If I look for the essential action shots in my art to find pictures that illustrate “Adventure” I am frustrated to find that I am much more a maker of static portraits than comic book action scenes.
Category Archives: artwork
More Art Day Role Play
Again I go back to artwork done for Saturday role-playing games, a thing which I started doing in 1981. It filled my life for a time. And it also taught me to be a teacher. After all, the DM (Dungeon Master, or Game Master) has to be a story-teller and a master explainer… just like a school teacher.
Filed under artwork, characters, Dungeons and Dragons, Paffooney
What Makes You Think You Can Draw, Mickey?
Drawing is a matter of life-long practice and a honing of skills. Honing? I like that word. A hone is a fine-grained whetstone for sharpening knives or cutting edges. It can also mean sharpening the details, clarifying and making more accutate the process you are performing.
So, what’s wrong with this picture?
Well, the unicorn who posed for it had round glasses and didn’t stick his tongue out while posing.
Honing is needed.
And these duck eyes aren’t realistic because mallards are usually much angrier when they are looking at you in real life. Where’s the red blood vessels around the edges of the eye-whites that real ducks don’t even have?
And this evil smile is not supported by necessary details. Where’s the MAGA hat? And why does his left hand not contain the severed pigtails of the girl who sits in front of him in Science Class?
And this picture? Is this supposed to be Cupid? The tip of his arrow is not dripping with love-potion. And if you look closely, you can see the wrinkles in the paper it’s drawn on. Honing is needed, Mickey!
Role-Playing Game Art
Here I am back to doing D&D and Traveller on Saturdays. All of the art in this post was once used in conjunction with RPGs played with former students, and my own kids. I was always the game master in the past, and I used drawings and illustrations to help the imaginary adventures come to life.
Harun the Charmer was only ever used as a player-character once. The boy whose character it was provided the face I modeled it after. He was an absolutely arresting boy that had such a winning personality that people fell in love with him almost instantly.
He spent way more time helping another teacher grade papers than he did playing Talislanta games with goofy old Mr. B.
And I promise, only one of the facts presented here about Harun is a lie, in attempt to protect this young gentleman’s identity. We unfortunately lost him back in the 1990’s.
evil familiar well before my kids met him in the D&D adventure.
Filed under artwork, characters, Dungeons and Dragons, humor, Paffooney
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?
Having My Say
No one listens to me anyway.
So, I might as well have my say.
The world will someday go away.
Maybe only me that day,
But possibly everybody else should pray.
But rhyming is just goofy play,
And this is not a poem, okay?
If I am trying hard to get stuff done before the end of life, I have made some headway in 2021, I have published Twenty-One books in my lifetime all published with three different legitimate publishers and one criminal publisher. Oh, and all currently available on Amazon. Of the soon-to-bees listed above, I have published Cissy Moonskipper’s Travels along with an unlisted novella, Horatio T. Dogg, Super Slueth. AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers is finished and undergoing final edits. And I have added a working rough draft of The Necromancer’s Apprentice, a satire I hope won’t be sued by Disney Corporation.
I now own a third of the farm you see in the foreground of this picture. The farm on the far side of the road is Uncle Harry’s farm that was sold when Uncle Harry passed away long ago.
In a sense, I have already had my say in the books I have written. The themes are my fundamental thinking, the horrid insults flung at me in my internal monologue by my inner critic, the rough nuggets of supposed wisdom that I have not only cut my writer’s teeth on. but, in some cases, chewed on relentlessly for decades until it comes out again as sweet as honey. Or, sometimes, as sour as the bile and vomit created by extended illness. Whatever its quality, the writings I will leave behind me are my fair say in an attempt to help the world evolve.
There is still a considerable record of having had my say in middle school and high school English classes. That say, that attempt to influence the future, has already been written in the memories of students that sat through my classes. They endured a lot, put up with a lot of mistakes by me, but also, hopefully learned some real lessons.
Here’s the current gist of what I have to say;
We are in a time when the environment is out of control and getting worse. It will probably kill us all, including all other life on Earth. But we are creative enough and smart enough to invent our way out of that problem. If only the stupid people and the greedy-evil people will let us.
We are also in a time when there is a definite threat that our leaders are going to embrace the easy and profitable path of being a Fascist. We have to hope there is enough empathy and morality left amongst our people to avoid this and find a fairer way for all.
And that is not all I have left to say. But it will do for now.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, insight, inspiration, novel plans, novel writing, Paffooney
Art and Anatomy
Actual anatomy should be studied with live models and strong light.
…And making a human form look real depends on how you render the shading and shadow to reveal 3-D shapes in 2-D.
And it probably becomes an issue if you are only drawing children’s anatomy.
You have to have parental consent for a child to pose nude for you. This picture not only shows adult male anatomy and deer anatomy drawn from photos, but a nude girl who was 13 when the photo was taken, but 22 when she gave me permission to use it. And, of course, I returned the original photo when this was done. The girl was the daughter of Canadian nudist friends.
This picture was drawn from a model that was actually a nude statuette rather than an actual human being. The important factor in creating nude art is that it is not sexual or intentionally erotic. It does not focus on genitals or breasts, and can, in fact, obscure those parts of the body completely and still be a nude.
Filed under artwork, nudes, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, studio
Portraits of Norwall Kids
Today’s Art-Day Saturday post is about the pictures I have drawn to establish in my mind the characters that make up the fictional world of Norwall, Iowa. Specifically, the kids in my YA novels.
I do manage character development and detailed descriptions by creating early on a picture of what the character looks like for me.
Filed under artwork, characters, humor, illustrations, kids, novel writing, Paffooney, Pirates
And God Said, “Let There Be Peaches!”
Peaches, it seems, mean something I don’t really need to be talking about here when used in their emoji form. Especially by teenage boys and girls texting each other and sending pictures to each other to learn the secrets of human anatomy in spite of parental prohibitions. Things that make the teacher in me squirm in my own skin.
But my wife and daughter love eating peaches. And peach cobbler can be a real sensual experience. We often call situations “peachy” when we mean it is all good. And a beautiful woman, a beautiful car, and a lovely sailboat can all be called a “real peach.”
So, while pretty girls are a good thing, and peaches are good food, It is especially a blessing if you have a life full of peaches. That is really “peachy keen.”
Fiona Long, dragon name, Firefang. was a hot peach in The Boy… Forever.
So, let’s reclaim the meaning of peaches from the emojis. For God looked upon them and dectared, “Peaches are good.”
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Thank You for My Daily Bread
A full life, well lived, is dependent on good daily habits. What you do when you get started in the morning sets up a successful day. A successful day, done every day, adds up to a successful career, a successful year, a successful life.
Remember the old Dunkin Donuts commercial where the alarm goes off before dawn, the donut chef climbs out of bed. and says to himself, “It’s time to make the donuts!” as he goes to work? I did that as a school teacher for more than twenty years. I said to myself, “It’s time to make the donuts!” Then I dragged myself to school before anyone else and didn’t make any donuts, but I did prepare lessons and got the classroom ready to tutor early birds and teach kids to read and write.
I accomplished most of what I have done in life by taking just a few small steps every day. That’s how a teacher delivers a lesson. Introduce two or three ideas, practice them, and connect them to what has been learned before and what will come after.
That’s also how I have written and published 21 books so far. I wrote 500 words a day, edited what came the day before, and outlined what would come the day after.
Most of what I have said in this post is simply repackaged Stoic philosophy. We can only control those things we have control over. And we exert ourselves to control those things in ways that move us forward to better things. The things we have no control over, we simply choose not to worry about.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, Paffooney, philosophy
Catch a Falling Star 