was trying to take some rest. hands do scrawl scrawl

oko for @spongehole

BACK OF MEMORIES 1924-2024

Take notes, people

Little tiny whiny wet cat

John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in The Cossacks (George W. Hill, 1928)

Cast: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Ernest Torrance, Nils Asther, Paul Hurst, Dale Fuller. Screenplay: Frances Marion, based on a novel by Leo Tolstoy. Title cards: John Colton. Cinematography: Percy Hilburn. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Blanche Sewell.

Nobody comes off well in The Cossacks. Not even John Gilbert, for whom MGM made the movie, hoping the reteaming with Renée Adorée, his co-star in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925), would strike fire at the box office. Gilbert spends much of the movie in a shaggy Astrakhan hat that makes his nose look big. Nor was the film much fun for screenwriter Frances Marion and director George W. Hill, who spent much of the production time fighting with studio interference and handling complaints from Gilbert and Adorée. Hill eventually quit and was replaced by an uncredited Clarence Brown. Nor does the film do much justice to the novel by Leo Tolstoy on which it's based. It completely inverts the story, in which Prince Olenin is the protagonist, an idealistic Russian who hates Moscow society and finds himself in the simpler, more primitive way of life in the Caucasus. In the film, Olenin (Nils Asther) has been sent by the tsar to mingle with the Cossacks and find a bride in some vaguely diplomatic attempt to cement relations between the urban Russians and the rural populace. Asther is a very pretty Olenin, who of course lights on the equally very pretty Maryana, played by the very pretty Adorée, but she's in love with Lukashka (Gilbert), even though he's a "woman man" who doesn't like killing Turks, which is all that the male Cossacks seem to do. (The women, meanwhile, do all the work.) The film winds up as an absurd paean to the Cossack way of life, after Lukashka decides he really does like killing after all. True, The Cossacks is often fun to watch, and there's some spectacular stunt riding by a troupe of actual Cossacks brought to the United States for the film. But there's too much nonsense and too many clichés.

Grim reaper of resurrection alternate ending

Parody of that nichijou post that’s been going around

The Young Witch & the Devil (Молода відьма & чорт) by Ukrainian artist Halyna Mazepa (Галина Мазепа, 1910-1995).

Pair of vintage postcards published in Lviv, 1930’s.

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks by Ilya Repin // 112th Territorial Defense Brigade by Emeric Lhuisset

AeriSeph x 🇺🇦

For Sephiroth, I used the reference of a warlike Cossack because Sephiroth looks good without a shirt. He also wears a hetman's hat, because feathers… feathers suit him💕

Ukrainian Cossacks

on a roll with these dumb doodles

(September 3 - September 22 2023)

I never really know what to say in these things, but I hope the drawings will speak for me. More under the cut (there's a LOTTTTT this time.)

Revisited an idea as previously seen in Feb. 2023 Highlights.

Rejected Sasha sketch.

I realized I had only drawn Milka four times so I decided to rectify that. (But who's to say she isn't in all of my drawings but invisible.)

Quentin makes me happy.

(Will anyone get the reference? I wonder)

(The joke is they are both named Mikhail. hahahaaaaaaaaAa)

(patrick voice) EVERYONE DIED.

I figured out how to make gradients the real way in my art thing. It's over for you all.

Aye aye aye, your eyes hypnotize 🎵

(here I was thinking I was clever for drawing Kitty with hypno-eye swirlies, but upon closer inspection on her model, she had them all along.)

Note: Crystal doesn't have an official birthday. I just chose from a random Virgo date. It happened to be Sept. 22. Yaaaaaaaaay.

I dread to imagine what's inside that box.

Okosona but I took it to another level and made a Graysona and Tursona too

I just love to draw those funny little guys

This is an abandoned comic that I think I did in December of last year. I couldn't continue due to lack of will and ideas.

Pharaoh Man was supposed to be the protagonist of the comic but I didn't really know what the "loyal subject" was supposed to do. It was difficult and unpredictable to make this comic because I tried to do it without writing a script. I can't make that mistake again lol!

As I wasn't going to finish it anyway, I decided to post it incomplete.

Btw Enjoy the funny faces of Pharaoh Man's helmet snake :)