Newsday cartoonist battles the bright lights of the convention

Battling the bright lights: Newsday cartoonist Walt Handelsman attempts to use a light box to complete one of his cartoons. (Photo by Mark La Monica)One of the pitfalls of drawing on location for a cartoonist is getting comfortable outside of their normal studio.

Walt Handelsman, editorial cartoonist for Newsday, learned this first hand as he set up to draw at the year's Democratic National Convention in Denver.

A rought sketch by Walt Handesman of a group of local policemen all hanging off a little white golf cart.Handlesman uses a device called a lightbox, which allows an artist to trace a rough sketch onto a clean piece of drawing paper to be inked and finished. Using the lightbox is extremely difficult in bright areas, something Handelsman realized as he began to draw.

"When I work in my Newsday office, I turn off the lights," Handelsman said on his blog, "but once I saw our unbelievably bright, plastic-roofed work tent, I knew I was in trouble. "

Handelsman tried several different strategies, including pulling a plastic skirts over his head and lying on the floor underneath the table. He wasn't successful until he decided to "think inside the box" and draw underneath a cut-up cardboard box.

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More coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention from cartoonists' point-of-view:

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist skips this year's conventions
• On the drafting table: Convention sketchpad in progress
• Go check it out: Ron Rogers' armchair convention sketchbook
• Pittsburgh cartoonist sketching his way through Denver
• Should the political conventions be combined?
• Go check it out: Drew Litton convention animations
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