A selection of my illustrations and editorial cartoons. Check back for updates.
Interested in having me work in your print publication or on your website? Interested in a custom illustration for your newsletter, newspaper, magazine, website, T-shirt or what have you?
Contact me at donlee@donleecartoons.com
Or contact me through eByline.com.
There's a continuously-updated album of my editorial cartoons HERE.
Two takes on a neighborhood's general failure to notice something was off in the Cleveland house which was a prison for three young women for a decade. Top one is for the Toledo Free Press; bottom one is for the Sandusky Register.
Two responses to the Boston Marathon bombing: Top, response to the bombing itself, printed in the Sandusky Register and bottom, timed to appear the weekend of the Glass City Marathon (which featured a number of area runners who had also run in Boston two weeks before) in the Toledo Free Press.
A topic to which I find it necessary to return from time to time. I guess I should update it to include smartphones and other hand-held internet devices. Only creaking old dinosaurs like me use laptops anymore, I guess. Sandusky Register.
Toledo Mud Hens home opener cover for the Toledo Free Press.
As publisher Tom Pounds explains, the Hens aren't really angry, just very, very determined. Home opener was much less sunny and much more wet than the illustration lets on, and the bottom of the ninth was a real Casey-at-the-bat finish for the hapless Hens.
I was in the news biz long enough to have seen obituaries for many of my old "sources." John Magnuson was longest-serving sheriff of Erie County, Ohio, and ran the office from his wheelchair. He retired years ago, but much of what's good about the office can be traced back to him ... and the current sheriff is one of the people who will tell you that.
In addition to the traction this cartoon got on social media, I was honored to be asked to allow this one to be used in the bulletin for Sheriff Magnuson's funeral service.
Never could figure out what the threat was. Apparently people loving one another and committing to one another is a bad thing. This one got some traction in the social media sphere, at any rate.
Pope Francis, who used to like to ride the bus when he was just Cardinal Jorge, is seen by some as a voice of modernization and moderation, except where he won't be. For the Sandusky Register.
Removal of a diseased and nonfunctioning body part was recommended for the Lucas County (Ohio) Board of Elections. For the Toledo Free Press.
More of an editorial illustration, looking into the sequester and the necessity thereof, for Region's Business of Philadelphia.
Probably shouldn't take a nuke threat lightly; all it has to do is go off. But I wonder how much Kim Jong-Un thinks he has to lose? (And he seems determined to prove the adage that it's always the third generation that screws up the family business.)
For the Toledo Free Press, this cartoon about the head of the Toledo school board trying to sound as if she's answering questions about the search for a school superintendent while saying nothing.
Things got a little literal for this editorial illustration for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers. It started out as illustrating the "warehousing" of the mentally ill in state prisons and turned into this comparison of today's conditions with those of the good old days that really weren't.
A complex cover for Region's Business of Philadelphia, one of a series of
covers in December 2012 for issues that took a look at what faced Philly and
Pennsylvania in 2013. Click HERE or on the step-by-step link above to see
how this came together.
A cover for the Toledo Free Press; the resident curmudgeon columnist, who looks a little like St. Nick would after spending too much time going over the naughty list, ginned up letters to Santa on behalf of Toledo's city council members. Editor Michael Miller shipped me a draft of the column and basically said, run with it. I love those kinds of commissions; this idea pretty much suggested itself, though my favorite part might be the two former mayors as ghosts of something-or-other past.
Search for answers to the "cancer cluster" in and around Clyde, Ohio,
focuses on a playground built half a century ago atop a buried chemical dump.
For the Sandusky Register.
Cover for Toledo Free Press-Star, the entertainment edition of Toledo newsweekly, announcing first volume of stories featuring a private investigator who specializes in all things popular culture -- which gets him an unusual list of clients.
Obituary portrait of Sen. Arlen Specter for Region's Business of Philadelphia.
Museum showcasing the importance of the Great Lakes breaks ground in Toledo, within a week of an investors' fair just across the river in which local governments compete for the attention of overseas (read: Chinese) investors, a real-life version of "The Millionaire.
Illustration for a nascent project in which a friend writes about the outrageous things her kids (mostly the youngest twin daughters) do, and I take off on them. I understand everything happened exactly as depicted, except there was no football helmet and the failed tackle was more of an attempt to force a fumble. But how much fun would that be?
Illustration for a nascent project in which a friend writes about the outrageous things her kids (mostly the youngest twin daughters) do, and I take off on them. I understand everything happened exactly as depicted, except there was no football helmet and the failed tackle was more of an attempt to force a fumble. But how much fun would that be?