Working on a cartoon about proportionality

Pretty emotional stuff...

I’m used to wading through horrific news and awful details when I create my cartoons.

Sometimes though, it gets uncomfortably emotional, like this week as I work on an animation about Gaza.

One scene in the upcoming animation is about the number of journalists who have been killed during the war in Gaza — a total now at 79, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The journalist who seems to be living out some mythic heroic tragedy is Al Jazeera’s bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, whose son Hamza Dahdouh (also working as a journalist) was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday.

This, after the bureau chief some now call “The Mountain” lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson in an earlier airstrike.

This drawing is based on an incredible photo taken of the elder Dahdouh mourning his son who was killed over the weekend.

When basing a caricature on someone in so much pain, I take it seriously.

It involves a lot of staring at the photo — not to match it, but to get the feel of it: his injured hand, the weight of his other hand on the helmet, the dirt and burns on his arms.

It’s just awful.

There is so much pain in that photo, I wanted to humbly attempt to bring some of that to my drawing.

This feels particularly close to home since I consider myself a journalist, and have cartoonist friends across the globe who have been jailed and attacked for their work.

By the way, in addition to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Cartoonist Rights Network International is a good place to find out more and help protect people doing essential, but dangerous, work.

Now back to the animation, I’ll see you back here shortly.

-Mark