Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln!

Since I poked fun at Abraham Lincoln in an earlier post this week by saying he might have been a pirate, I figured I should try to make nice with him by wishing him a happy birthday here, too. Not that he would know, since he died a year or two before Al Gore invented the internet.

Abraham Lincoln would have been 206 years old today, so he isn’t exactly a spring chicken any more. One can only wonder how things might have been different if he had been able to complete his second term as president. One can only wonder, too, what he might think of where our country headed today. And one can only wonder what he would say if he were to see his larger-than-life face on Mount Rushmore, or his giant self at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington? Probably something along the lines of, “Why do I look so serious up there? I did smile sometimes, you know.”

But anyway, here he is giving you a tip of his hat and a wave:

Most of the drawings I have posted here in the past have been produced digitally. But this one was done the old-fashioned way - just a quick pencil sketch on paper, with some of it drawn over with ink. I then dropped it on the scanner, and here it is. No fancy post processing necessary. And who says technology makes everything better? Easier sometimes, maybe, but not always better.

So, happy birthday, Abraham Lincoln! Try not to eat too much birthday cake all at once. And good luck blowing out all of those 206 candles in one blow!