Owl Chef

You know, now that I look at this I don't think Owl's would make very good chefs.

Alice Paul

2010 is the 90th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the US constitution which gave women the right to vote. Alice Paul was a suffragist leader at that time and underwent many hardships to secure that right. I'm still amazed that it has hardly been fifty years since the equal rights movement and even today there is not equality for all. People these days forget that everything we have had to be fought for at some point by amazing leaders like Alice Paul.

A is also for...

We all know what an Aardvark looks like, or DO we?? Have you ever really looked at a picture of these guys? It's nuts. Those hind legs are prehistorically gigantic, not to mention that they're about half the height of a grown person. Anyhow, after seeing one in my animal book I had to share it with the rest of the world. You're welcome.

Advanced Sketch

I was talking to my friend Ari last month during his visit to the west coast about maybe doing some drawings of the fashionable elder people on his blog Advanced Style. Here's a rough sketch to see what one might look like. I didn't really correct anything as I went so the eyes came out much too small for the rest of the face, but I think it still came out okay. Hopefully there will be more coming.

Woman

Still trying to find a style I like and wanna stick with. This one is inspired by one of my favorite artists, Egon Schiele

Squirrelin' Around

Here in Portland one of my favorite distractions is to watch the squirrels in my backyard (as if I wasn't enough like an old man already). I always think about that scene from The Sword in the Stone when Merlin turns them both into squirrels and they get chased by those lady squirrels. Isn't it totally sad when he turns back into a boy and breaks the girl squirrel's heart?

Another thing I love about squirrels, they never walk. They only prance. I wish I could do that.

Robert

This is my friend Robert from a photo taken on his birthday at the Skidmore Bluffs.

You can see him dance in Culture Machine, October 14-17 at Disjecta in N. Portland. I know I'll be there.

Swifting the Night Away

Every September the Vaux's Swifts roost in the chimney of the Chapman Elementary School in NW Portland on their way south for the fall. At sunset thousands of them gather and spiral down the chimney swaying and pulsing with all the elegance of a firework display or a ballet.

I went last week and made this drawing. Enjoy!

Alexis

We visited with our friend Alexis while down in Oakland who was very busy with schoolwork at the time. She was sitting still in front of the computer so long that I took it as an opportunity to do a quick portrait. Consequently concentration face = kind of angry looking face. Cheer up Alexis, it's only library science!

The Many Sordid Affairs of Rabbi Herschel Rabbitovski

Hershel Rabbitovski - the name alone conjures images of loose women, fast cars, and cheap moonshine. Not much is known about the infamous bootlegger's early years, other than that he was born in a small village outside of Odessa to Esther and Dimitri Rabbitovski, poor carrot farmers, in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Young Hershel, it seems, always had a cute, whiskered nose for trouble and was quickly spirited away to Kiev where his parents enrolled him in a rabbinical seminary.

He was ordained as a rabbi in 1914 but, after persistent allegations of money laundering, Rabbitovski fled to America where, through his cousin Harvey Harewood, he quickly found work in a poor Brooklyn synagogue. With the advent of Prohibition, Rabbitovski turned the congregation into a front for a bootlegging operation extending as far west as Missouri and as far south as the Carolinas. Taking a leaf from his upbringing, Rabbitovski's outfit specialized in a unique brand of single malt carrot whiskey colloquially known as "Warren-Tooth Rotgut." At first, life was good and money was easy but, during the later half of the 1920s, Rabbitovski was constantly on the run from Feds and hired guns alike, culminating in a deadly subway shootout in 1933. His funeral was held at B'nai Abraham Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey, though persistent sightings of his distinctive beard and floppy ears have led conspiracy theorists to believe he survived the hit to live out his days somewhere along the Brazilian coast.

Drawing by Ilan Schraer
Story by Aaron Greyson and Ilan Schraer
Written by Aaron Greyson