Sketch o’the Week: Sir Ian McKellen!

“You Shall Not Pass!”

I’m not sure this movie moment stacks up to the Rosebud reveal in “Citizen Kane”, but it’s a favorite of mine. Sir Ian McKellen‘s casting as Gandalf in Peter Jackson‘s “The Lord of the Rings” films was pure genius. There are lots of stories about other actors who were considered for the part, including another KBE by the name of Sir Sean Connery, but McKellen made the role so much his own that it’s now next to impossible to imagine another actor in the part.

I do a video of me drawing these sketches every week, and paid subscribers to my weekly newsletter have access to them (subscribe to my weekly newsletter “The Ink Stained Wretch” here). Every once and a while I share that video with everyone, and this is one of those every once and a whiles: