Category Archives: artwork

September 28, 2023 · 12:42 am

Humble Pie

The difference between who you want to be and who you are is humbling.

The recipe for humble pie requires good, clear eyesight.

And you need a reliable mirror that only shows the flaws in the reflected image, not in the mirror itself.

And you need to look at every detail in the whole of you. Even the secret things that you tend to conceal from everybody, especially yourself.

And writing a novel, if you do it right, is a form of baking humble pie.

The good and the not-so-good is reflected in reviews, which are often written with mirrors that have flaws.

But what you see, if you are honest with yourself, can show you that, even though you are far from perfect, you are exactly what you are supposed to be.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, irony, Paffooney, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life

September 25, 2023 · 1:54 am

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.

Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.

The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.

It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.

I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, classical music, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, Hidden Kingdom, magic, metaphor, music, Paffooney

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September 23, 2023 · 12:59 am

How Does Mickey Justify This?

Swashbuckling mice fighting racist weasels? Why?

There’s something really wrong with this guy.

And what does this oil painting signify? It’s called “The Madonna of the Golden Door.” But the door is obviously made of brown wood, surrounded by all the gold paint the doofy artist could afford at the time.

And is this a painting of a naked young girl, or a shirtless boy with long hair? And how can there be an ocean in the background if the painting was done in Iowa, as far away from the ocean in every direction as you can get in North America?

And no explanation of this is worth the time it would take to explain.

Are they green because they are aliens? Or do they just eat too many leafy vegetables?

One of the models in this picture didn’t show up to pose for this picture… but his clothes did?

So, maybe this post is geared toward artworks that Mickey doesn’t reveal very often because they show some of his mistakes and tendency to bad judgments. Yeah,, that’ll do, unless he decides to tell us the real reasons at some later time.

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September 22, 2023 · 1:08 am

The Golden Age

I am certainly no expert on the Golden Age of Comics. I was, in fact, born the year that the Golden Age ended. I am a child of the Silver Age (1956 to the early 1970s) and those were the comics I grew up with. But I admit to a fascination with the initial creation of the characters I love, including Batman, Superman, the Flash, Captain America, the Phantom, Steve Canyon, Wonder Woman and numerous others who were first put on the comic book pages in the Golden Age. And being subject to comic book prices that zoomed upward from a dollar an issue, I was bedazzled by the ten cent price on old comics.

Comic books owe their creation to the popular newspaper comic strips from the Depression era and WWII wartime. Originally, comic strips were gathered and printed on cheap paper. Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, and other adventure strips would lead to the war comics and hero-centered comics that would morph into superhero comics.

Some of the artwork in Golden Age comics leaves a lot to be desired. Especially original, straight to comic book publications that were produced fast and furiously by publishers who would open one week, produce three issues. and go out of business three weeks later. But in the mad scramble, some truly great artists formed the start of their illustrious careers, Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Milt Caniff, and Bill Elder learned to master their craft in the newspaper strips, and all later created comic books and graphic novels. True geniuses like Jack “King” Kirby and Bob Kane and Jack Davis grew directly from comic book studio madhouses into comic-book-artist immortality.

As with most things that have a Golden Age, the truth was that later comic book eras were superior in most ways. But this Golden Age was the foundational age for an American art-form that I truly love. So, flaws and warts are overlooked. And some of these old ten cent books on super-cheap paper are worth huge amounts of money if you still have a rare one in mint condition. Ah, there’s the rub for a manic old collector guy like me.

Most of the Golden Age comic book images used for this post were borrowed from the ComicsintheGoldenAge Twitter page @ComicsintheGA. If you love old comics like I do, you should definitely check it out.

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Filed under artists I admire, artwork, comic book heroes, comic strips

September 21, 2023 · 2:17 am

Picturing What’s Inside

The question before me now is, “What do you know, and how do you know it for certain?”

Well, I really don’t know anything. How do I know that I don’t know anything? Well, Socrates always told everyone who would listen that he didn’t know anything for certain, and he is obviously much smarter than I am. So, being super-stupid by comparison, I don’t even know as much as Socrates.

So, like Socrates, I need to ask questions. But who will I ask? I can look at the picture above for answers, and I can ask you, the reader, the questions.

The picture is one of the most favorite ones I have ever drawn. By that I mean it is one of the pictures I drew with colored pencils that I like the best. It is, therefore, basically a self portrait of things inside my silly head.

Do the soldiers look familiar to you? If they do, it is probably because, like me, you have seen the soldiers from Disney’s Babes in Toyland. Hopefully they are just generic enough that Disney wont sue me for modeling this fantasy on something I saw in their copyrighted movie. I didn’t intentionally copy anything, and I have never knowingly made a single dime off of this picture. So, they don’t need to sue me, right?

Okay, those weren’t Socratic questions. They were leading and focused questions. So, let’s start the Socratic stuff.

Do you see anything in the picture that is innocent and childlike? Could this be illustrating a childish fear of the darkness? Did you notice the darkness they are marching towards on the left of the picture? Could this also be showing a progression towards maturity? Are the children and the soldiers not approaching that darkness… whatever it might be? Are they not getting more prepared to face the darkness as they get closer to it? The weapon pointed straight at the darkness is the bugle. Does the bugle, being an instrument for announcing something in combat, not have some symbolic meaning here? Does the darkness they are approaching not represent something like death? Does the boy with the drum suggest how we might deal with the darkneness in our own too-near future?

So, did you learn anything from this post?

I am asking because…

…I don’t really know anything.

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Filed under artwork, Paffooney, philosophy

September 18, 2023 · 1:53 am

Thinking About Tomorrow

No tomorrow is guaranteed.

Even today is not a sure thing.

Every new dawn is a gift.

It might be the last day on Earth for me.

It might be the start of a new adventure.

We shall see what we shall see.

And all we can do is…

… Let it be.

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September 17, 2023 · 12:29 am

Ken Akamatsu

Ken Akamatsu

Japanese Manga is a complicated and difficult-to-understand thing. Of course, it is also a very beautiful art form when done well. There are many features of Japanese culture that play a prominent part in the comic book genre known as manga.

It is a strange fusion of the art of Meiji culture in Pre-War Japan and the Western influence of the U.S. Occupation forces after WWII. You read the comic from right to left, opposite to American comics, and the dialogue in speech balloons go from top to bottom rather than horizontally.

A manga by Akamatsu

I first discovered Ken Akamatsu’s manga brilliance in 2004 through Half-Price Books copies of his manga series Negima! I was reading the last two Harry Potter novels at that time and the Harry Potter-ness of the main character, Negi Springfield is what attracted me. He is a ten-year-old boy who is secretly a wizard. He is also so accelerated in school that they make him an English teacher in a Middle School where they give him an all-girl class. Of course, Negi is definitely NOT like Harry Potter. I learned that after three books worth of Negi’s magic sneeze that blows girl’s dresses off and all the other accidentally-seeing-middle-school-girls-naked jokes. Gushering nose-bleeds and the most-important girl character, Asuna, constantly ending up standing in front of the older instructor she has a crush on stark naked soon convinced me that Japanese humor and sense of adventure are very different from their American counterparts.

Negi Springfield is the little guy in the middle… Of course he’s the teacher.

The students in this ten-year-old teacher’s class are a diverse group of girls. One is a deadly ninja. Another is a dead-shot gunslinger. A third is an expert swordswoman who fights with a katana in each hand. Several of them wield magic like their teacher.

The adventures in this multi-book story are filled to the brim with magical battles, martial arts, demon summoning, Japanese festivals, and the many ups and downs of young love.

There are lots of instances of girls losing their clothing. Some of it happens in Japanese outdoor baths and spas. Some happens by magic. And some happens completely by accident.

Though, the writer seems to focus on it an awful lot.

Ken Akamatsu has been at the business of creating very similar manga stories for many years. He started in 1994 with A.I. Love You.

He has written three series since.

Love Hina came before Negima!

UQ Holder! is his current manga series.

So, I love the artwork of Ken Akamatsu. And it isn’t necessarily the story that makes it so good. The stories are chaotic and full of things that make very little sense to American sensibilities. And I do like artfully done naked girls. But the real attraction for me is something that I can’t quite name.

I just know it is there. Ken Akamatsu definitely has it. Whatever it is. (Maybe it IS naked girls?)

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September 16, 2023 · 1:02 am

People Art

All art on this planet (with the possible exceptions of paintings by monkeys and elephants, and the songs of whales and dolphins) is about people. What is art, after all, if it is not a reflection of who and what we are?

“Tell me a story with our people in it.”

I am the man from the setting sun who comes from the past to deliver the future.

Every bit of art I do now is done as my own mortality, the end of my own story, is soon to reach the final page. I have lived six decades complete and have begun to live the seventh. I am close to the sunset. But I have wisdom to share from a lifetime of struggle, and reversals, and successes, and joy. And in a dark time when it appears the world could actually be ending, I wish to do the only thing I can to help, provide pictures and stories that might prove useful to you.

“We are beautiful as the day is ending, because the day was worth living in.”
“Magic, like lightning, infuses the sky with that which makes us wonder. What is it? How do I use it?”
What we are is based on what we were. Our hopes for the future have their foundation in our past. We only have to see it and identify it. Then we can build on it.
Why am I obsessed with naked people? Because naked people are exactly what you see. Naked hides nothing, and honesty is like sunshine, the more we walk in it, the healthier we become.
Laughter is an essential part of who we need to be and how we deal with where we need to go. Laugh at mistakes, and chuckle with satisfaction as you correct them.
Life is like Moose Bowling because… in order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose!
Art exists because it simply has to exist. My art exists because I exist. So, my art exists because you all made the mistake of allowing me to exist.

So, all art is about people. Even the art with no people in it. That art, at least, has a creator who was most probably a people… or a monkey… or an elephant.. or a… well, you get the idea, don’t you?

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Filed under artwork, Paffooney cartoony, wisdom

August 31, 2023 · 1:11 am

This is What Happens When You Leave a Crazy Old Retired Guy Alone With a Doll Collection and a Camera

Yes, I know this is supposed to be a Saturday Art Day Post, but you can make art in many different ways. That can include pictures made with a camera while I play with dolls… er… action figures and try horrifically to be funny. There is an art to that, right? Maybe?

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Filed under action figures, artwork, cartoony Paffooney, comic book heroes, comic strips, doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, photo paffoonies, playing with toys

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August 30, 2023 · 12:39 am

Monster Mashing

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One of the side “benefits” of having diabetes is that it often comes with an extra helping of diabetic depression.  I had the blues really bad this week.  I am not the only member of my family suffering.

So, what do you do about it?

Or, rather, what does a goofy idiot like me do about it?

Especially on a windy day when the air is saturated with pollen and other lovely things that I am absolutely, toxically allergic to?

Well, for one thing, I used the word toxically in this post because it is a funny-sounding adverb that I love to use even though the spell-checker hates it, no matter how I spell or misspell it.

And I bought a kite.

Yes, it is a cheap Walmart kite that has a picture of Superman on it that looks more like Superboy after taking too much kryptonite-based cough syrup for his own super allergies.

But I used to buy or make paper diamond kites just like this one when I was a boy in Iowa to battle the blues in windy spring weather.  One time I got one so high in the sky at my uncle’s east pasture that it was nothing more than a speck in the sky using two spools of string and one borrowed ball of yarn from my mother’s knitting basket.  It is a way of battling blue meanies.

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And I bought more chocolate-covered peanuts.  The chocolate brings you up, and the peanut protein keeps you from crashing your blood sugar.  I have weathered more than one Blue Meanie attack with m&m’s peanuts.

And I used the 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination to bring my novel, The Baby Werewolf, home.  I wrote the last chapter Monday night in the grip of dark depression, and writing something, and writing it well, makes me a little bit happier.

And I have collected a lot of naked pictures of nudists off Twitter.  Who knew that you could find and communicate with such a large number of naked-in-the-sunshine nuts on social media?  It is nice to find other nude-minded naturists in a place that I thought only had naked porn until I started blogging on naturist social media.  Being naked in mind and body makes me happier than I ever thought it would.

And besides being bare, I also like butterflies and books and baseball and birds, (the Cardinals have started baseball season remember) and the end of winter.  “I just remember of few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!”  Oh, and I like musical movies like The Sound of Music too.

The monsters of deep, dark depression are being defeated as we speak.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, battling depression, cardinals, Depression, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, imagination, nudes, Paffooney, photos, strange and wonderful ideas about life