Behind the Satire: Creating Political Cartoons in 2026

Political cartooning is one of those art forms that people either love or find deeply uncomfortable. That discomfort is rather the point. I've been drawing editorial cartoons for a while now, and 2026 has been a particularly interesting year to be doing it. Here's how the process works, what I've been thinking about, and why I believe satire is more necessary than it's ever been.

Why Political Cartooning Matters

There's a line I keep coming back to, usually attributed to Finley Peter Dunne: the job of the newspaper is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Political cartoons do that in a way that no other medium quite manages. A well-drawn cartoon can distil a complicated political situation into a single image that hits you in the gut before your brain has time to rationalise it away.

That's what makes them dangerous. Not in a violent sense, but in the sense that they bypass the usual defences we put up against political messaging. You can ignore an op-ed. You can switch off a podcast. But a sharp cartoon catches your eye, makes you laugh or wince, and plants an idea before you've decided whether you agree with it or not.

In 2026, with public trust in institutions at historic lows and political discourse increasingly reduced to slogans and social media clips, there's an argument that the political cartoon is one of the few formats that can still cut through the noise. It's cheap, shareable, and requires no context beyond a basic awareness of current events.

My Process

Every cartoon starts the same way: reading the news. I usually spend the first hour of my working day going through several papers and news sites, specifically looking for the gap between what politicians say and what they do. That gap is where satire lives.

Step 1: Finding the Angle

The hardest part isn't the drawing — it's finding something to say. The news throws up dozens of stories every day, but a good cartoon needs a specific, focused point. I'm looking for hypocrisy, absurdity, or a moment where the real meaning of an event is different from the official narrative. Sometimes it's obvious. Often it takes a couple of hours of thinking and scribbling before the angle reveals itself.

Step 2: Thumbnail Sketches

Once I've got an idea, I'll do a dozen or so tiny thumbnails — rough, scribbly things no bigger than a postage stamp. The point is to work out composition and visual metaphor quickly. Most of them are rubbish. That's fine. I'm looking for the one sketch that communicates the idea in the clearest, most immediate way possible.

Economy is everything. The best political cartoons use a single visual metaphor. If you need a paragraph of caption to explain the joke, the cartoon isn't working.

Step 3: Final Ink

I work in traditional media — dip pen with Indian ink on smooth Bristol board, sometimes with watercolour washes for colour pieces. The whole thing typically takes two to three hours from rough pencil to finished ink. I'll scan it, do minor cleanup in Photoshop, and it's done.

The traditional process is deliberate. There's a rawness to hand-drawn linework that digital illustration, for all its advantages, struggles to replicate. When I press harder with the nib, the line gets bolder, angrier. That physicality translates into the finished piece in ways I can feel even if I can't always articulate.

The Line Between Satire and Cruelty

This is the question I get asked most, and the one I think about most carefully. Where does legitimate satire end and cruelty begin?

My answer, imperfect as it is: satire should always punch up. The target should be power — people and institutions with the ability to shape other people's lives. Politicians, corporations, systems. Not individuals who are already vulnerable. Not people's physical appearance for its own sake (unless the person in question has made their appearance a deliberate part of their political brand, which is a slightly different conversation).

That doesn't mean the line is always clear. I've drawn cartoons I've later felt uncomfortable about. I've scrapped ideas mid-sketch because they crossed into something that felt more like bullying than commentary. The editorial cartoonist's job isn't to be nasty — it's to be honest. Sometimes honesty is uncomfortable, but it shouldn't be gratuitous.

A cartoon that makes the powerful squirm has done its job. A cartoon that makes the powerless feel smaller has failed at a fundamental level.

The other tension is between clarity and nuance. Political cartoons are, by nature, reductive. They simplify complex issues into single images. That's their power, but it's also their danger. I try to be aware of when simplification crosses into misrepresentation, though I'd be lying if I said I always get it right.

Tools I Use

I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to materials:

• Dip pens: Nikko G for general linework, Gillott 303 for fine detail. I've written more about nib selection in another post.
• Indian ink: Winsor & Newton, the tall bottle. Waterproof, dense black, dries quickly. The standard for good reason.
• Watercolour washes: For colour pieces, I use a basic set of Winsor & Newton Cotman pans. The limited palette forces decisions, which is a good thing when you're working to a deadline.
• Bristol board: Smooth finish. Takes ink beautifully without feathering, and the surface is sturdy enough to handle watercolour washes without buckling (if you tape it down).
• Pencils: HB and 2H for under-drawing. Nothing fancy. The pencil lines need to be light enough to erase cleanly after inking.

I do the final cleanup digitally — adjusting levels, cropping, occasionally removing a stray mark. But 95% of the work is analogue. I like the constraints of traditional media. Every mark is a commitment.

Dealing with Reactions

If you draw political cartoons and put them on the internet, you will receive angry messages. This is not a possibility; it is a certainty. I've been called every name you can think of and a few creative ones I hadn't encountered before.

The trick, such as it is, is to distinguish between legitimate criticism and bad-faith outrage. If someone makes a thoughtful point about why my cartoon misrepresents an issue, I want to hear that. I might not agree, but I'll think about it. If someone's just furious that I've criticised their preferred politician, that's not really about the cartoon — it's about tribal loyalty, and there's nothing I can draw that will change it.

What I won't do is soften the work to avoid reactions. The day a political cartoonist starts worrying about being liked is the day the cartoons stop being worth drawing. You're not there to be popular. You're there to say the thing that needs saying, in a way that makes people look twice.

The Future of Editorial Illustration

Here's the uncomfortable truth: traditional editorial cartooning is in decline. Newspapers are shrinking. Staff cartoonist positions have been cut across the industry. The golden age where every broadsheet had a resident cartoonist is largely over.

But the form itself? I think it's evolving rather than dying. Social media has given political cartoonists direct access to audiences in a way that wasn't possible when distribution depended entirely on newspaper editors. A cartoon can go viral on its own merits. Independent cartoonists can build followings and sustain themselves through print sales, Patreon, and commissions without ever setting foot in a newsroom.

There's also the question of AI-generated imagery and its impact on illustration more broadly. I'll say this plainly: a machine can generate a political image, but it cannot generate a political opinion. Satire requires a point of view, a moral stance, a willingness to take a position and defend it. That's fundamentally a human act. The day AI can genuinely satirise power is the day we have much bigger things to worry about than the future of illustration.

So I'll keep drawing. With a dip pen and a pot of ink and whatever remains of my patience with the news cycle. It's frustrating, occasionally thankless, and absolutely essential work. Someone has to draw the emperors without their clothes.