So what was the inspiration for the cover?
Unlike most editorial assignments, New Yorker covers are pitched, not assigned. So artists are left to follow instincts and respond to current events. Here I was trying to combine a couple of elements that are associated with the president and make a visual statement that incorporates a point of view with some humor. One tries to avoid being pedantic with this stuff as nothing can kill a joke quicker than somber outrage.

What does your illustration say about the president’s relationship with golf?
Having the president grimly “play through“ in this drawing is, hopefully, subject to some interpretation. To some he might appear determined, to others, oblivious. His affection for golf has been reported on and documented a lot, and his campaign rhetoric complaining about Obama’s time spent on the golf course and his pledges to do otherwise is yet another hypocrisy and broken promise in light of the record-breaking amount of hours he himself spends playing. He also appears to be confronting a difficult lie. But he ought to be used to that.

I’m curious if Trump is a challenge to draw in that he’s so widely satirized. How do you try to bring something new to the fore?
I envy the newspaper political cartoonists who have managed to reduce his face to a kind of formula. Some sublime reduction of lips, nose and hair that somehow resembles him more than a studied portrait might. I wish I had could have a mulligan myself on him here—I’d change a few little things. Pen and ink is an unforgiving medium, especially for those of us who haven’t learned how to fix things in Photoshop.

Illustration by John Cuneo

Similarly, seeing how you do a fair amount of drawings for us, what do you find difficult about golf illustrations, and what do you find rewarding?
I got schooled early on working for GD. It turns out that golfers are just a wee bit particular about the proper way to grip a club and a myriad of other related nuances. Comic artists can usually get away with fudging the details, but when it come to golf not so much.

Golfer bodies are fun to draw—their postures, their body language and their (more extreme) fashion choices. Many illustrators will tell you that green is a particulalry difficult color to work with. I consider myself a drawer first and don’t know enough about painting for it to be a problem, but even I can recognize that too much green can overwhelm a decent drawing.

The post The story behind this New Yorker cover of Donald Trump playing golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Editor’s Note: President Donald Trump is immersed in another controversy regarding Civil War history, on Thursday lamenting on Twitter the removal of Confederate statues in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Va. In May Trump caused a stir with comments about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. As noted in this story from 2015, Trump had earlier instances of historical revisionism regarding the Great Rebellion.

By Sam Weinman
We all play golf courses that feature various memorials to people and events: benches, flagpoles, that sort of thing. At my home club, for instance, there’s a stone marker honouring the memory of a longtime starter at the club from decades earlier.

Call me naive, but I’ve always operated under the assumption that this was at one point an actual person.

It’s worth reconsidering only because of a New York Times report from November 2015 that says Donald Trump’s Northern Virginia Trump National Golf Club features a plaque between the 14th and 15th holes honouring a Civil War battle at that precise spot. The inscription, signed by Trump, reads:

“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ It is my great honour to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”

Nice sentiment, small problem: there apparently was no such battle.

The Times checked with various historians in the area who had trouble tying the site of Trump’s course to any such event.

“No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,” Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, told the Times.

Gillespie went on to say the closest thing to what Trump was describing was a battle 11 miles up the river in 1861. “The River of Blood?” he said. “Nope, not there.”

During his campaign, Trump questioned how historians could dispute the battle. “How would they know,” he told the Times. “Were they there?”

The post Donald Trump has Civil War plaque at his golf course commemorating battle that never happened appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.