These musicians played a tribute to Keith jarret last night at the Jazz station.
Isaac and the Awkward Situations
Comics, Vaudeville, Art Education, and Music
Category Archives: art
Ska music: The Toasters, Israelites, the Bandulus, Heavy City, The Longshots
I’m so lucky to live where great musicians play ska music! Here are a few drawings. The Toasters are from New York City. You may have heard their hit,”Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
The Israelites are from Portland, Oregon.
The Longshots are from Eugene and Portland.
Heavy City are from Portland! they have many of the same members as the sentiments, and their drummer organizes a ska big band!
Here are some pencils for The Bandulus, Heavy City and The Longshots.
Save Kesey Square
At a street fair in Kesey Square in downtown Eugene (that charged nothing to vendors), I drew portraits and performerd comics and banjo. The event was not a fundraiser, just a free fair for everyone to enjoy Kesey square in downtown Eugene, a public space that will sadly soon become another overpriced apartment complex because people with money want more of it.
I drew these portraits and more. I hoped to do art lessons for children but there were no children.
I could draw people at your event!
Black Magdalene
Black Magdalene have a bass and guitar player, a drummer, and three belly dancers. They also have a sexy vocalist and decorate their mic stand with swag. Combining world music with electronics and live instrumentation they put on a special show.
They call themselves organic dark wave with middle eastern sounds. They have a bandcamp page where you can listen but of course, the fun is in seeing the band play and dance live!
Ocean and aquarium paintings
I teach art at Mecca some Saturdays. Here are some photos of my lesson’s results. 
This is a nudibranch I guided an 8 year old boy to draw. I broke it down to basic shapes and encouraged him as he went.
This young girl is drawing a whale. 
This child appeared to put on too much water. Cool skull though.
A sunken ship! I didn’t prompt them to draw that. Notice the crystalline trees to the right. Or are they houses?
You can see the bright oil pastels show through the blue water based paint. Sometimes the students use colored pencil or crayons. 
Coral and layered paint.
This was an example I made to show them how.
After drawing fish, eels, sea anemones, sea turtles, jellys, coral and sea weed, the children paint blue over with sponges.
Some students abandon their drawings, so I recycle their pages to guide other students. I like to not finish my projects so that students don’t imitate me fully. I like this lesson because it doesn’t have to be changed for older kids, just expect more detail out of them. In most projects, for some reason, I get push back from kids when I ask them to put in more when I think they aren’t done. This project usually has less of that, perhaps because there is always more to put in the ocean. I’m going to mail these to my niece in Amsterdam to put up on the wall around her cradle. I hope they aren’t nightmare inducing.
I even got my mom to try this lesson.
Didn’t she make a nice scene with layers of paint? Her fish have some personality. You can try it at home or share with children.
Human Ottoman, Bustin Jeiber, and Jeff
Human Ottoman play weird beautiful ethereal math rock. They call it polyrhythmic world metal. They say they are influenced by Brazilian rhythms, Fela Kuri, Mr. Bungle and they sing in Spanish and English. Susan loves Dave King from the Bad Plus. Matt loves folk music including Bob Dylan. They were all U of O music students.
I would color them, but they are cool as black and white drawings too, no? Print them out, make your own coloring book!
St. Lucia, the goddess of percussion!
Bustin Jieber call themselves a sister group to Human Ottoman, but they are much more free form, improvisational and silly. Andy plays sax, alternating between cacophonous squonks and howls, and melodic John Coltrainesque splendor.
Dustin seems to be quite skilled on the Primus slap style, but there’s a healthy dose of Tom Waits and off kilter Zappa here too. They sing about nipples and gravy. It sounds silly, but it’s performed by virtuosos! Long live Jeiber! I’m a belieber! The bands also share a drummer, the marvelous master of rhythm Susan Lucia.
The bands combined at the end of the night to play some songs as “Jeff” including “Bonobo Greeting.” It was a thrill. members will be traveling to Peru and relocating to Portland, so I do not know the future of these talented, enigmatic collectives. Andy also plays with Eleven Eyes, The Cherry Poppin Daddies, and The Tim Mclaughlin Project, so catch him tootin sax somewhere!
SOOO many handsome musicians on one stage!
Cabinet of Curiosities steam punk cabaret! Faerbella, Cullen and Mia Vance, new zone gallery, fusion fascination
Faerbella call themselves “dark cabaret” I thought their clever pop lyrics and harmonies reminded me of Camera Obscura and the Cardigans. Trumpet and stand up bass mean they fit in at a jazz venue, a sense of humor and lovely voices make them a fantastic live show.
Serena had several dance performances with her troupe Fusion Fascination. (Michele was very serious and had a stern face as she danced, but Kaity had a big smile.) I took photos to reference for details in my drawing.
Cullen Vance is so talented, producing elaborate middle eastern soundscapes with a fiddle, some drums and a looping pedal. His wife Mia dances belly dance. I hope to see them again because they are awesome! Keep up with them at this website. Cullen also teaches drama and improv and makes animation.
We also heard humorous stories from Tamathy Christenson, who performs monthly at No Shame Eugene. I got to play piano and theremin and share my cartoons while people mingled and enjoyed Steve’s incredible steam punk, diesel punk and ???? art. His work is always up at the New Zone Gallery. It is weird, wonderful and functioning.
Grayson Fiske and I working on a music video!
We transformed a living room into an animation studio. When it’s finished, we will post here and at the Human Ottoman website.
Eucon 2015, Terryl Whitlash and Kelly McMorris
I made it to Eugene’s second con this fall, Eucon! And I saw many amazing artists. By coincidence the author of this book was there.
I picked it up a few months ago from a Portland Art store and I’ve been sharing it with my students to many “oohs” and”aaahs.”
She was charming and answered questions and talked about her career. She told us the secret to making believable animals in fantasy worlds and films is to base them on the structures of real living animals. She shared with us how she would go about designing a “jabberwocky.” (she would combine a pteranodon, a rahmphorincus, with an Ethiopian wolf, a long neck and a rabbit head) I asked her what does the jabberwocky eat with those rabbit teeth? She said, “little girls!”
She said she wanted to illustrate biology but got into film almost by accident when Lucasfilm’s art director saw her work in her school’s gallery. Here is a long video about her career.
My favorite part of the video is where she says, “keep yourself teachable.” 
She is behind a massive free online course for designing fantasy animals, Creatures of Amalthea.
( maybe it’s an ad campaign for copic markers, but it’s pretty cool!)
Thank you Terryl, you are an inspiration.
I also met this fantastic Portland artist Kelly McMorris who illustrates for Disney, Scholastic and cricket magazine. Check her work out here. She has a blog where she talks about art technique! Wow, I could learn a lot from her.
Here are some of the coolest cosplayers I saw.
What time is is? ADVENTURE TIME!
What kind of crazy fan fiction would have Marty Mcfly meet Ant Man?
That adorable pink storm trooper outfit is made out of yoga mats!
Lesson plans based on Freehand by Helen Birch.
I picked up this book at an Oregon art store and immediately began copying drawings from it. Nearly every page could be a “daily art challenge” or inspire a lesson plan.
Here is my drawing inspired by page 19 Maria Molares.
I think anyone could follow the basic rules of these patterns and make their own. Like it is meditative to color, it is also to draw the same image again and again. Once an artist figures out the rules of a pattern, or makes up their own, they can be followed continuously until the page is full. It’s quite satisfying, and the brain can stay occupied you might find the solutions to puzzles that have perplexed you when you were stamped.
Some people say they do their best thinking in the shower or while driving, by sketching, one could imitate the draining showering phenomenon while sitting at a desk. Lynda Barry suggests drawing spirals.
Or writing the alphabet. If you have the “tip of the tongue phenomenon” you might stumble across the answer if you just stop focusing on it. Imagine a scenario where you can’t come up with the Latin word for werewolf. Try writing out the alphabet… A, b, c, d,
After all, your brain is a collection of connected neurons, and considering we make sense of our world through language, the neuron cluster that make up our letters we make our language out if must have millions of connections!
Eventually you’ll think of something that will remind you of the answer. “L makes me think of Lyme, which makes me think of… Oh I just started craving a lime Rickey… Hmmm, m n o p… I remember now, it’s lycanthrope!” ( results may vary)
Here is my drawing inspired by page 21 by Julia Pott.
It features made up animals. Intentional distortions. I also included words that have nothing to do with the composition, forcing the viewers mind to make a connection that doesn’t seem to be there. By having one animal resting on the back of the other, I think it makes the animals that clearly don’t really exist, look a little more real, forcing the viewer to imagine perhaps the artist had a model he was looking at while drawing. It reminded me that as a child I would draw my own animals and dinosaurs, combining traits of many real animals into my own biologically feasible creations.
Here is my drawing inspired by page 31 by Stephanie kubo and page 39 by Kristen Donegan.
It utilizes patterns like a Zentangle, some elements of collage, some random chance (I threw a cup down on the page to trace and there was charcoal in the cup that marked the page.) I have been researching about Dadaism lately… This peice also uses the technique of blending/ drawing with an eraser. I used color sparingly. One ” rule ” of composition, is if you have a color appear somewhere on a piece, have the same color appear somewhere else. I intentionally broke that rule.
Isaac and the Awkward Situations 