Tag: Medium

Liza Donnelly is “The Observer” – Noteworthy by Medium

It was an honor to be selected as a Noteworthy Writer for Medium, a wonderful online publication started by Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter.  I have been publishing with Medium for years now, and I love the simplicity of the design and their mission statement. It is a place for my writing and drawing (together and alone) that  is supportive and yet also leaves me alone to do what I feel I need to do!   In the introduction to this wonderful brief video, the Medium editors say I was chosen  “…for finding nuance in the news cycle, Liza sketches everything that can’t be said.”   https://noteworthy.medium.com/liza-donnelly-c848c1d06ac4

Director: Matthew Miller
Creative Director: Spencer Somers
Producer: Jacqueline Legan
Director of Photography: Kevin Phillips 
Editor: Matthew Miller, Jeremy Bowditch Animation: Arthur Jones
 
Produced by Standard Time

International Women’s Day is Every Day

I love drawing cartoons of all sorts:  silly, wacky, mysterious, introspective,  fun, cultural, political, single panel, multi-panel, titled, caption-less, captioned. There are so many ways to go.  The New Yorker has published many of them for over 20 years, some of them political. I also draw a political cartoon for Medium.com every Monday.  Most every week, I create one that is about women’s rights around the world.  Below is part of this week’s cartoon, which I drew with International Women’s Day in mind.   I think about that subject just about every week.

This image was inspired when I read about a rapist in India who said his victim deserved it.  He is in jail, to be killed by the government.  He was found guilty;  but the culture is guilty for perpetuating these perceptions, and I don’t mean just Indian culture. Ours is guilty of fostering  tragically wrongful perceptions of others, too.  To see more of this cartoon, and my others, click here. too late raped

Live Drawing The Golden Globes After Tragedy

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I often draw political events and awards shows on television. It seems to be something I enjoy and people enjoy seeing my quick sketches.  I have done it for a few years now for The New Yorker, BET, Theatermania, Fusion and Medium.  This time I did it for myself and my own personal audience….as I wasn’t even sure I could do it at all. The Golden Globes this year followed an incredible tragedy: it was so close to the deaths of the four cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, and I was in such a fog about that, and still very sad. It seemed odd to being doing something so frivolous. But I decided–or imagined–that the four irreverent cartoonists who were killed would approve of my lampooning Hollywood. They would have done a much more forceful job of it than I, but that’s neither here nor there.

Above and below are the results.  I have a feeling that cartoonists were on people’s minds as they watched the Golden Globes (some actors commented on the tragedy), because my work got more attention than usual.  Cartoonists are being thought of.  It’s nice, I hope it lasts, but for better reasons.  Cartoonists are a wonderful asset to our society, I must admit.  I like cartoonists: they are, generally speaking,  good people. And we provide a much needed service.

My tweet drawings for the Golden Globes got a shout out on twitter from @NBC, and Retweeted and favorited by thousands of others.  The following day, my drawings were shown on the Today Show, I was profiled in People and also on USA Today.  Quite something.

It seems that people like cartoons, no matter whether they are hard hitting or silly. We all need to laugh.