40. CALVIN COOLIDGE: Never give up

40. CALVIN COOLIDGE: Never give up:


Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) was the 30th President of the United States. A serious and no-nonsense man, Coolidge was unassuming but had a quiet determination that saw him prosper in the White House. Thanks to Matt for submitting this great quote. After drawing humans in realistic situations all the time, it was fun to dip my toe in the realm of fantasy with this comic. Sometimes a cartoonist just needs to draw a big-ass dragon!
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39. SHANTIDEVA: What, me worry?

39. SHANTIDEVA: What, me worry?:


Shantideva was an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar who is most well-known for writing the famous buddhist text A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. I think this is a fantastic quote. Worry can consume a person and suffocate them into inaction. I know I’m guilty of it and it’s something I’m working on fixing. The amount of energy it takes out of you is exhausting and at the end of the day is really quite pointless. Thanks very much to Jill for submitting this quote.
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Hedy Lamarr Portrait

Hedy Lamarr: was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age". Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.

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Video tutorials: [link]

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Living Water - Drawing

Living Water: Chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state (water vapor or steam). Water also exists in a liquid crystal state near hydrophilic surfaces.

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37. BRUCE LEE: Be water, my friend

37. BRUCE LEE: Be water, my friend:


This is Bruce Lee’s most famous quote and conveys his most important fighting philosophy: adaptability. He believed that a great fighter must be ready to adapt to whatever situation he faces, to flow like water around and through an opponent. If one way doesn’t work, a fighter should be prepared to adapt and find a way that does.
Lee decided that the best way he could showcase his skills was through a television or movie career, and was encouraged by his famous martial-arts students like Steve McQueen and James Coburn. Before he moved to America, he was a famous child actor in Hong Kong, so he was no stranger to being in front of the cameras. He auditioned for a Hollywood producer after being spotted giving a demonstration at a Karate tournament (watch the audition – his charisma already oozes off the screen). This eventually led to his role as Kato on the series The Green Hornet in 1966. The show only lasted one season and over the following years Lee got bit-parts in other shows but nothing substantial. His other major role during that time was on the TV series Longstreet, where Lee basically played himself, a martial-arts instructor. It was in this role that he says the famous water quote (Watch it here. He later recalled his lines in this more well-known interview.) Lee’s big break was meant to come in a starring role for a TV show he spent a long time developing called The Warrior. He would play a shaolin monk who would wander the land getting into adventures. But mainly because the Hollywood producers were racist assholes, they instead gave the role to David Carradine (a white guy playing a Chinese monk! WTF?) and the show eventually became Kung-Fu.
Rejected and almost broke, Lee returned to Hong Kong to get away for awhile. He was surprised that he was famous there thanks to his role as Kato, and was soon given a movie deal. Lee went on to make three insanely successful movies in Hong Kong: The Big Boss, Fists of Fury and Way of The Dragon. Each one broke the previous film’s local box-office record, and Lee became a hero thanks to his roles as strong, ass-kicking Chinese men who fought for his oppressed people. Hollywood eventually caught wind of this and decided to give him the leading role in a big-budget Hollywood movie. So Lee finally got to showcase his amazing skills and philosophy to a worldwide audience in Enter the Dragon. It was the culmination of 10 years of struggling to break into the business and a lifetime of martial-arts training. A culmination of blood, sweat, tears and never-ending hard work. And you know what happened next? HE DIED JUST BEFORE IT WAS RELEASED! Argh! It still makes me upset just typing it. Enter the Dragon would go onto to be massively successful and catapult Lee into instant mythic status. Imagine being a kid in 1973 who was used to watching cowboys duke it out on the big screen, and then being shown this opening scene in Enter The Dragon.
What sometimes gets overlooked is the impact Lee had on action cinema. His fight with Chuck Norris (best fight scene ever, and it showcases his ‘be like water’ philosophy) could be inserted into any movie today and it would still hold up. It was filmed 40 years ago! He choreographed all of his fight scenes and had a natural talent for knowing what audiences would like, which angles to shoot and when to add dramatic pauses in the middle of sequences. And not only did you know he was a real fighter, but he could act too! Sure, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen etc are great in fight scenes, but they’re not very good actors. There will never, ever be another Bruce Lee.
- This interview with Lee is the only extensive interview with him that exists on video.

- I tried to make this piece look like an old Chinese scroll painting with the quote being a fable spoken amongst two wise, old sages. If I had to explain that, it probably didn’t work.

- In case you missed it, I posted yesterday that from next week I will be updating twice a week instead of three. Read more here.

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Boy

Boy:

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36. BRUCE LEE: There are no limits

36. BRUCE LEE: There are no limits:


BRUCE LEE WEEK: PART 1
The story goes like this: In 1964, Bruce Lee had moved to Oakland from Seattle and opened his own martial-arts school named Jun Fan Gung-Fu (Bruce’s Chinese name is Jun Fan). Lee was an expert in Wing Chun, a style of Chinese kung-fu he learnt as a teenager in Hong Kong. He was teaching a modified version of this Wing Chun style to a variety of students – Chinese, Japanese, black, white – whoever wanted to learn was welcome. However, Oakland and nearby San Francisco had a very large and traditional Chinese community who weren’t too pleased that Lee was teaching non-Chinese students. At that time, kung-fu still had an mystical aura surrounding it, and the different schools were very protective of their fighting techniques. They passed down their secrets from generation to generation like a precious family heirloom and always kept it among their own people. So for Lee to be teaching non-Chinese students was a serious offence.
The old guard issued an ultimatum to Lee: stop teaching to non-Chinese or we’ll visit your school and beat the crap out of you. Lee refused. He had been the victim of racism his whole life (he grew up in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, got teased as a kid for having caucasian heritage and most likely got teased when he moved to America for having Chinese heritage), so he was going to teach whoever the hell he pleased. And that’s where this comic starts: A posse turns up to Lee’s school with their number one fighter, Wong Jack Man, to challenge Lee to a fight.
The duel was a life-changing event for Lee. Although he won, he didn’t beat Wong as quickly or efficiently as he liked. It was messy and over 3 minutes long, with Lee having to run around the school chasing his opponent and bruising his hands from punching the back of Wong’s head. After the fight Lee, out of breath and despondent, faced a harsh reality: he wasn’t in the best shape and Wing Chun was nowhere near a complete fighting system.
This isn’t easy to do for a lot of people, to look at yourself critically and admit that you still have a lot to learn, even if others have already labeled you a ‘master’. But Lee was willing to look as his performance objectively and make the necessary changes.
From then on, Lee took his training to a new level. He began serious aerobic and strength training and also studied different fighting styles. Now when I say ‘took it to a new level’, I mean he was freakin’ OBSESSED. He lived, breathed and probably dreamed about martial arts. Lee was fanatical about training, sometimes to a fault as he seriously injured his back during a workout. He refined his fighting style into a system he named Jeet Kune Do, which translates into The Way of the Intercepting Fist. Lee became something like a martial-arts celebrity in California, with experts in other styles (like Karate champ Chuck Norris) coming to train with him. Over the years he transformed himself from a pretty fit, Wing-Chun expert into an almost super-human, half-human, half-dragon, cyborg fighting machine, capable of incredible demonstrations of speed and strength. All it took was dedication, hard work and having the determination to never stay on a plateau.
- The woman in the comic is Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce’s devoted wife. It was Linda who worked a steady job during this time to pay the bills that allowed Bruce to concentrate on his martial arts training. And the baby Bruce is shoulder pressing is his son, Brandon, who also died way too young.

- The yin-yang symbol in the final shot is the Jeet Kun Do logo Lee came up with.

- The official Bruce Lee website.

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