Bill Clinton watches over the world

A cartoon from 1994. The idea was:
"Is the USA a big friendly brother to us, or a big eagle controlling the world?"
- or maybe both? -

An assignment for the Flemish children's magazine 'Klap'.
They called me, I made some quick notes and preliminary sketches...
again the starting signal for some busy evenings...

... some more quick tries (front and back of this page)

Exclusive attention to the head...
(also an additional test: the eagle without a neck - or not?)

...now working on the total pose again...
(Apparently I had some trouble staying focused here) :-)

... this detail required some extra attention...

... even a lot more extra attention! All those stars and stripes!!!

Everything put together gave this. "I can go on with that" I thought ...
(The eagle has now got a neck again. Bill Clinton's head is now the torso. That seemed better to me...)

From now on I turned my attention to the color...

I had little color experience yet. I have done many quick tests with colored pencil on reduced photocopies (50 percent).

When I was sure of my choice I could start the last phase: painting with watercolors on heavy paper.
You can't do much correction with watercolor before it becomes a mess.
I had a little problem here with his nose tip, a weak spot in the paper,...

... It was also somewhat visible on the end result in 'Klap'... a bit of a shame if you work on it for so long...
Today you would quickly retouch that digitally, but back then that wasn't possible yet :-[