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Girl Boy, 2023, painting by James Hough

Girl Boy, 2023, acrylic on wood, 21″h x 28″h I made a painting for my friends Kerry and Carrie, who go by “Boy” and “Girl” for convenience. The painting is also dedicated to Ayden, whom Girl wants to nickname “Gibroly” so that each of them can have a nickname represented.

JK Rowling Portrait: Expressing Your Love for an Author With More Than Words

The JK Rowling Portrait isn’t the first stencil portrait I made in the early days of my Jim Public website, but it is the portrait that one of you bought most recently, so Jo is fresh on my mind. This article talks a little about why and how I made this portrait, and it is… Continue reading JK Rowling Portrait: Expressing Your Love for an Author With More Than Words

Fuzz Dots: Abstract Art That Is Warm and Fuzzy

The Fuzz Dot paintings above are original works that I’ve unearthed for my website’s 10th anniversary. The pieces themselves are straightforward enough: they are 11″ x 14″ original airbrushed paintings on heavy watercolor paper. But even the most simple artwork can contain multitudes. There are several art ideas at play in these little works. Why… Continue reading Fuzz Dots: Abstract Art That Is Warm and Fuzzy

10th Anniversary of jimpublic.com

I started this website ten years ago and posted my first blog on January 19, 2011, titled Come on in, the party’s just started! The post consisted solely of the above picture. I was clearly full of pep and vigor about the accessible and affordable artwork I intended to sell to people who don’t have… Continue reading 10th Anniversary of jimpublic.com

How to Lame Duck: a presidential comic book collection, by James Hough

Buy the Book I’m very happy to announce that my new book How to Lame Duck: a presidential comic strip collection is finished and ready to read! I have been publishing my comic strip Trump After Trump every three days for five months now. Comic no. 1 is set in the Oval Office on election… Continue reading How to Lame Duck: a presidential comic book collection, by James Hough

Trump After Trump #50

Trump Is No Longer Our Concern, Right? Trump and Pence have parted ways in this story, and now Trump is left with the only person who really understands him. Don-Don, the little, stuffed Donald-Trump-looking doll whose face is contorted into a permanent yell. Where do we go from here? Anywhere? Has this comic strip said… Continue reading Trump After Trump #50

Trump After Trump #49 (Sunday)

Pence Issues Trump a Parting Challenge Does anyone call Trump “Don” or “Donald”? It’s hard to imagine. Trump is on record as loving when people call him “sir” or “mister president,” so I don’t see why he should change his mind just because he’s no longer president. Now that it is Inauguration Day in this… Continue reading Trump After Trump #49 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump #48

Trump Is Under Stress and Could Use a Healing Message I hope this comic strip doesn’t set up an expectation that something is going to happen with the box. I drew it to symbolize that Trump is heading out of office soon, now that it’s January 21 in Trump After Trump world. If the document… Continue reading Trump After Trump #48

Trump After Trump #47

Trump Understands His White, Evangelical Christian Supporters My Trump loves the letter “T”, and – regardless of what he learns about the cross and its symbolic power – he prefers to see the letter “T” when he encounters crosses as necklaces, tattoos, car stickers, etc. Pence will soon be moving on to his post-politics life;… Continue reading Trump After Trump #47

Trump After Trump #46

Trump Gives Pence a “T” to Wear Around His Neck One of my favorite experiences raising a secular family is when my daughter was little and pointed out the window as we were driving through suburban Las Vegas. “Look! That building has a “T” on top of it!” That is not a direct quote, but… Continue reading Trump After Trump #46

Trump After Trump #45

Trump, Pence and Don-Don Toast 2020, an Unforgettable Year I am committed to pre-celebration. Trump After Trump started as a way for me to do a sort of visualization therapy: I imagined the end of the Trump presidency and watched him withdraw from the public eye during the lame duck period, which is not exactly… Continue reading Trump After Trump #45

Trump After Trump #44

Another Christmas Episode: Pence Gives Don-Don His Gift It was a revelation to invent Don-Don, the little, stuffed version of Trump with yellow yarn hair and a perpetual yell on his face. And, because of how much fun I have with Don-Don, it’s hard not to just make little toy versions of everyone, but today… Continue reading Trump After Trump #44

Trump After Trump #43

Introducing Father Michael, the Reinvented Mike Pence Saul had his moment of transformation on the road to Damascus. Anakin was christened Darth Vader by Emperor Palpatine, who himself is also known as Darth Sidious. Natalie dumps Scott Pilgrim and soon emerges as the Clash at Demonhead frontwoman Envy Adams. Renaming a character is often part… Continue reading Trump After Trump #43

Trump After Trump #42 (Sunday)

Merry Christmas, and the Reason for the Season I am writing this on October 31, 2020, on a physically-distant Halloween. On this day of candy, horror films and minimal trick-or-treaters expected, it’s funny to have spent the last week in the headspace of Christmas in a fictional Oval Office, where apparently Trump and Mike Pence… Continue reading Trump After Trump #42 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump #41

Pence Has a Beard and He’s Not Afraid to Use It Christmas is two months away at the time that I’m publishing this comic, but it is only four days away in the timeline of this comic strip. So the question isn’t “Why are you already doing a Christmas comic?” but “What has taken you… Continue reading Trump After Trump #41

Trump After Trump #40

Stubble Tells Them You’re Manly and Know How to Cut Loose There are plenty of times when an aspiring artist feels self-doubt as they continue to stay up late and wake up early in order to create their obscure artwork. One of the great balms for this angst is cracking yourself up. When I wrote… Continue reading Trump After Trump #40

Trump After Trump #39

Trump and Don-Don: Presidents Everyone loves tiny things, right? Tiny houses. Tiny dancers. Tiny Tims. Shoot, NPR even has that awesome Tiny Desk concert series! Which brings us to today’s strip. In celebrating all things tiny, I introduced Don-Don a few weeks ago. He is a little doll version of Trump, and, in spite of… Continue reading Trump After Trump #39

Trump After Trump #38

Big Boy Desk One way to illustrate a dysfunctional White House is to have the president order the vice-president to assemble a toy for his doll. One way to illustrate the unfortunate American (and human) love affair with authority is to have a top-ranking government official dutifully do what he’s told, regardless of how irrelevant… Continue reading Trump After Trump #38

Trump After Trump #37

What More Could Pence Hope to Accomplish in Politics? I continue to joke about the hypothetical future where American conservatives get everything they want. One of my favorite Onion pieces – it’s so hard to pick a favorite, so this is just one of many – is the headline from January 1, 2000, “Christian Right… Continue reading Trump After Trump #37

Trump After Trump #36

Pence Has Been Praying About Something Writing the headline above came naturally to me as someone who was raised in Oklahoma, going to different churches depending on the weekend, and as someone who currently lives in suburban Dallas. But, not everyone may know the colloquial meaning of “praying about” something. To say, “Pence has been… Continue reading Trump After Trump #36

Trump After Trump #35 (Sunday)

The Next Best Thing to Another Trump I feel like Don-Don may soon be Trump’s closest companion – in this strip – replacing Mike Pence for the time being. I think Pence might be moving on to the next chapter of his life, soon. Also, it’s strange writing a comic strip about Trump set in… Continue reading Trump After Trump #35 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump #34

Roe v. Wade Overturned The way things have been going in 2020 – during what really feels like will be the final year of the Trump era – why not have the Senate confirm Trump’s nominee and then have the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade on the same day? One of the bad things… Continue reading Trump After Trump #34

Trump After Trump #33

Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump-Style I liked this remembrance that Chief Justice John Roberts gave in a ceremony after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on September 18, 2020. “Justice Ginsburg’s life was one of the many versions of the American dream. Her father was an immigrant from Odessa. Her mother was born four months after her… Continue reading Trump After Trump #33

Trump After Trump #32

A Highly Motivated Supreme Court Nominee With a Clean Record I don’t have a lot to say about today’s strip. Just that I’m enjoying the absurd alternate reality of a lameduck Trump nominating a fetus for the Supreme Court. Not only is there the typical rush to confirm for political reasons, but they want the… Continue reading Trump After Trump #32

Trump After Trump #31

How to Choose a Supreme Court Justice Looking at two ultrasound prints of two different fetuses is kind of like selecting a nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Ultrasounds are grainy and low-res. The little outlines suggest the shape of a little human, but the image tells us mostly nothing about who that person… Continue reading Trump After Trump #31

Trump After Trump #30

Need a Young, Pro-Life Supreme Court Justice? Think Huge. I don’t know about you, but this is the first time I can think of that I’ve seen an ultrasound drawn in a comic strip. They’re grainy and low-fi as it is – translating that to ink on paper is a tricky endeavor. I guess I’m… Continue reading Trump After Trump #30

Trump After Trump #29

It Feels So Good When Someone Really GETS You Trump wouldn’t be the first sad case to find true companionship with someone who can’t speak for themselves. There’s definitely the fascinating question of the extent to which we bond with our pets versus how much we project onto them. Trump doesn’t strike me as a… Continue reading Trump After Trump #29

Trump After Trump #28 (Sunday)

Trump and His Best Bud Don-Don Say Their Night-Night Prayers I wrote this comic to explore more of the gap between Pence’s Christian faith and Trump’s amoral narcissism. But, when I started drawing, Trump needed to look more like he was ready for bed time. I dressed him in gold silk, T-covered pajamas, then considered… Continue reading Trump After Trump #28 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump #27

So Much Undoing – So Much Left Undone On the eve of Thanksgiving, Trump and Pence hang out on the Truman Balcony and reflect on all they’ve accomplished in their brief four years. In an effort to make America great again – that apparently effective phrase of turning the clock back to a mythical past… Continue reading Trump After Trump #27

Trump After Trump #26

Call Names and Rewrite History – It’s What Winners Do Trump seems like a person who acts on raw instinct more than premeditated thought, so maybe today’s comic isn’t that plausible. Like a plant that turns away from shadow and toward the sun, Trump uses language intuitively to distance himself from the perception of failure… Continue reading Trump After Trump #26

Trump After Trump #25

COVID Joe, a Nickname Masterpiece, a Prediction of Historical Revision I wonder how long it would take Trump to start blaming COVID fallout on Biden, if Biden were to take office in 2021. I also wonder if these jokes are funny only to one person. In this case, I laugh at Pence reading the Bible… Continue reading Trump After Trump #25

Trump After Trump #24

COVID Don #CovidDon Don’t you love images of older folks crowding around a cell phone? I think the size of our readership here at Trump After Trump is not quite at that tipping point where we can get people everywhere to start calling Trump “COVID Don,” but maybe if I make two comic strips in… Continue reading Trump After Trump #24

Trump After Trump #23

COVID Don Trump minimizes and bullies people by giving them diminishing nicknames. “Lyin’ Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” “Low Energy Jeb.” No need to get into the details about his mastery of manipulative oration. One way to win is to always be the one who stoops lowest. I don’t think anyone would say that going low is… Continue reading Trump After Trump #23

Trump After Trump #22

Blame It on Hillary I have gotten a little feedback that my comics present Trump as a lovable buffoon. So that leaves me asking myself questions, and here are two of them: Are we so used to seeing negative portrayals of Trump that are so extremely monstrous that my attempt to show him as a… Continue reading Trump After Trump #22

Trump After Trump #21 (Sunday)

The 5 Faces and Emotions of Donald J. Trump You’ve got to hand it to Trump: he has a face that can be entrancing in its ability to contort and display emotion. If Trump were a mime (and imagine a world where we didn’t have to hear him speak…) his body and facial language would… Continue reading Trump After Trump #21 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump #20

Pence Tries a Trump Face Masks and Gets to LARP It’s strange what circumstance will do to your outlook. If you’d asked me five years ago, the idea of an evangelical Christian as vice president would not exactly have shocked me, but I wouldn’t have taken much comfort from it either. Now that we’ve been… Continue reading Trump After Trump #20

Trump After Trump #19

Trump Wears a Mask and Still Shows His Face I wouldn’t be surprised if face masks that feature Trump’s face already exist; I didn’t check, because for me it’s beside the point whether they exist or not. And I don’t want the comic to be influenced too much by stuff that’s already out there. I… Continue reading Trump After Trump #19

Trump After Trump #18

Masked in the USA Official Trump Brand Face Masks One of my top five novels of all time it The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. This book is so good that my friend Sean and I both read it twice in a row. If you want to hear more about why… Continue reading Trump After Trump #18

Trump After Trump #17

Trump Finally Finds a Suitable Mask – Sweet Red, White and Blue I think this strip is about how simplistic patriotism can make it hard to see the complexities and nuances of events and interests at work in the very big world outside of one’s own motherland. Also, it’s about adding a splash of color… Continue reading Trump After Trump #17

Trump After Trump #16

A Face Mask, Made in the Left Coast I said as much as I have to say right now about masking in the age of COVID-19 and the age of Trump in Trump After Trump no. 15. On an entirely different note, the practice of daily cartooning is making it painfully clear to me that… Continue reading Trump After Trump #16

Trump After Trump #15

Why Would Trump, or Anyone, Wear a Face Mask? I’ve made “two weeks” worth of comics – I publish every three days but pretend that I’m creating a highly-syndicated daily – and have not acknowledged that we are all living in a historic and life-changing pandemic. I think the first I heard of the new… Continue reading Trump After Trump #15

Trump After Trump #14 (Sunday)

Pence Tells Trump a Bible Story One of the themes of the Trump era is the overwhelming support that he enjoys from American evangelical Christians, among whom we usually include Mike Pence. Encouragingly, there is also a fun strain of satire that looks at this very odd coupling between an amoral man and a community… Continue reading Trump After Trump #14 (Sunday)