I continue to believe bankers, health insurance companies, and corporate leaders are all pirates. The gentleman of the sea dressed all in red in this picture is Black Timothy, bombastic and barely comprehensible leader of the pirates of Fantastica.
The truth is I am a bit of a cartoonist. Don’t worry. It is not a completely horrible and detestable thing to be. Not like being a pirate… or a banker… or worse, a pirate banker. It leads me to do cartoons like you will find in my vault, here…
It is a basically incurable disease, and yet… I can live with it. It will not kill me like some of my other incurable diseases eventually will.
So today’s post, keeping alive an unbroken string of daily posts that now goes back 16 months, is a picture post. I hope you like it, but if you don’t, another one will come along soon enough.
This is an oil portrait of me and David. I can probably no longer create a picture like this. My arthritic hands are not steady enough anymore to blend shadow colors, especially in clothing.
My personal connections to the 1800’s died in 1980 with the loss of Great Grandma Hinckley.Much of my connection to the bucolic days of family farms is gone too. I am a part owner now of the family farm, but it is being farmed by a renter. and I only get to visit once a year, which hasn’t happened during one of the two years of pandemic.
I will never return to the classroom as a teacher again. Not even as a sub. I am no longer physically capable of doing the job. Most people don’t realize how tough a job it truly is.
When I pass on, my connection to the future will also be gone… At least to all the parts of me that are not confined to words in a book.
My super powers are fading, even the incredibly bad smell that makes criminals pass out during combat.
I am slowly going color-blind.
Fortunately, my kids can carry the family name onwards.
The cover I have been using for my current work in progress has some flaws in it. As you can probably see better than I can (because I am becoming increasingly colorblind,) the golden glow I tried to put on Valerie’s face with colored pencil is too heavy-handed, not subtle enough. So, I tried to smooth it out and blend it with the Windows Paint program. I also needed to do something about the blue frame and the rather wide title banner. The Amazon KDP Cover Creator has a tendency to cut off words and details if you are not careful enough about the distance between words and images that you need to appear on the cover and the potential edge of the cover. And I decided to use white over blue because the book is about battling suicidal depression. White is a more hopeful and positive color than blue which is usually associated with sadness and negative emotions. And I want this book to be an answer for depression, not a cause of it.
The cover probably still needs work. But I think it is getting better. You are certainly welcome to disagree, and the comments are open for you to say so. Input is a good thing, even if it is insulting. After all, no matter what else happens, some readers are going to hate this book. I hope more will love it.
“My name is Michael Beyer, and I am an amateur cartoonist.”
“Hi, Michael!” says the entire group of CA group-therapy participants.
(CA stands for Cartoonists Anonymous.)
Doofy Fuddbugg
“I have to admit, I am guilty of giving in to the urge to draw cartoons. I know how it can fill lives with slapstick pain and derisive laughter, and I give in to the urge anyway.”
“So, what did you draw that you have to be ashamed of now?” asked one mad-eyed cartoonist with a pencil lodged behind each of his large ears.
“I made a very unfortunate video to post on YouTube that was supposed to be How-to-draw Cartooning. But everything went wrong. You couldn’t see my drawings in the video. It was not adequately lit. I look like a doofus (which probably can’t be cured) in the video. And instead of thinking twice or editing it, I posted it anyway.”
“Wow!” said a rather ugly cartoonist lady, “that is really bad. You have a seriously bad case of cartoonity.”
“Cartoonity?” I responded stupidly.
“The condition of needing love for your cartoons so bad that you will risk anything to make people look at them and like them,” said the wise group therapist (who looked an awful lot like Chuck Jones, though I am fairly sure Chuck Jones is now dead).
“Yes, I suppose that’s about the size of the problem,” I said. “I have been posting pages from my graphic novel, Hidden Kingdom, and I really haven’t seen more than one comment about it. Do people actually read cartoons and comics nowadays? Or is it just me that gets ignored?”
“You have to focus on how much you love drawing and doing it just for that reason, and nothing beyond that,” said the wise therapist. “Cartooning should be done for its own sake, and nothing more than that. Craving attention and approval for it can get seriously infected and become a bad case of cartoonititis. How do you think I dealt with it when I was still alive?”
At that point, my eyes popped out of my head in disbelief and my lower jaw fell all the way to the floor. Could he really be…?
And so I must end today’s blog post since it is hard to keep typing when your eyeballs are rolling around on the floor.
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.
Today’s post is basically a picture post. Every metal (or Plasticine) figure displayed in this post was painted by me with Testor’s enamel. Most of the figures were painted back in the 1980’s. Most of them were sculpted by Citadel Miniatures Co. The Indian boy I repainted as a young storm giant was made of an inferior quality Plasticine that melted a bit with the paint’s more caustic ingredients. That’s why looking at him closely makes him appear like a burn victim.
Not all of the figures are from Dungeons and Dragons games. These are figures I used in the Traveller RPG. I also owned the Indiana Jones role-playing game, but the figure was used as a Travellerhero.
These figures were used to play Call of Cthulu as well as Traveller. Cerebus the Aardvark made appearances in both the Dungeons and Dragons game and Traveller, which was fairly true to the character as he appeared in Dave Sim’s underground comic.
I am proud that my arthritic hands once allowed me to paint the tiny details on these miniature sculptures. But the red dragon I wanted to display in this post, that I have pictured before in this blog, is missing for the moment. I spent most of the morning trying to find him. Oh, well… I still got to show off my mini-painting skills.
How does an artist know himself? Now there’s a difficult question. I spend all my time looking at the world with the eyes of imagination. I don’t even seem to be able to take photographs in the normal way other people do. Maybe I should consider this self-think through the medium of pictures I have made with captions added to them?
Mickey is not actually me. He is my “other” me, my pen name, my goofier self.
I was born in a blizzard in Mason City, Iowa in the 1950’s.
I have learned about dog poop five times a day since 2011 when we found Jade, our dog.
I was a middle school teacher for 24 of my 31 years of teaching. I love/hate 7th Graders.
When things go wrong, I tend to make a joke about it.
I like to draw students as I saw them, not as they really were.
I always see myself as the one with the BIG pencil.
If there is goofiness around here, it is all my fault.
In spite of the title, I don’t know how to disappear.
I love everything Disney.
I tend not to be very much like other people. I don’t think like they do.
In grade school, I was deeply in love with Alicia Stewart, though I never told her that, and that is not her real name.
My high school art teacher told me that when an artist draws someone, he always ends up making it look a little bit like himself. That is because, I suppose, an artist can only draw what he knows and he really only knows himself. That being said, this post should really look just like me.
Catch a Falling Star 
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
Tagged as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart