Are caricatures in magazines not hand-drawn these days?

I think it’s rare for much of anything to be done by hand these days, even masturbation.

As for whether it has less artistic merit, I don’t think so. See, it still takes a good eye, a good mental image (artistic talent), and a steady hand to create digital art. In my view, claiming that painting on a computer requires less skill than painting on a canvas is like saying that race car drivers who spend many hours in a hot, loud box and subjecting themselves to ridiculous G-forces are not athletes simply because a machine is involved.

Have you ever noticed how when someone with no artistic talent tries to use a machine to create art, it generally sucks? Case in point; the “Casio” music of the ‘80s, made by people who thought they could just press a few buttons and get good music without all that pesky composition. I’ve seen people do impressive stuff on keyboards, but only by people who were competent musicians/composers in their own right.

Computers are not artists, they are a medium used by artists.
Computers do not create; they are a tool to help create, much like a brush, a chisel, or a guitar.

Hard to say without actually seeing the things for myself, but I very much agree with @jerv.

I’ve never really thought that certain kinds of equipment or tools (be they guitar pedals, cartooning pens, etc) would make me a better artist or musician.

It’s more like technology allows you to do the same things, but in a way that’s faster and more polished. For example, when I drew cartoons with a graphics tablet at school, it made many things easier than on paper (inking, re-drawing, scanning, lettering), but I still had to use my own drawing skills to get something that looked halfway decent.

Like Jack White said in “It Might Get Loud” (I used him in another answer, too), technology doesn’t make you a better artist. It can make you a faster artist, but you still have to work from what’s in your own head.

Well, Al Hirschfeld‘s dead, isn’t he? I mean, he tried for as long as he could, working right up until he died at 99. But one man couldn’t do it all.

Thought I think Terry Colon draws by hand and fixes it up in post. Remember the online mag Suck? He drew for them. It was like Spy, except on the teh interwebz of 1995. Wow. I’ve been online for a long, long time.

I don’t know why you think modern caricatures are machine drawn, other than those applets on the web “create caricature of yourself”. Most artists, especially the editorial cartoonists, still work largely in conventional media. And even artists who use digital assistance still draw their cartoons, even if digitally or with digital enhancements. The copy may often be done in fonts like cartoon, but if you look at the text closely, you’ll see that much of that is still hand-drawn. Do you think Dilbert is machine drawn? Why?

But as @aprilsimnel mentions, Hirschfeld’s dead, so no more counting the Ninas.

Got to think what gives something merit. Is it the time it takes to do it, or the quality of the finished product? I believe that there are computer programs that can make it look hand drawn, so yes the times they are a changing. A good friend of mine is an animator for Pixar, and there all computers. The old Disney cartoons like Snow White, were painted by hand, now that’s an art form. Disney has done some amazing things but they also sold out a lot to. They made second rate straight to video cartoons, crap. Disney isn’t the best anymore. When you say “caricatures” do you mean comics, political cartoons, or just illustrations for products or promotions, because there’s never been any soul in that.

Dilbert is done with assistance of a “graphics tablet” by Scott Adams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams and I still like it