Believe it or not, if you wade past the spam bots, name-calling and nuclear threats, there’s a heartwarming, human side to Twitter. Recently, 94-year-old Rose Marie, best known as Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke Show, joined the fray, probably expecting it to be the soul-deadening echo chamber it is for most of us. In a few weeks she’s gained about 100,000 followers, all coming out of the woodwork to express their love, admiration, and awe at her 90-year(!
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in extremely weird times. There have always been people who take pride in stubborn ignorance, emit lies and spurious arguments to justify bigotry, and are fundamentally disposed toward seeing the world in terms of “us vs. them.” But, for the first time, we’re seeing these qualities in the supposed leader of our country. As a person who’s rational yet anxiety-prone, it’s meant a year of lost sleep and gnashing teeth.
Last week I had the opportunity to spend three days in a caricature drawing class led by Mad Magazine artist Tom Richmond. Basically everything that’s covered in the course can be found in the book that I bought way back in 2011, so if you’re a self-starter, that may be all you need to step up your game. As for me, I tend to require someone standing over me and telling me what the heck I’m doing wrong, which is almost always obvious in retrospect.
Like me, Tyrus Wong grew up in Sacramento, scribbling drawings on recycled paper. Okay, that sort of diminishes everything he went through. An illegal (trigger warning, Republicans!) immigrant to post-earthquake San Francisco, he powered through discrimination and prejudice to quickly rise through the ranks at Disney, almost single-handedly defining the look of 1942’s Bambi. A Disney strike and World War II killed the momentum of the Asian-American artists group he helped to found.
Another class assignment! Here’s an illustration inspired by a New York Times essay by a woman whose online persona became a real-life façade. If you spend eight years building a house (no matter how uncomfortable or ugly it may be, no matter how impractical or poorly lit), it becomes nearly impossible to knock it down. That is about how long I put into building my social media presence, into becoming the cool girl I showcase on Instagram and Facebook.