Category Archives: artwork
Drawings Made from Real-Life Models
Filed under art editing, artwork, colored pencil, Paffooney, self portrait, studio
Leftovers From the January File
You reach a point after a hard month has lingered long where you have to eat the leftovers and accept what is. I face challenges in the new year at least as large as the challenges of 2017. When faced with such a situation, I need pie.
So here are some of the things left in my January file for use in this blog. The only reason they are here is because I haven’t used them yet and the ideas have not been knitted together for any rational purpose.
This will be a crazy quilt blog post. But crazy quilts keep you just as warm in winter as any other kind.
My newest Facebook friend is the daughter of my wife’s cousin. I have only known her as the sweet-faced little smiler at Filipino-American family gatherings who sometimes gets my attention by squirting me in the ear with a water gun. Her father is from Greece and teaches Math in San Antonio. Her mother, like my wife, is from the Philippines. I won’t tell you her real name, but we used to call her “Sweetie” because of her resemblance to the little pink Tweety-bird character from Tiny Toons Adventures.
I have also spent considerable time writing to and for nudists I have connected with through their various websites and on Twitter. These two lovely works of nude art were shared with me on Twitter. I have collected a number of nude pictures from Twitter nudists that I can’t use on WordPress because I am still entirely too modest to be the unrestrained naked person that some nudists are. I can’t really claim to be a complete nudist myself. But I do have stories to tell about naked people, and I have been working on them diligently.
Of course, I still miss being a teacher. I was a teacher of English for 31 years. I taught reading and writing in English to over 2,000 kids. I also learned how to stare in Klingon. It is a useful skill for keeping students in line and keeping them from becoming a disappointment to the empire. I miss teaching kids, especially talkative kids. Far fewer people talk to me during a day of retirement than used to talk to me in a single class at school. Those interactions were precious.
And several things are just too confusing for my old brain to explain.
But I do like this picture I found on Facebook of Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, playing with multiple kittens. I don’t know why, but it makes me happier.
Filed under artwork, blog posting, Dr. Who, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, nudes
Irreverence
It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God. Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth. And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.
The thing I find most distressing about faith is the fact that those who have it are absolutely convinced that if you don’t agree with them and whatever book of fairy tales they believe in and interpret for you, then you are not a True Believer and you do not have real Faith.
I remember being told by a Mormon girl in one of my classes that I was her all-time favorite teacher, but she was deeply distressed that, because of my religion (I professed to be a Jehovah’s Witness at the time) I was doomed to burn in Hell forever.
Hey, I was raised in Iowa. I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill. I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
But I am no longer actually a Jehovah’s Witness. So I guess that helps with the whole Hell-burning thing. The Witnesses are a religion that claims to understand the Bible is full of metaphorical truth, and yet insist that it is literally true. They don’t believe in Hell, which, honestly, is not actually mentioned or explained in the Bible as we have it now. But they do believe your prospects for eternal life on a paradise Earth are totally contingent on knocking on doors and telling other people that they must believe what you believe or experience eternal destruction. I have stopped being an active Witness and knocking on doors because I got old and sick, and all the caring brothers and sisters in the congregation stopped coming around to visit because number one son joined the Marines, and the military is somehow evil hoodoo that cancels out any good you have done in the past. Being a Jehovah’s Witness was really hard work with all the meetings (5 per week), Bible reading (I have read the entire Bible two and a half times), door-knocking, and praying, and you apparently can lose it all for saying, thinking, or doing one wrong thing.
According to the Baptist preachers, Jehovah’s Witness elders, religious zealots, and other opinionated religious people I have known and dealt with in my life, if I do not believe what they believe and agree with them in every detail, then I do not know God and am therefore an atheist. So, okay, I guess I am. If I have to be an atheist to believe whole-heartedly that everyone is entitled to sincerely believe whatever the hell they want to believe, then I’ll wear that label.
On a personal note, my favorite verse of the Bible has always been 1 John 4:8, “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.” That is why I claim to be an atheist who believes in God. I know love. I love all men, women, children, animals, sunrises, artwork, paintings of angels by Bouguereau… everything that is. And I even love you if you exercise your freedom to tell me, “Your ideas are totally wrong, and you are going to burn in Hell, Mickey, you bad guy, you!” Mark Twain always said, “I would choose Heaven for climate, but I would prefer Hell for company.” I am not going to worry about it. I will be in good company. Some things are just bigger than me. And trying to control things like that is nonsense. Sorta like this post.
Mickey Plays with Pictures and Paint
Once I was finally able to scan pictures again, I did some scanning of old pictures that only got the camera treatment before on my blog.
But why stop a drawing at just the pen and ink, when there is potential for so much more?
So, I took the Microsoft generic paint program and my generic photo editor to not only this pen and ink of the Jungle Princess, but a few other pictures as well.
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This is what she looks like after being attacked with color by my arthritic old hands. (There was a day when I could have handled intricate details more cleverly, but that was many, many days ago.
Anyway, I have added new dimensions to Leopard Girrrl with color.
Now I need to add more complications to the basic story of the picture.
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Here is an older pen and ink.
This is Dorin Dobbs, one of the dueling plotlines’ protagonists from the novel Catch a Falling Star.
But, of course, Dorin is a more complex character than this old black and white.
So, color needs to be added.
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I had this one actually already painted in…
But in order to use it in this project, I needed to enlarge it to make it fit into the other picture.
Making this unlikely pair work together in a story is one of the challenges of doing surrealist stories. They have to be grounded in realism, but also bring jarringly different things together. Like the Jungle Princess going on an adventure with Norwall’s Lying King.
But, putting these two together is still not enough. Let’s try some other things.
The Jungle Princess together with Tomboy Dilsey Murphy is an unusual pairing.
Or what about the blue faun from Laughing Blue?
Or even Annette Funicello?
Ridiculous, I know. But don’t they look like satin sofa paintings?
And how surreal is that?
Drawings that use Metaphors
Ah, Reluctant Rabbit using the big pencil in the front of the classroom. What could that be a metaphor for? How about teaching kids by showing them how? You teach writing by writing in front of the class, talking out loud about your process, editing yourself, and polishing your writing in front of those who need to learn those skills.
Is an avatar not a metaphor for me?
A Peek Inside the Portfolio
Here’s a bit of the file called Novel Pix (illustrations for my novels);
Filed under artwork, illustrations, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 
Naturism and How it Helps Me
The most obvious aid that naturism has been to me as an author is how readily members of the online naturist/nudist community are willing to spread the word when my writings include things that they care about. They are much better at caring about my work, especially the parts of it that touch on naturism/nudism, than other portions of the online #writingcommunity is about any of my other work
https://histonudismo.wordpress.com/2021/04/17/preservar-la-historia-nudista-una-entrevista-con-naturist-vintage/
The website I linked to twice above is a good example. (You might need a Spanish/English dictionary if you don’t normally read the English parts easily.) I have had summer boosts to views here on WordPress two Augusts in a row now due to naturists coming across my posts and linking to them so that their own followers can share in discovering me as an author who is friendly to naturism. My continued online contact with other naturists/nudists on Twitter continues to benefit me in book sales, exchanges of writing tips and tricks, and exposure to the good naturist literature, both fiction and non-fiction, that is out there.
Here are some of the authors who’ve had the most impact on me,
Ted Bun (his pen name) first discovered my nudist characters in Recipes for Gingerbread Children. He did the most to get me involved with other nudist-friendly authors. And his book The Boy On a Baker’s Bike is possibly his best story, out of many excellent ones, because of how much the main character reflects some of my own experiences with being nude around other nude people.
Will Forest edited the book Holiday in the Nudist Colony in which I was encouraged to add a story of my own. His book Co-Ed Naked Philosophy is a wonderful fictional story that works like an encyclopedia of the philosophies behind naturism, the practices of naturism, and the struggle of those actively trying to make the practice of it normalized. I am half-way through the book and finding it an absolutely enthralling story. I am definitely going to read more of his books.
Paul Z. Walker is one of the organizers of the group of naturist-fiction writers that I have become a part of. He also writes a variety of fiction with nude characters in it. I haven’t read any of his books yet, but I own some of them in e-book format and will correct that problem soon.
Of course, the biggest benefits I have gotten from naturism/nudism is not from merely observing it while clothed, but by participating and getting naked, despite the fears brought on by childhood trauma and the general disdain the public at large has for nudity.
It has made me whole again to be a practicing nudist. It has helped me heal and overcome self-hatred. It has helped me overcome depression. It has also helped me understand the kind of honesty and innocence that life requires of us. Nothing bad remains hidden forever, and sunlight heals many moral problems that were festering before being exposed.
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The most critical thing I learned about naturism and living life naked is that is not about porn or sex. You can see from the drawings I have put in this post that none of the pictures are sexual in content or in any way essentially erotic.. They are merely naked and happy. That is how life should be. At least, in my humble opinion. And I will continue to write stories about it.
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Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, Depression, drawing, nudes, Paffooney, publishing, strange and wonderful ideas about life