Visiting Artist - Ricardo Siri Liniers

In life drawing this morning we were lectured on muscles and bones in the arms and hands and it made me feel really twitchy. I think everyone is still jet lagged from our all-nighters and even our teacher was punchy and easily distractible. Which was quite enjoyable. He had diagrammed the muscle groups he was discussing, onto drawings of the Incredible Hulk, and She-Hulk - and that lead to some interesting tangents about the accuracy of the Hulk's chest muscles... compared to those of She-Hulk's.

Our Artist, this afternoon (actually, I just got home- 5:30pm) - was Liniers. Who may be my new favorite cartoonist! His characters are so simple and so adorable and he has a wicked sense of humor combined with that "Awww, that's so sweet!" sensibility. Interesting combo.

His work is best known for his comic strip, Macanudo, in the Argentinian newspaper, La Nacion, but he's also done a few New Yorker covers, and now his children's books are available in English. (Here's a link to Liniers' Amazon Author page)

I have this crazy urge to go to Amazon and order all his books. Unfortunately, most are in Spanish. I can figure out what some of the words mean... but I'm going to start with all the English books.

One thing I loved was his story about ripping off other artists. Of course, he does it in his own style. He told the story of how he drew himself as a rabbit and then was worried that Matt Groenig would be upset. But there was no chance that Groenig would EVER see an Argentinian comic strip right? Turned out his sister's best friend is now married to the guy. Snicker snicker.