Stephen Paul Breen (born April 26, 1970) is a nationally syndicated cartoonist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning twice, in 1998 and 2009.[1][2] (wikipedia)
When I look at someone's face, there's something in my brain that just clicks - that breaks down their face into the elements that go into a caricature. It might be like the way a chef tastes a dish and can break down into elements what went into it.
When I first started as an editorial cartoonist, I was terrified on a daily basis. Filling that hole the next day, knowing that tens of thousands of people were going to expect something funny. There is still that pressure, but you kind of learn how to cope with it a little better.
We can self-censor ourselves for various reasons, but we can't live in a world where some person or some group decides what's offensive and what's not.
It's sometimes hard to wrap your head around a big story, and for most of us drawing editorial cartoons 9/11/ 01, that was the biggest story of our professional lives.
It's a fun job, but it's stressful because you have to be funny. You have to have punch lines and captions. Be funny now! And if you're not inspired, they don't care - be funny now! They have to fill that hole the next day.
I loved practical jokes. I loved being goofy on the playground, and I loved doing silly cartoons, but I was not this subversive little delinquent. I am an Eagle Scout, after all.
As an editorial cartoonist now, I live for those moments of inspiration, and it is exhilarating to be inspired by a topic, have an opinion on the topic, come up with a good cartoon on the topic, and to draw it and get it in the paper the next day. That is what I live for.
Women are more difficult to caricature than men - partly because beauty is more difficult to caricature.
When I was starting out in 1988, I was doing cartoons on President George H. W. Bush, Iraq and the fall of Soviet Union.
Personally, I try to be provocative but not needlessly provocative in my work.
