Here’s the colored pencil version of Derfentwinkle, girl fairy. I like this one a lot better.
Category Archives: artwork
Evolution of a Fairy
I decided to be lazy today. The work I am sharing with you only took a week to accomplish.
She was inspired by a cartoon character in an old animated TV show. But the model for this idea was fully clothed and not a fairy. I don’t know why I felt it necessary to portray her nude.
But drawing clothes made from leaves and acorn caps is hard. So, this little 3-inch-tall fairy girl decided to pose nude.
This is a second drawing. The first one was a little too revealing and I felt the need to give her a longer braid.
This, then, is Derfentwinkle, a fairy resident of the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia. Specifically she is the apprentice of an incompetent necromancer known as Old Bumble Bones.
Once I had the drawing scanned into a jpeg, I decided to enhance it with the basic paint program that came with the computer back when I bought it.
I am not overly fond of this kind of coloring. My old laptop is quirky and unreliable, and my arthritic fingers still prefer a pencil to a mouse or a keypad. So, I may recolor it with colored pencil, But for now, here she is in all her glory.
Portraying Key Characters
Since I have written my Hometown Novels as a series with certain recurring characters, it becomes important that I know what they look like in my own stupid head. So, I draw them. Mike Murphy and his girlfriend Blueberry Bates are good examples. They appear in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, Magical Miss Morgan, and Catch a Falling Star.
Valerie Clarke is a main character in When the Captain Came Calling, Snow Babies, Sing Sad Songs, and He Rose on a Golden Wing.
Farbick the pilot and Davalon the tadpole are main characters in Catch a Falling Star, Stardusters and Space Lizards, and both appear in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.
Sherry Cobble and her twin sister Shelly, both dedicated nudists, appear in Superchicken, Recipes for Gingerbread Children, The Baby Werewolf, The Boy… Forever, and Sherry by herself appears in A Field Guide to Fauns with her own twin daughters, Mandy and Tandy Clarke.
Brent Clarke is the leader of the Norwall Pirates in Superchicken, The Baby Werewolf, The Boy… Forever, and he appears as an adult in A Field Guide to Fauns, and The Wizard in his Keep.
Milt Morgan, from boyhood onward, is a wizard. He appears in Superchicken, The Baby Werewolf, The Boy… Forever, and he is an adult character in The Wizard in his Keep.
Torrie Brownfield is not actually a werewolf. He suffers from a genetic hair disorder called hypertrichosis. He appears in Recipes for Gingerbread Children and The Baby Werewolf.
Some characters have a single starring role, as Francois Martin does in Sing Sad Songs.
And Devon Martinez does in A Field Guide to Fauns.
I can always tell a better story when I know exactly what a character looks like. And I do that by drawing a picture.
Filed under artwork, characters, illustrations, Paffooney
A New Day Art Day
So, how do you follow up a thing like starting a new religion like Quackatoonity? Should you follow it up?
I mean, this is Art Day. And I need a theme for Art Day. How about, “Art with no ducks in it?” Well, Ducks are always watching from somewhere. So, I guess that’s a no-go.
Of course, I could always try to prove the “toon” part is real. I am a cartoonist. I do do cartoons. (Haha! He said, “doodoo!” Shows you the level of humor he will sink to.)
This cartoon is a bit creepy and definitely surreal. This was done more than a decade before I even met my wife. But the two boys seem to be four years apart in age, just like my real-life sons. They do not, however, have visible horns on their heads. This is supposed to be surreal, not photographic.
So, there’s a weird cartoon story for today’s Art Day post on a New Day. And nowhere in sight will you find a duck in it… OH, NO! THERE’S A DUCK IN IT!!! How does Donald do that?
Filed under artwork, cartoons, colored pencil, humor, Paffooney
Simplicity
Today’s sermon is a further attempt by Mickey to say something coherent about religion. I am trying to be a humor writer, and religion is a difficult topic to commit acts of humor against. People do not take it well when you put the heat of thoughtful questions to the personal mythology that they adhere to. They are afraid it might all burn away and leave them with nothing. It is the main reason nobody plays George Carlin’s comedy albums in church. And my atheist friends and acquaintances always get upset when I slip and make a statement like, “Atheism is a religion too. After all, it is a difficult act of sincere faith to believe in nothing.”
But religion is important enough to being human that it merits some daily and, at the minimum, weekly attendance to the fundamental ideas of it. After all, what is the reason we always have had and still have some form of religion?
Religion serves an important function in the lives of human beings. It is the guiding principal that keeps us from wigging out, being self-destructive, or going on a killing spree. Religion sniffs out the borders of our behavior. It gives us a sense of where the lines are that you should not cross. Of course, by itself, religion is not enough to save us from ourselves. It only provides the warning. The girl who hears the admonition from the pastor to not have sex before getting married can still go ahead and have four children before reaching the age of eighteen. Religion does not (or rather, it should not) provide the punishment for crossing the line. It just gives us the warning about the consequences.
I like the metaphor that Joseph Campbell always used in his insightful books about mythology. He suggests that if our lives are the hardware, our shared myths are like the software that makes it operate properly.
Our religious software has to be used with caution, however. Because, just as George Carlin so often used to gleefully shout, “Religion can be stupid enough to really hurt you.” It is hard to deny the truth of that statement with things like the Westboro Baptist Church, the Spanish Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials, and the Methodist Church Ladies who saw your kid running around naked in the yard.
But there is a reason that some religious extremes are dangerous and counter to the basic purposes of religion. There is reason why more atheists are generated by the Catholics, Baptists, and other fundamentalist religions than by more tolerant sects like the Midwestern Methodists and the New-Age Crystal-wavers. Intolerance. If you are too insistent that your religious way is the only path, and all others burn in Hell, then you have taken religion too far into its own dark corners and scary, deep crevices.
There are many acceptable forms of religion that have many good things to offer. I have never been bullied by a true believer of the Buddhist faith. Christians, if they are tolerant, believe in a religion founded on love and forgiveness. Nudists are sun-worshipers who believe in positive body images, communion with nature, and freedom of self-expression. Quackatoons believe in the power of Donald-Duck cartoons to make you wise and capable of laughing at anything. Okay, I haven’t actually established that last religion in the real world. But it could happen, in the very near future. We are going to need it if Donald Trump (not Donald Duck) gets reelected in November.
But the simple point of all this is simply that… we need religion. There is a spiritual aspect to all human thinking, and especially when interacting with others. We need to keep it simple enough for even the most simple people among us to guide their lives and their children’s lives with it. And yet, we need to also be tolerant enough to suffer fools like me to think they are atheists who believe in God.
So, to put it in simple terms, “Here endeth the lesson.”
Filed under artwork, humor, nudes, philosophy, religion
What Dreams May Come?
Lately I have been having problems with passing out during low blood-sugar moments in the middle morning, early afternoon, and shortly after supper, usually when I have already had a snack and my sugars haven’t balanced yet. When I pass out, perchance… I dream. Vivid dreams. So, for art day, I will post images I have made based on dreams I have had.
This one has shadows on everything. I exhausted three pens drawing shadows. Yet, there are no shadows on the child-figures. In the dream, they were glowing white ghosts.
Snowboy is one of the main villains in The Bicycle-wheel Genius. But the boy-robot made entirely of snow, ice, and circuitry first appeared in a 1978 dream that happened while I had a fever from the flu.
This dream is a mental-disturber caused again by fever. Here the two gigantic toys play with the little girl. I was not actually in this dream. I was an observer floating above. I think the bear was inspired by a Care-Bear.
This picture has all the elements of the actual dream, the candle, the line of glowing pixies, the sleeping princess, and Prince Charming. But nothing here looks like it did in the dream. The prince and the princess were both young teens that I did not know in real life. The fairies were larger and a lot more obviously nude.
I actually passed out while writing this post. It happened right here, before I could post this dream of living colors. All the colors were in motion in the dream, something I couldn’t really represent here.
I knew when I dreamed this dream that the Bambi-kin in this dream were members of my family, but at the time I dreamt it I had not met my wife yet, let alone had three kids of my own. Yet I knew that it was not my family at the time of the dream because one of my sisters was not there.
This is from a dream I had in college at Iowa City. I made an entire cartoon out of it called Babysitters Hate My House, It is about a babysitter having a horrible time with my two sons as she loses control when they show her the man in the basement that, “Daddy built out of a kit.”
And, finally, this dream featured not only the spirit stag and the medicine man, but the bolt of lightning in the background. The Dakotah people say having a dream with lightning in it makes you a “lightning dreamer”, a magic man, or a shaman. So, I guess that qualifies me to be one.
The Never-Naked Nudist
Today I have a low-grade fever. A slight cough. No sign of Covid yet, and I am fully vaccinated. But I have been to Walmart without a mask and get regular flu regularly. And it could also be a sinus infection again due to high pollen counts and neighborhood grass-cutting.
But the truly frustrating thing is that I had planned to go tomorrow to Bluebonnet Nudist Park, give them a copy of my nudist novel, and meet some of the members of that establishment that I didn’t meet in 2017.
The frustrating thing is that this marks the fifth time that I had planned to go back to Bluebonnet for a second visit. And now the plans are canceled yet again by illness.
As ever, I remain mostly a closet nudist. Me being a nudist now in the twilight years of my life is mostly a joke I tell, only loosely based on reality.
Part of the problem is the fact that I simply waited too long in my life to give in to the urge to be a nudist. I was one from childhood onward, but always too afraid of the unknown to try it openly. Especially after being assaulted at the ripe old age of ten.
My real opportunity came when I had a girlfriend in the 1980’s whose sister lived with her husband and children in a clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin. I met nudists there fully committed to the lifestyle and who encouraged me to join the movement, even after I broke up with that girlfriend. There were limited opportunities to become a nudist then. A park near Houston, a park near San Antonio, a nude beach on Lake Travis (Hippie Hollow,) and clubs in the Austin area that met in members’ homes. I only ever visited those places with clothes on. I never actually tried it. And now that I am old, I regret the opportunities missed.
Now I am old and ill and unable to express my love of nudism and naturism except through art and fiction. Of course, it has always been a very visual-only experience for me. No touching was ever involved. Whatever sexual feelings there were were always sublimated and deeply buried or strictly controlled.
And, as always, I didn’t absolutely need to share these normally private sort of details, but it seems my art and writing make me far more naked to the world than walking around a nudist park ever could.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, nudes, Paffooney
Synesthesia (Part One; French Blue Monday)
This link will help you understand Synesthesia
Yes, Mondays are blue. Specifically French blue. Every day of the week has its own color. Sunday is golden yellow, Tuesday is a yellow-ochre, Wednesday is indigo blue and sometimes changes to blue violet, Thursday is burnt orange, and Friday is solid wood brown, and of course Saturday is rich pure red while Mondays are not just any blue… they are French blue. I learned the names of these colors from being a painter and using oil paints. I experience these colors every week and they help me maintain the calendar in my stupid old head. I began to realize when I first heard about the colors of the wind in the Disney movie Pocahontas that there was something to this everyday thing, something different in the way I see the world. I have in the last few years learned that this condition has a name. It is called synesthesia.
It has been suggested to me by more than a few people that I don’t really perceive the world the same way “normal people do”. When I was growing up, and going to school, I never had trouble remembering to capitalize the first word in a sentence. I did however, have a great deal of difficulty with capital letters on nouns. Looking back on that difficulty now, I can say without a doubt that I was having trouble not because I didn’t know the difference between proper nouns and common nouns. It was because things like the word “dog” or “chair” had to begin with the right color. Dogs are blue when you are talking about the color of the letters in the word. But small “d” is blue-green, not true blue. It doesn’t fit as well as the dark blue capital “D”. And chairs are orange-red when you write them down, while the small “c” appears light green by itself.
Sundays are Sun-days, and that’s why they are golden yellow.
I am told that most synesthetes are taken by surprise when they learn that they are seeing things differently than other people do. I certainly was. I always got funny looks whenever I described Thursdays as orange, or the month of November as sky blue. My classmates in 4th grade thought I was nuts… of course, it wasn’t just for the orange Thursdays thing. I was not a normal kid in any real sense of the word. I always suspected that if I could look at the world through other people’s eyes, I would probably see the color green as what I called red, or that glowing halo that surrounded things when organ music played in the Methodist church would no longer be there. But once I learned how synesthesia works I knew it was true. The visual part of the brain can be scanned to show activity, and lights up on the scanner as if the brain is seeing bright colors when Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is being played while the subject of the scan is actually blindfolded. I am told that synesthesia is more common in left-handed girls. My daughter, the Princess, tells me that she also sees color on printed numbers and letters. She is left handed and also gifted at drawing. I suspect she inherited the synesthesia from me.
Synesthesia probably explains what this nonsense is all about.
Now, I acknowledge the fact that my synesthesia is self-diagnosed and not proven by any of the methods the articles I have read about the condition talked about. But my personal experiences always seem to fall in line with descriptions of letter/number/color combinations and music/color combinations that I have read about. And if I do have it, it is not the same as any of my six incurable diseases. It is not a bad condition to have. In an artistic sense, it might actually be a good thing. I could use some good for a change. Good doesn’t usually come from weirdness… not my weirdness, anyway. (Oh, and capital “G” is lime green… as is the word Goodness).
Pants on Fire
Our previous President, the man whose name I will no longer use because it makes him happy to see it in print, has a hollow pumpkin for a head. Hollowed out with no remaining think-o-lating pieces, seeds of ideas, or potential candle lights to shine out of the carved eyes and fanged demon smile. Just empty. Desolate. Possibly a site for spiders to spin their cobweb houses.
And everything I said in that previous paragraph, the distortions, the metaphors, the exaggerations, are all lies.
Spiders would definitely NOT be comfortable spinning webs inside Trumpalump’s head. And I just used his name even though I distorted it. And he did have ideas. Lots and lots of EVIL ideas.
Really, journalists are writing lots and lots of books about it. They are giving him so many journalistic hotfoots, that his pants are bound to catch fire.
And that’s a lie too, unless you grant me the notion that the metaphors are accurate.
As the flames continue to lick upward around the seat of the defeated former President’s pants, brought on by an administration’s inability to deal with anything but by lying, we must all deal with the fact that most of what human beings on planet Earth actually believe and act upon are lies.
Yes, we are all necessarily liars. Not just the lying leader of what was, before his presidency, the leading nation of the free world. All of us.
And keep in mind, this article is written by a fiction author and former middle-school teacher, two jobs that necessitate telling lies to others daily.
It is entirely possible that I am even a liar as a fantasy artist. My sister never met the boy in her lap in the first picture. The Aztec girl was not really an Aztec as the background suggests. And if the red dragon is really personifying liars in the picture I call, “The Family Picnic,” that dragon will win the battle and eat the whole family.
Of course, not all lies are malicious.
That’s why it has taken this long for prosecutors and judges to start applying matches to the Trumpinator’s trousers. They have to prove how stupefyingly manipulative and harmful his monstrous lies have been.
Mostly, however, we tell lies for benign reasons. We tell ourselves that science and technology will find a way around extinction of life on Earth through Climate Change. We tell ourselves we will go to Heaven when we die. These lies comfort us in that, well, they might be true. And they give us hope against the bleakness of reality.
And there is truth to be found in the creation of fictitious worlds through books, movies, plays, and poetry. We can rewrite the world and its problems to our liking, possibly creating solutions to those problems along the way.
But basically, we all have to constantly be checking whether the smoke rising from our pants is being ignited by our dishonesty, or by the dire need to change something about our daily diet. Lying is a fact of our humanity. And it can get out of control to extreme levels where it Trumps everything else.
Catch a Falling Star 
Other Folks’ Artwork
There are many, many things I appreciate about other people’s artwork. It is not all a matter of envy or a desire to copy what they’ve done, stealing their techniques and insights for myself, though there is some of that. Look at the patterns Hergé uses to portray fish and undersea plants. I have shamelessly copied both. But it is more than just pen-and-ink burglary.
I like to be dazzled. I look for things other artists have done that pluck out sweet-sad melodies on the heartstrings of my of my artistically saturated soul. I look for things like the color blue in the art of Maxfield Parrish.
I love the mesmerizing surrealism of Salvador Dali.
I am fascinated by William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s ability to create photo-realistic and creamy-perfect nudes.
Basil Wolverton’s comic grotesqueries leave me stunned but laughing.
The dramatic lighting effects employed by Greg Hildebrandt slay me with beauty. (Though not literally. I am not bleeding and dying from looking at this picture, merely metaphorically cut to the heart.)
I even study closely movie-poster portraits like Bogart and Bergman in this Casablanca classic poster.
I could show you so many more art pieces that I dearly love to look at. But I will end with a very special artist.
This is the work of my daughter, Mina “the Princess” Beyer. Remember that name. She’s better than I am.
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Filed under artwork, commentary, inspiration, oil painting, old art, pen and ink, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Uncategorized
Tagged as Saturday Art Day