Deerfield’s Ilana Strauss is leaving her mark on the world by cartooning.
She not only created artwork for the Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she attended class for two years, but also for the Daily News at Yale University, where she is now a junior.
Sketching
out an idea
Before she begins to draw, Strauss must first decide what she wants to say about an issue. Then she must think of associations she might make with it.
For instance, she decided to do a Sara Palin cartoon when Palin announced she wasn’t going to run for the presidency, but already had collected a “bunch of money” to do so.
“I thought about what I could do that would be about disguising one’s actual motives,” Strauss said. “It was around Halloween, so I thought about a Halloween costume, and it worked.”
Strauss first sketches her ideas in pencil, then brings them to life by shading them with marker and pen.
“Once I have the idea for a cartoon, it may take only an hour to draw it. But coming up with the idea is the hard part. I keep track of all my ideas in a notebook, then when I have time to draw, I’ll just choose one and go with it.”
She is majoring in English and considering a career in journalism, or combining her writing and artistic talents to go into advertising.
“In high school, I was the lowest editor on the totem pole, but I was still in charge of the content that more people would read than any other,” Strauss said.
“It seems really sad that some people read only one section of the newspaper, but they always turn to the cartoon.”
“I’ve always been interested in art,” Strauss said. “I have been pretty much drawing and painting even longer than I could read. I would draw storybooks and get my dad to write in what I wanted to say.”
Strauss, the daughter of Melinda and Roy Strauss, has lived most of her 18 years in Deerfield, attending Walden Elementary School, Shepard Middle School and Deerfield High School. Her younger brother, Alex, is a senior at Deerfield High now.
“In high school, I started making political cartoons for the newspaper, and became the art editor,” Strauss said. “Then, I just kept doing cartoons for my college newspapers.”
