more than 25
years of working in that industry, I was laid off and decided to try
something completely different. I became a licensed home inspector, and
then in late 2018 I became a real estate agent. In 2019 I won Rookie of
the Year at my brokerage and have fortunately been a top-producing agent
ever since. For a couple of years there -- while I was busy working as a
real estate agent -- I didn't create any art at all and I eventually
started to miss it. During lulls in my real estate business I began
creating art again, and it's the editorial cartooning that I enjoy the
most.
Currently the only place my editorial cartoons are being published is on
my own social media platforms (my blog, Facebook, InstaGram, and
Twitter pages). I've received very positive feedback wherever I share my
cartoons. My most recent cartoon is the Before/After Elon Musk Twitter piece. So far that cartoon has
received 265 Shares on Facebook, which makes me feel pretty good. You
never know when your art will resonate with people on a large scale, but
that one certainly does!
I create my cartoons entirely
digitally now, drawing on a WACOM tablet, in Adobe Photoshop, using a
desktop PC. After the 2016 election, I was inspired to start creating
editorial cartoons. I was mostly lampooning Donald Trump, because how
could you not, right? So much material there... Ha Ha! My first
political cartoons were pretty rough, but the more of them I created,
the better I got at it. Over the past 6 months I have made an effort to
consistently produce more cartoons. I believe the quality of my work has
significantly evolved and become polished to the point that I now
aspire to be a professional syndicated editorial cartoonist. I'm friends
on Facebook with quite a few syndicated editorial cartoonists. They all
have been very gracious with their feedback and complimentary of my
work. Because of their encouragement, I have gained the confidence to
begin reaching out to syndicates.
My links:
Blog (this is where all of my editorial cartoons, preliminary sketches, and commentary can be found): www.DanielBoris.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
Instagram: @DanBorisCreates
Twitter: @DanBorisCreates
Website: www.DanBoris.com
Comic Strip Website: www.HoxwinderHall.com
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