Steve Bell - images

Another name which i am fairly familiar with but haven't looked at a lot of his work before is Steve Bell. Like most prolific British caricaturists Steve Bell has had a really good career working with many publications such as private eye, punch and the guardian. 

Bell has like most of my other influences a very distinctive style particularly when depicting some 'characters' as David Cameron where he is always drawn as a condom, which in a way i suppose is taking it from a somewhat grotesque angle as he is explicitly saying that cameron is a dick. 

He works in a very traditional sense in terms of how he produces his images, which is as i said a traditional use of watercolour and i imagine ink and markers of some sort. Perhaps this is for many reasons the first being that it keeps that traditional aesthetic of a caricature as caricaturist are not really like illustrators in the way that they explore new avenues or ways of creating an image and will generally stick to what they do and what they are used to, which i guess avoids readers being confused of when they have their works every week in the paper. If there was a constant change of 'style' then it would certainly work against the caricaturist. I also imagine that it is a way of working that just generally suits and he is able to get the work done quicker, probably with him working to deadlines, perhaps. 

This is the way he depicts chancellor of the exchequer George Osbourne, rather crudely with a ball sack hanging out of what i think is a gimp mask...Which once again certainly feeds into a grotesque nature that Bell can sometimes have in his work but not in an over the top way, which i really like.

This is a very successful caricature as you can immediately tell that it is a crossover of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair as some sort of hybrid monster. 

And just so i can get another attack in the form of a cartoon against Donald trump in here is a small cartoon strip by Steve bell that would have been featured in the guardian. In this Bell has used the idea of centering the satire on Trumps hair which i have found is a highly important aspect when caricaturing him.