Author: liza

GOP Debate: Subjective Sarcastic Snapshots

-11Last night the Presidential hopefuls of the Republican Party persuasion gathered somewhere out west to debate. I should say some of the hopefuls, because there was a kiddies table again: a handful of candidates debated at 5 pm instead of 8pm. People like Pataki and Santorum (remember him?), who did not make the cut to prime time.  How debilitating, if you ask me.

I was in front of my television,  iPad and stylis in hand. CNBC turned out to be controversial in its questioning, and in the way some of the journalists shouted and over-acted their questioning. Sorry I didn’t get that in my drawing, it would have been difficult to do. But it was very unprofessional. Plus they did not start at 8:00, but made us listen to their pundits go on and on for fifteen minutes beforehand. This is what its come to, forced-pundit-listening.

No one appeared to stand out as a particular winner, from my vantage point. They all seemed to do similarly. Christie tried to out-Trump Trump with his loud bombastic statements, and Trump seemed to be quieter this time. Perhaps Carson is rubbing off on him (not something you want to picture).  Jeb seemed cantankerous, Rubio seemed angry, Huckabee is Mr. Smooth, Carly took aim at Hillary, and Cruz used his eyebrows often. We didn’t hear from Rand Paul for a long time, and I wondered if he had left. I can’t really remember the last guy’s name, and can’t remember what it was he said.

Here are the drawings that I tweeted out in real time, within minutes. Hardest to draw, you ask?  Ben Carson: he is round, very round.  I wrote that on twitter and one of my followers said  he should be easy to draw because he never moves!  Well none of them do, really.  Next debate, I am going to make a concerted effort to draw entire bodies. And maybe there will be more movement on stage for me to draw, you never know. Wouldn’t that be fun. Dancing, perhaps some tango?

 

 

 

Live Drawing the Benghazi Hearings and Hillary’s Testimony

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Last week, I watched Hillary Clinton testify for eleven hours on one day of the Benghazi Committee hearings. I drew some of what I saw and immediately shared it with Twitter and Facebook. Many of the quotes here were verbatim, others I could not help but contribute my thoughts on the situation. Hillary held up amazingly well, and many of the news outlets and observers as well as pollsters feel she benefited from the day.

Global Cartooning: A forum in Caen

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A gathering of 35 cartoonists from 16 countries took place from September 11-13th in Caen, France at the Caen Memorial Museum, and I was honored to be among the invited to participate in the events and public debates. It was a wonderful event and many conversations were had about the role of political cartooning in a world run by the internet.
Here is a video from France 3, who asked the Spanish cartoonist Kap and myself to draw and discuss the immigration crisis.
Over the course of the three days, we debated the limits of free speech and the importance of understanding one another globally. Many were in agreement that just because we have free speech does not mean we have to use it to its limits in every case.

Page Six!

 

Last week, my good friend and fellow New Yorker cartoonist, Marisa Acocella Marchetto had a terrificbook party to celebrate her new Graphic Novel, Ann Tenna.  It was held at Marisa’s husband’s restaurant, Da Silvano, and was covered on the New York Post’s Page Six, “Graphic Novel Debuts Among Media Elite”  It was fun to be mentioned as one of the New Yorker cartoonists who came to celebrate with Marisa.

 

 

 

Putting Pearls On Jeb, And Other Fun Things About The GOP Debate

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How could I not live tweet draw the first Republican Presidential debate? It was an invitation I couldn’t resist. And on some level, visually, it delivered. I could have used more (some) dancing, a fist fight or two, maybe if someone broke out into song, I could have drawn that. Trump’s hair behaved, although Christie’s did not. Marco Rubio did not drink any water on camera. Jeb! wanted everybody to just get along and Trump skirted on the very edge of racism and sexism and misogyny. I draw these quickly, they are impressions, but I miss so much stuff. What I didn’t miss was a feeling that this was a lot of men groveling for attention.

There were a plethora of blue and black suits. And there were so many of them, I lost track of who’s tie was what color. Some weird stuff was said, and I tried to capture some of the bon mots. Two hours zips by when you are having fun drawing.

I drew Megyn Kelly just for variety, I had to.

And I drew Trump several times (he was on camera a lot, surprise surprise), each time he came out differently.

One of my favorite candidates to draw is Rand Paul?—?his hair and eyebrows are to die for, for a cartoonist.

And I gave Jeb! a string of pearls because I really think he looks like his mother, Barbara.

Iceland And Women’s Rights

bike and door Recently I was fortunate to be invited to attend a conference in Iceland.  What a fascinating place. The conference was terrific also: called WE2015, the conference was founded by Halla Thomasdottir, a wonderful and powerful person whom I met when we both spoke at TED in 2010 (here is my talk about women and humor).   The conference was a series of fascinating discussions about closing the gender gap, and the importance of including men in our fight for equality around the world. Geena Davis was the keynote speaker, and she could not have been more inspiring as she spoke about her Institute On Gender In Media.  I live tweet drew the conference as well as some of Iceland.  Statistics show that Iceland is the best country for women to live and work, and they celebrated their hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage while I was there.

I wrote about my trip for NewYorker.com, which you can read here.  The post includes more drawings that I did on my visit to this alluring country.

Blue Lagoon