Madiba

To say that Nelson Mandela is important to Africans is a wild understatement. He is not only the greatest living African, but he may be the greatest African who has ever lived and one of the world's greatest men. I'm not going to spend a lot of time justifying that statement,  there are smarter people than me writing books to that effect right now. Sufficed to say that rebel leaders are ten-a-penny, it doesn't take so very much to smash something that is rotten from the inside. To rebuild it however,  to pull peace from chaos, to drag justice from terror and hatred takes true greatness.
I lived in Arusha in northern Tanzania some years ago. A place named "The Geneva of Africa" by Bill Clinton. The peace talks for Burundi were ongoing at the time. President Mandela was using his considerable influence to move things forward.
I was walking down the street next to the conference building one day when a car pulled out in front of me and paused before turning onto the main road. I glanced at the passenger in the back seat and made eye contact with Nelson Mandela. I had just about the good sense to not stare dumbly at him,  I waved. He waved back.

first days

Dear God It's Tuesday

God of Tuesday

Super Rain

It's super rainy lately.  And not just a regular rain, but HARD RAINS that DRENCH the streets, subway tunnels and souls.

This is a collab with a very young artist, Madeline and myself.  We do great work together.  She doesn't know how to code yet so she doesn't have a website up.

(This is in response to Tim Hamilton's fish drawing a few days ago)

xoxo!

The Boy Pope, Elephant and Chicken meet for breakfast.

Yay, it's Friday and...raining all day...

Here's a fish creature:

Paper cut out sketching just because...

Yay, it's...Friday

Just to take a break from the children's book, here is a
sketch of two people. One happy, one unimpressed.

Space Girl

What's a Wednesday without a space girl?

Tuesday Toons

Warming up my hands so I can do work for children.

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen

It's 2 days late, but here it is!

His movies shaped my fantasy world when I was a child.

His retrospective in parks on summer nights would be awesome. anyone know of anything like that happening in new york?

-Robin

Ray Harryhausen

I'm a day late with this. There's nothing I can add to the appreciation of Harryhausen's work other than I think he added an essential character and humanity to it that is often missing in FX work these days.

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen: RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!

Today at Drawbridge we honor recently departed stop-motion guru Ray Harryhausen, the special effects whiz behind such classic movies as Jason & The Argonauts, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and Clash of the Titans (I'm talking about the 1981 original-- the recent remake was an execrable pile of something unspeakable).

Release the, uh, me!

Ah, Clash of the Titans, you're not that bad a film.  I enjoyed you as a child, even though I was driven nuts by the scads of mythological inconsistencies.

The top thing that drove me nuts was the Kraken. The Kraken is not Greek!! It's a Norwegian monster, from, like, two millennia later. In the original Greek Myth, the sea monster that jeopardizes Andromeda is Cetus, a giant whale monster. As an adult, I now know that the reason for the substitution was that  Harryhausen thought that a giant squid monster like the Kraken  would be more fun to animate than a giant whale.

In recent years the catchphrase of "Release the Kraken" has become something of a meme. And it is fun to yell-- I especially recommend shouting it while in the stall of a crowded public bathroom. I decided today to draw Harryhausen's Kraken to honor the man and his work, even if it wasn't Greek ;)

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen

Before there was CG, there was Ray Harryhausen. He animated many "monster" or sci-fi creatures who populated the scary movies of my childhood, but the scene that stuck in my head the most over the years was the skeleton fight scene from Jason and the Argonauts.
A movie can mesmerize, but that scene TRIPLE mesmerized me (If there is such a term).
 You can see a clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF_Fi7x93PY
And here's my sketch inspired by said scene:

Jamestown Skeletons

With the news about the Jamestown colony skeleton showing signs of cannibalism, I'm being
a bit morbid and sketching a... skeleton this morning. What ever warms up your hands, eh?
You can read more about Jamestown cannibalism here if you're interested:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/skeleton-of-teenage-girl-confirms-cannibalism-at-jamestown-colony/2013/05/01/5af5b474-b1dc-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html