Category Archives: artwork

The Many People That Are Me

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Yes, I am a wizard.  That is a complicated thing to say.  It is complicated because a wizard has to be a wise man, and wisdom has to begin with the idea that you know practically nothing about anything… but you can find out.  So one version of me has to be my wizard D&D character, the wizard Eli Tragedy.  This is because I know practically nothing about anything… but I am willing to not be stupid and look stuff up before I tell you anything and pretend it is a wise thing to say.

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I have been thinking about who I am because I want to re-do my About the Author page.   And that leads to the difficulty of explaining who Mickey actually is.  You see, I am actually lots of different people in my head.  Mickey is the cartoonist, the humorist, the clown.  He is not the every-day me.  He is the goofy and foofy and lovey-to-drawie part of me.  And yes, I know some of those are not real words.  Mickey is like that.  He speaks Mickian Goof Speak.  I have no control over that part of him.  I am not certain where this Mickey-part of my soul originated, but it may be the result of too much TV when I was a kid.

And of course there is the Teacher-Me, Reluctant Rabbit, the person who stood in front of groups of twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds for three decades and tap-danced, told stories, stood on my head, and begged them to internalize at least a lesson or two of what I tried to teach them.

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Teacher

And the wizard part of me was just barely wise enough to realize that a teacher can open doors, but you can’t shove a kid through.  They have to take the critical learning step themselves.  They have to want to learn something.  But even though they actually do the learning themselves, they will come back to me in later years saying, “Oh, thank you, you taught me so much!” when really all I did was be a guide on the side and stayed out of their way.

And, of course, there is the Cowboy Me.  I live in Texas.  I was a Belmond Bronco in high school, but I became a Cotulla Cowboy for 24 years of my teaching career.  I ended up as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  I have worn the hat a lot in my life, being as much of a straight shooter as the Shakiest Gun In The West can be, always trying to shoot the six-guns out of the bad guy’s hands rather than shoot people.

So how do I explain a thing like that?  Probably the way I just did it (ironically).  I should use Paffoonies I have created over time and waffle about stupid stuff that might make people laugh when they realize how self-contradictory it is.  And I should say it like I mean it… because I probably do.

 

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, Mickey, Paffooney, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Uncategorized

Drawing Nude

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God didn’t really want me to write this post.  How do I know this?  Well, my computer is old and quirky (sorta like me) and it constantly spits up and farts when it is most inconvenient.  I had half of this post already written when it decided to release some toxic venom.  By its own volition it suddenly highlighted and erased the whole post except for the title and a random letter “r”.  And WordPress automatically and supposedly helpfully did its little “save the changes immediately” thing.  The whole post was gone in a flash.

Why did God do this?  Well, this isn’t really a “How to Draw Nude Figures” post as it may at first appear.  It is, in fact another in a series of “Why I Am An Artist And Not A Pervert” posts that attempt to justify why a potential “dirty old man” like me spends so much time drawing pictures of naked girls.

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My latest art project is a picture of Brekka, the Telleron tadpole, completely nude.

I am currently drawing the illustration above for my novel Stardusters and Space Lizards.  It shows the scene where Brekka, admittedly a female, although not a human female, has just been accidentally swallowed and then regurgitated by Lester, her friend who is a man-eating plant from an alien solar system.  So excuse number one would have to be, “She’s naked because it fits the story.”  I will stand by that one for matters of illustration.  And you will note, there isn’t anything even remotely sexual about the situation… er, I think I would rather not be subjected to Freudian analysis on that one.

Here are three previously posted nude drawings that I used for previous attempts to corrupt the minds of readers and viewers.  I got a lot of views for these posts, and may at least partially benefit from using the “naked” and “nude” tags on those posts.  Illegitimate excuse number two, then is, “drawing and posting nudes increases the number of people who pay attention to my work.”   My most popular blog post this year has been Be Naked More in which I rationalize my interest in naturism and walking around naked, even though I am certainly far from brave enough to do so in public.

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And I further claim that it is not a sexual thing to draw someone naked.  One of the fundamental truths about art is that every person I draw or paint or write about in a novel is really me.  The only person who stands revealed by the work of art is me, and it is a portrait of what is inside my head.  Of the five nudes in this post, only one of them was not drawn from a real life model.  (And no, I am not counting the butterfly, or the Gryphon, or Lester as nudes… so stop thinking I’m just playing word games.)  (Lester isn’t even a real thing… man-eating plants don’t exist… so stop it!)  But none of the subjects were ever uncomfortable about posing for me.  Of course now that I have suggested that lame excuse number three is, “All nudes are really me.”  I probably have you thinking about the real meaning of the title of this post.  I have psoriasis, I do tend to feel more comfortable with no clothes on, and do tend to write and draw when I am sitting on my sickbed naked.  But I am wearing clothes at the moment.  Considering the content of this post, anything else would just be creepy.  So, stop trying to picture me all hairy, fat, scabby and nude.  After all, you chose to look at and read this thing.  Maybe I’m not the one who needs to explain why I am an artist and not a pervert.

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Filed under aliens, art criticism, artwork, autobiography, drawing, humor, nudes, Paffooney, psoriasis

Growing the Gallery

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My bedroom walls serve as a gallery of my Paffooney artwork.

I have been collecting pieces of colored-pencil Paffoonery for a very long time now.  I am a life-long scribbler and doodler.  You are bound to build up an ocean of old drawings that you could easily drown in if you live that way long enough.  I recently found a few more in an old scrapbook I had squirreled away in the library between cartoon books.

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These are all drawings I did for my three kids when they were little.  I suppose that gives them sentimental value.  They are all imitations of copyrighted characters.  But I am not selling them.  I haven’t actually stolen anybody’s intellectual property yet.  But it makes a good filler post as I continue to rest and work on other things.

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Filed under artwork, blog posting, humor, nostalgia, old art, Paffooney

Islands of Identity

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Who am I?

Why do I do the things that I do?

No man is an island.  John Donne the English poet stated that.  And Ernest Hemingway quoted it… and wove it into his stories as a major theme… and proceeded to try to disprove it.  We need other people.  I married an island girl from the island of Luzon in the Philippines.  She may have actually needed me too, though she will never admit it.

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When I was a young junior high school teacher in the early eighties, they called me Mr. Gilligan.  My classroom was known as Gilligan’s Island.  This came about because a goofball student in the very first class on the very first day said, “You look like Gilligan’s Island!”  By which he meant I reminded him of Bob Denver, the actor that played Gilligan.  But as he said it, he was actually accusing me of being an island.  And no man is an island.  Thank you, Fabian, you were sorta dumb, but I loved you for it.

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You see, being Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island was not a bad thing to be.  It was who I was as a teacher.  Nerdy, awkward, telling stories about when I was young, and my doofy friends like Skinny Mulligan.  Being a teacher gave me an identity.  And Gilligan was stranded on the Island with two beautiful single women, Mary Ann and Ginger.  Not a bad thing to be.  And I loved teaching and telling stories to kids who would later be the doofy students in new stories.

But we go through life searching for who we are and why we are here.  Now that I am retired, and no longer a teacher… who am I now?  We never really find the answer.  Answers change over time.  And so do I.

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Filed under artwork, being alone, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, humor, insight, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Doodle Burger

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Recently burger-I have been binging on drawing doodle-burgers.  Burger-I know that sounds a little bit off, but that is because it was written in Burger-burger-Speak-burger .  It-burger is easy to translate.  Burger-I have merely added the word-burger “burger”-burger to every noun-burger and pronoun-burger as either a suffix-burger or a burger-prefix.  So enjoy my recent burger-doodles and ignore my burger-burger prose-burger.

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This burger-doodle was drawn in the car-burger as burger-I have recently been visiting burger-family and have not had to do all my own driving-burger.  Burger-I drew it with pencil-burger and later went over it-burger with pencil-burger.  It-burger was inspired by a burger-guy that burger-I happened to see walking by in Belmond-burger.  It-burger is not a portrait-burger, but it-burger probably accurately reflects his inner-burger-burger-self.  Burger-Iowans are like that-burger.

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The burger-girl being hit on with flower-burgers by a burger-bunny-boy-burger was also drawn in the car-burger.  The longer burger-I look at it-burger, the more burger-I realize what a creepy cartoon-burger it-burger really is.

Burger-burger-Speak-burger is annoyingly hard to do.  And burger-I doubt that it-burger will ever be a commonly spoken language-burger.  But some fool-burgers taught themselves to speak Klingon-burger, didn’t burger-they?

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, doodle, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink paffoonies, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Lovely Internet Weirdness

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One of the difficulties of being a humorist and trying to connect to people by being funny is that you have to compete for attention.  Cartoonists have an advantage in that they can put something together with pictures and just a few words that you can get easily and quickly and then you laugh.  So the internet is a nightmare maze of short-quick funnies with exceptional levels of weirdness.  I keep track of the weirdness by keeping a weirdo file on my computer and copying things in it that make me go “Whaaaa?”  and then laugh.  Let me share a little of that with you.

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The miracle that is Don Bluth.

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So, therein lies the challenge I face daily.  How do you compete with Muppet cupcakes?

 

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Filed under art criticism, artwork, blog posting, collage, goofiness, humor

Magic Kingdom Memories

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Since the Dallas shooting, and now the Nice attack, I have been needing to rely on things that pull me up from the darkness, and shine some light once again inside my goofy old head.  One thing that always seems to make things right again is looking back on trips to the Magic Kingdom.  Some of the happiest times of my life revolve around family at Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Orlando.

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You see, being an Iowa boy, born in the 50’s, raised in the 60’s and early 70’s, I had one of those rustic, bucolic lives that involved hard work, being frugal with money, and (like I told you yesterday) being around a lot of cow poop.  A great deal of my life was about what the future held, imagination and possibilities, and The Wonderful World of Disney in color on Grandma Beyer’s RCA color TV every Sunday night.  Those Technicolor dreams about things with no cow poop involved  came true for the first time when my family went on a summer vacation to Florida and Walt Disney World when I was in high school.  Oh, how I loved those E-ticket adventures with the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and Space Mountain!  I got to see Country Bears sing and play music on empty moonshine jugs.  We used C-tickets for Snow White’s Scary Adventure and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.  We saw Mickey’s Cartoon Musical Review.  Did you know those last three things no longer exist?

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We went back to Walt Disney World when my family was young, the eldest was six, the middle child was a cranky two, and the Princess was not yet born, though already causing my wife discomfort with six months to go before she made her debut.  That was the time we learned how much my mother really loved It’s a Small World.  We had to take that boat ride so many times that the song still plays relentlessly in my head every time I even start to think about Disney World.  We managed to go back to Disney World again when the oldest was a teenager and the other two were primed to be Disney fanatics.  That time we learned how slowly the other set of grandparents walked.  We also learned that you have to be a master planner to see everything that is good in 5 different theme parks that you just have to check out because, heck, you’ve already mortgaged the future to pay for it.

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And we have been to Disneyland in California a couple of times as well.  We were there, in fact, when the Anaheim earthquake happened, knocking down a couple of Los Angeles buildings nearby and shutting down several rides in the park while damage checks were made.  In fact, it happened during the Star Wars lightsaber battle in Tomorrowland, making us think at the start that it was just a really cool special effect.  It also shut down the food vendor before our expensive hamburgers were cooked.  That part was not so cool.

You can see now at least part of the reason I am such hopeless Disneyphile.  Memories of times spent at Disney parks are the exclamation points on my whole creative life.  It influences my artwork and storytelling to a noticeable degree.  And it takes my mind off my troubles a bit just to stop and reflect, “Once upon a time I visited the Magic Kingdom.”

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Filed under artwork, battling depression, Disney, family, humor, Paffooney

Idea Fertilizer

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Picture borrowed from the North American Manure Expo’s Facebook page

This morning as I was going to QT for my daily dose of wake-up juice with caffeine in it, Jody Dean and the Morning Team on KLUV radio station were making fun of the North American Manure Expo taking place in London, Ohio this week.  Jody Dean, the radio talk-show host, was suggesting that the Expo would’ve been a natural thing to host in Fort Worth because, well, Texas and cow poop just naturally go together.  But it occurs to me, that this is fortuitously a part of Ohio this month because the GOP convention is taking place shortly in Cleveland, and the bull dookie won’t have to be shipped as far for that.  Besides, having grown up as an Iowan, I have a farm-boy awareness of the intrinsic need for poo-poo conventions where the latest distribution technology is on display.  After all, cow poo is fertilizer… it makes stuff grow.

Yesterday I was unable to write the post I had planned about the tragic police shooting in Dallas.  There was a lot to write about.  It was a terrible thing that affected me deeply and did considerable damage to the fight for human rights in this country and preserving the respect and dignity we owe to the men in blue who too often give their lives to keep us safe.  It also gave our Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick a chance to actually put both feet in his mouth at the same time, and for Dallas resident and former rodeo clown turned president George W. Bush to do a goofy smiley-faced dance during the playing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic while the memorial to the fallen Dallas policemen was in the middle of a rather somber occasion.  Poop makes stuff grow, and that post would’ve been epic.

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A project I was working on yesterday while sulking.

You see, yesterday I didn’t have the usual amount of time for writing because I had to install an air conditioner for my hot wife.  It was difficult to install because the bedroom I installed it in has no regular windows.  Only a window/door onto the patio.  And I had to do the installing because my wife wanted to take a sledge hammer to the bedroom wall and knock out enough bricks to make a vent hole for the air conditioner.  I did not want my determined little wife taking up the hammer herself, so I carefully mapped out a plan and bought supplies to cut a hole in the drywall and then jury-rig a makeshift air duct to a pre-existing hole in the brickwork.  I got the hole cut in the drywall and then ran into a snag when I exposed a support beam in the way of my plan.  Well, this led to a discussion of the details executed rather loudly and I believe I was compared to a donkey at least three times.  We then reached a compromise (by which I mean what husbands usually mean when they use the word “compromise” which is that we did things the way my wife wanted them done.  Or, rather, my wife picked up the hammer and crowbar, and I retreated to my room to sulk like a proper adult.  The air conditioner is now humming.  It is blowing half of the exhaust out through the space left by the two bricks she knocked out rather neatly, and the other half up through the wall into the attic.  Oh, well, it works and she is happy with it.  Hopefully no building inspectors read this post.

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Another piece of alien art done while sulking.

The point is, cow poop happens.  And cow poop is fertilizer.  It makes things grow.  Including ideas for posts on my blog.  I was able to illustrate the Telleron alien kids from two of my novels while I was busy sulking and feeling sorry for myself.  In fact, the novel Catch a Falling Star probably only exists because of Iowa and cow poop.  Yes, life in farmville is resoundingly boring and uneventful, so my fertile imagination couldn’t help but make up an alien invasion of a small Iowan farming community.  And my imagination was probably fertile due to so much exposure to cow poop on my grandfather’s and my two uncles’ farms.  So now you know.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, blog posting, farm boy, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Iowa, irony, Paffooney

Stardusters… Canto Three

Installment 3 in my ongoing unfinished Sci-Fi saga is here for your perusal.  Hopefully it is not too awful.  It is a little bit racy in a junior-high sort of way… and it might turn your eyes black to read it, but it is also a little bit funny.

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Canto Three – In the Tadpole Chambers Aboard the Base Ship

Alden Morrell was astounded by the changes alien technology had made in him.  His wife, Gracie, inhabited a child’s body which had been artificially created by the Tellerons.  Her mind had been lifted out of her dying brain and placed into a container which had automatically adopted her DNA.    So the aliens had offered him a chance to be the same age and size as his now child-like wife.  They had put him in a device that resembled a tanning bed and processed him like a naked frog in a microwave oven.  When he had come to… no more body hair, penis reduced to a tiny pink mushroom, bald head re-forested with hair, and a renewed youthful energy he could barely contain.

Alden sat now in the moist sauna-bath that was known as the Tadpole Chamber wearing only his fruit-of-the-looms.  Gracie sat next to him, naked, and feeling apparently far less embarrassed than Alden himself felt.  Five naked Telleron tadpoles were with them, Davalon, Tanith, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson.  The tadpoles were the reason they were there.  Nutrient baths were absolutely necessary to the continued health of the amphibianoid children.

“We should dance,” suggested Brekka.  She was a lovely female Telleron tadpole with skin of forest green and having a delicate reddish blush on cheeks and neck, as well as her shapely buttocks.  Alden shuddered when he realized what he had been looking at.  He looked away and blushed deeply maroon himself.

“Why do you always want to dance?” asked Tanith, another pretty young female of emerald green.  “You suggest that forty times a day.”

“Since we learned to do that on Mars,” said Brekka, “I haven’t wanted to do anything else.  I want to dance like the Mickey Mouse Club kids we saw on the Earther broadcasts.”

“It doesn’t hurt to exercise,” said Davalon.  “I learned that by playing baseball.  It makes the muscles hurt at first, but then you come back stronger and more filled with power.”

Alden beamed at that.  He had been the one to teach Davalon about baseball during that brief time on Earth when he had tried to adopt the abandoned fin-headed alien boy.

“The computer system has Mickey Mouse Club music recorded from Earther TV,” reminded Menolly.    “We just have to ask for it.”

“Yeah!  Great idea!” said George Jetson.  Like many of Captain Xiar’s children, George was named for something on Earther TV that Xiar particularly liked.  “Computer, play all the Mickey Mouse Club songs.”

Alden didn’t know the song that started to play, but it had a good dance beat and the green children began to sway and move and dip and boogie.  It was a wild collection of dance moves from Earth filtered through alien perceptions.

“Let’s dance too,” said Alden’s beloved wife Gracie.   She stood and held out a hand to him.  “We can show them how it’s done.”

Alden was forty years old and Gracie was two years younger.  But now they inhabited children’s bodies, having been reduced in age to twelve and ten.  Their health was so much better, and many years had been added to both of their lives.  Still, it felt unnatural and somehow wrong.  She was younger now than when they’d first met in Belle City High School in Iowa when he was seventeen and she had been fifteen.

“Do you really have to be naked in front of the children?” he asked her in a whisper.

“Why, yes, you old coot.  I think I do.  You should take those soggy shorts off too.  This is like a sauna bath after all.”

“You know Mrs. Castille wouldn’t approve.”

“That old fuddy-duddy doesn’t have a say in this.  Prudes would tell us we have to wear swimsuits in the bath tub because they have issues, not because we do.”

Alden nodded.  He didn’t agree, but he nodded because that was what he thought Gracie wanted.   She was a mere child again, but his love for her made his twelve-year-old body want her mightily.  He had to dance bent forward because he didn’t want mushrooms blooming and embarrassing him while he danced with naked girls in an alien nutrient bath.

*****

My Art

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Filed under aliens, artwork, goofiness, humor, kids, NOVEL WRITING, nudes, Paffooney, writing, writing humor

In a Softer Light…

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The news recently has been painful to contemplate.  Police shootings of suspects that seem on video to be indefensible, yet no charges are ever brought.  Angry people taking vengeance with guns on good Dallas policemen and women because the shooters somehow convinced themselves that violence in return for violence will balance the scales of justice.  Did they perhaps get that idea from orange-colored presidential candidates who have been campaigning about fighting fire with fire?  The weight of the injustice and spirals of anger are crushing me… and I deal with those things through humor, but humor takes time.  So what do I do while I’m trying to process all of the pain?  I spend some time shining lights on things and thinking about stuff.  I told you before that I bought a cheap lamp with a 300-watt bulb to use for photographing artwork.  Let me show you some of the photographed and re-photographed stuff I have been working on;

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Filed under artwork, battling depression, colored pencil, forgiveness, humor, Paffooney, photo paffoonies