Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
9/28/11
Without Millions pencil sketch portraits
I was tasked with creating pencil portraits from photos of the founders of the real estate/community-building group Without Millions for their site's About Us page. All I can say is thank G-d for backlit LCD screens, because they enabled me to do a lot of tracing without which I doubt it would have come out nearly as good.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
9/25/11
Today's jpost.com cartoon
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
9/22/11
Today's J. Post cartoon
The flags hanging in the background are those of countries who decided not to pull out of the conference: from left to right, Greece, Denmark, Romania, Hungary and Finland.
UPDATE: After the Post reused this cartoon to accompany an article online, said article has been making the rounds among the usual suspects, reblogged by sites like Israpundit and ScrollPost (who magnanimously also put it on Twitter).
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
9/17/11
Ripped From the Archives: July 2008
Another month with three printed at once.
Drawn in response to renewed murmurs about how it might be a good idea to hand the Golan over to Syria in exchange forpiece peace. Nutters.
Yes, believe it or not there actually was a Pensioners' Party and they took 7 Knesset seats (out of 120) in their first election. Eventually becoming a de facto faction of Labor, the party's obviously out-of-their-depth members floundered and squabbled, with three MKs eventually announcing a split from the party. Except that they didn't. Then they did. Then they weren't sure. The whole back-and-forth was exceptionally diverting and provided excellent cartoon fodder. (In October, two of the three rejoined the main party and the third formed yet another offshoot. None of them made it back to the Knesset following the elections in February '09.)
Just general commentary on the abysmal state of the Kinneret's water levels.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
Drawn in response to renewed murmurs about how it might be a good idea to hand the Golan over to Syria in exchange for
Yes, believe it or not there actually was a Pensioners' Party and they took 7 Knesset seats (out of 120) in their first election. Eventually becoming a de facto faction of Labor, the party's obviously out-of-their-depth members floundered and squabbled, with three MKs eventually announcing a split from the party. Except that they didn't. Then they did. Then they weren't sure. The whole back-and-forth was exceptionally diverting and provided excellent cartoon fodder. (In October, two of the three rejoined the main party and the third formed yet another offshoot. None of them made it back to the Knesset following the elections in February '09.)
Just general commentary on the abysmal state of the Kinneret's water levels.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
9/15/11
Today's J. Post cartoon
You know, I've done cartoons about Egypt before; I've done cartoons on Iran and Libya and Syria and Dubai, and cartoons with Jordan and Turkey and Lebanon and Tunisia and even Algeria, and of course I've done cartoons aplenty featuring Israel and the Palestinians. But there's at least one notable Mideast country that I have not yet worked into a political cartoon: Yemen. Time to fix that!
Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, faced with an uprising similar to the one going in Syria, is very slowly and begrudgingly giving up his grip on power... and sometimes, frankly, the only way to illustrate a situation is simply to convert it into a visual medium. Originally I was thinking about maybe putting one or more people on the bottom, saying something like, "Okay, that's good, now keep going," but I think this came out pretty well as it is.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus6.0
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus6.0
9/11/11
Today's jpost.com cartoon
Where were you when the world changed?
It's a cliche thing to say, I know, but some cliches exist because they are true. And indeed, on the 21st century's "day that will live in infamy", the world did indeed change--forever.
I was in my psychologist's office in Jerusalem, finishing off another weekly session. A little earlier then usual, my mother comes bustling in. "We need to go."
What's happened?
"There been an attack on the Twin Towers."
Some clarification is in order here. Up to that point, I had never to the best of my knowledge so much as seen the Twin Towers, let alone know anything about them beyond a passing familiarity with the ubiquitous name. On the drive home, my mother explained that they were these two really tall skyscrapers in New York. Automatically, my mind envisioned a simplistic child's version of the site--two elongated boxes of brick and mortar and cement, standing on end, covered in a zillion windows, reaching for the sky. And that was, in fact, pretty much exactly what the Twin Towers were in real life. There was nothing exceptionally glamorous or memorable about them, like the Chrysler Building or the Empire Stae Building. Just a couple of boxes and nothing more, a singularly aesthetically unimpressive and unimaginative sight. From a visual perspective, anyway.
To many other people they were symbols of America's general and economic might. To some people, they were targets.
I was too young to remember the first WTC attack in 1993, but growing up in Israel had made me used to the concept of terrorist attacks on civilian locations. As opposed to Americans, to whom terror attacks were something than for the most part happened in other countries usually full of brown people, knowledgability about terrorism was an integral part of life here, running the gamut from suicide bombings to airplane hijackings. This, however, I could sense was something bigger. Much bigger.
So there we were, in the car, driving back home down the highway. My mother had seen the initial coverage on a TV in a clothes shop where she was passing the time. So, this was big news. Okay. But what did that have to do with us?
"Uncle Marty works in the Twin Towers."
This gave me pause. While I cannot claim to be particularly close in any special way to my Uncle Marty, having met him only on fewer than a dozen visits to the US in my lifetime, he was still my uncle and a nice guy to boot. This was profoundly potentially earthshaking news. In my 12 years of life, not one close relative of mine had yet died. This helped reinforce my childish sense of invincibility: death and other disasters were for other people. I and the people I loved would last forever and nothing bad would ever, ever happen to us.
The illusion was beginning to crack.
"What floor does he work on?"
"The eightieth, I think."
Eightieth floor... wow. Oh my. If a plane hit the Twin Towers, then it would pretty have to hit pretty high up, right? Let's say it didn't hit his floor. If he was above it, could he get down? If he was below it, could he make it out before something... awful happened?
The cellphone rang. I picked it up.
"It's Glenna."
Glenna. Glenna's one of my mother's closest friends. After many years in Israel, she was now living in St. Louis. She was closer to the action. She could tell us what was what.
Mechanically, I relayed the information I was reeiving from cross the Atlantic to my mother. Two planes hit the two towers. A plane had hit the Pentagon. The Rose Garden. A bomb in a DC mall. Fighter jets had shot down a plane. Two planes. Hijackers on one plane were negotiting with the authorities. Too much. Too much.
Home. I just wanted to get home. Home was shelter. Home was safe.
Home.
My father's back from work early. Pacing. Reciting Tehillim with a manic fervor. My younger brothers are sitting around, confused.
Where's Uncle Marty?
No one knows. No one knows yet. Was he in the tower? Was he in the subway? Out on the street? Was he... was he...
No. This would not happen. This could not happen. I turned all of my childish belief and stubbornness and denial and focused it on one thing and one thing only: Uncle Marty is not dead.
Phone rings.
It's Aunt Esther.
"Marty is not dead. He's alive."
Whooping. Hollering. Drawn-out sighs of relief. Amidst it all, I scurry away into the bathroom and bend over the sink, crying, crying tears of relief, the first and only time in my life this has happened to me.
"He's not dead... he's not dead..."
Uncle Marty, it turned out, was late to work that morning and was still in the subway when the first plane hit. From there on, it was only a matter of time until he finally got an open phone line to his house.
And in the bathroom, I wiped my eyes and washed my face and walked out to face the brand new reality.
Where were you when the world changed?
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
It's a cliche thing to say, I know, but some cliches exist because they are true. And indeed, on the 21st century's "day that will live in infamy", the world did indeed change--forever.
I was in my psychologist's office in Jerusalem, finishing off another weekly session. A little earlier then usual, my mother comes bustling in. "We need to go."
What's happened?
"There been an attack on the Twin Towers."
Some clarification is in order here. Up to that point, I had never to the best of my knowledge so much as seen the Twin Towers, let alone know anything about them beyond a passing familiarity with the ubiquitous name. On the drive home, my mother explained that they were these two really tall skyscrapers in New York. Automatically, my mind envisioned a simplistic child's version of the site--two elongated boxes of brick and mortar and cement, standing on end, covered in a zillion windows, reaching for the sky. And that was, in fact, pretty much exactly what the Twin Towers were in real life. There was nothing exceptionally glamorous or memorable about them, like the Chrysler Building or the Empire Stae Building. Just a couple of boxes and nothing more, a singularly aesthetically unimpressive and unimaginative sight. From a visual perspective, anyway.
To many other people they were symbols of America's general and economic might. To some people, they were targets.
I was too young to remember the first WTC attack in 1993, but growing up in Israel had made me used to the concept of terrorist attacks on civilian locations. As opposed to Americans, to whom terror attacks were something than for the most part happened in other countries usually full of brown people, knowledgability about terrorism was an integral part of life here, running the gamut from suicide bombings to airplane hijackings. This, however, I could sense was something bigger. Much bigger.
So there we were, in the car, driving back home down the highway. My mother had seen the initial coverage on a TV in a clothes shop where she was passing the time. So, this was big news. Okay. But what did that have to do with us?
"Uncle Marty works in the Twin Towers."
This gave me pause. While I cannot claim to be particularly close in any special way to my Uncle Marty, having met him only on fewer than a dozen visits to the US in my lifetime, he was still my uncle and a nice guy to boot. This was profoundly potentially earthshaking news. In my 12 years of life, not one close relative of mine had yet died. This helped reinforce my childish sense of invincibility: death and other disasters were for other people. I and the people I loved would last forever and nothing bad would ever, ever happen to us.
The illusion was beginning to crack.
"What floor does he work on?"
"The eightieth, I think."
Eightieth floor... wow. Oh my. If a plane hit the Twin Towers, then it would pretty have to hit pretty high up, right? Let's say it didn't hit his floor. If he was above it, could he get down? If he was below it, could he make it out before something... awful happened?
The cellphone rang. I picked it up.
"It's Glenna."
Glenna. Glenna's one of my mother's closest friends. After many years in Israel, she was now living in St. Louis. She was closer to the action. She could tell us what was what.
Mechanically, I relayed the information I was reeiving from cross the Atlantic to my mother. Two planes hit the two towers. A plane had hit the Pentagon. The Rose Garden. A bomb in a DC mall. Fighter jets had shot down a plane. Two planes. Hijackers on one plane were negotiting with the authorities. Too much. Too much.
Home. I just wanted to get home. Home was shelter. Home was safe.
Home.
My father's back from work early. Pacing. Reciting Tehillim with a manic fervor. My younger brothers are sitting around, confused.
Where's Uncle Marty?
No one knows. No one knows yet. Was he in the tower? Was he in the subway? Out on the street? Was he... was he...
No. This would not happen. This could not happen. I turned all of my childish belief and stubbornness and denial and focused it on one thing and one thing only: Uncle Marty is not dead.
Phone rings.
It's Aunt Esther.
"Marty is not dead. He's alive."
Whooping. Hollering. Drawn-out sighs of relief. Amidst it all, I scurry away into the bathroom and bend over the sink, crying, crying tears of relief, the first and only time in my life this has happened to me.
"He's not dead... he's not dead..."
Uncle Marty, it turned out, was late to work that morning and was still in the subway when the first plane hit. From there on, it was only a matter of time until he finally got an open phone line to his house.
And in the bathroom, I wiped my eyes and washed my face and walked out to face the brand new reality.
Where were you when the world changed?
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
9/10/11
Thing and Thing and Thing
I have no idea what the person who entered this keyword phrase was looking for when it led him/her to TED, but by golly I'm going to provide it!
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you John Carpenter's iconic Thing, Marvel Comics' Thing, and Thing One from The Cat in the Hat!
I know they don't really look right--so sue me. I drew all three from memory.
Drawn using:
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
I know they don't really look right--so sue me. I drew all three from memory.
Drawn using:
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
9/8/11
Today's J. Post cartoon
You know, after drawing stuff like children being scared of rockets striking their vulnerable school buildings and evil dictators beating the embodiment of their own civilian populations to a bloody pulp, it's nice to just kick back and let rip with an old-fashioned humorous cartoon whose sole purpose is to make you laugh instead of wince:
Mind you, there is no actual strike currently going on among Israeli doctors at the moment (although their labor dispute is still dragging on and many residents' resignations have been tendered), not to mention that operating surgeons wouldn't leave their posts in any case, but hey--a laugh is a laugh, amirite?
Fun fact: I was going to call the janitor "Bob" until I remembered that we're in Israel. Such is life.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
Fun fact: I was going to call the janitor "Bob" until I remembered that we're in Israel. Such is life.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0
9/6/11
Today's Jerusalem Post cartoons
In a first for me, two of my political cartoons debuted on the same day.
In print, we got this, delayed over from last week. Just a humorous spin on how Muammar Gaddafi's whereabouts continue to be unknown following his recent overthrow. (I was tempted to do a "Where's Waldo"?-type cartoon to illustrate this, but decided not to because a) time reasons and b) other cartoonists have already done it, far better than I can.)
Online, we have Bashar Assad beating the crap out of Syria's civilian population. This one's an extended metaphor that got out of hand: it started as a comparison between "strikes" in the Middle East (AIRstrikes in Libya, striking as in HITTING in Syria, and being ON strike in Israel), which got scrapped when the Libyan revolution basically came to a close. Then I tried to rework it a little later into just a comparison between Israel and Syria, but was stumped how to present it most effectively and anyway didn't have the "feel" for it. Then I got to thinking how strikes can also be BASEBALL strikes. Then I decided to mix it all up and show Assad the batter STRIKING a Syrian catcher while being called out on a progressively higher STRIKE count by the Global Community in the role of an umpire. Then for good measure I stuck Uncle Sam in the background on the pitcher's mound, waiting to throw the Ball of Freedom to the Syrians, because hey why not. From an artistic standpoint, I really, really like how this one turned out, particularly Assad, whose caricature I have very, very clear in my head but am not always successful in transferring to paper. (And in case you're wondering, 00 not only refers to Assad being a worthless zero, but also neatly ties in to the year he took control of the Syrian government, as hinted at by the 76 on the USA uniform.)
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch) (both)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen (second)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen (both)
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen (first)
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0 (both)
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch) (both)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen (second)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen (both)
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen (first)
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0 (both)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)