Category Archives: artwork

September 17, 2016 · 7:09 pm

The Pinterest Problem

I suddenly find myself back on Pinterest for the first time since the Spring of 2014. It is not that I have been forgiven by the powers behind Pinterest, rather that I have created a new email account which apparently wipes the slate clean of accusation and animosity. But I have to explain what the problem is between me and Pinterest.

First, here are the good things;

Pinterest is a way to make use of my insane hoarding-disorder urge to collect internet images of all kinds.
Pinterest is another place to promote my artwork and I can link covers of my books back to Amazon or I-Universe where crazy people might just be goofy enough to buy one.
I am hoping that in three months I will have another book to put on Pinterest. Page Publishing was goofy enough to offer to publish Magical Miss Morgan, as long as I pay my way.
Pinterest allows me to organize my collections into “boards” which are actually free-flowing collages made up of the pictures I have collected.
The Down-Side;
I was blocked from Pinterest back in 2014 for being a pornographer. They had a lot of sexual content running rampant in their social media site in 2014, which, being a site created for women to share favorite recipes, they didn’t really know how to handle.
I am not shy about liking nudes and boobs in artwork. I was not aware that some of the nude photography I was liking and even sometimes sharing had been added to Pinterest from porn sites. My bad!
After being warned, I stopped liking and re-pinning nudes. I even tried to remove what boobage I had on my boards. (They were popular boards, and some of the bad stuff was among the most popular and re-pinned.)
I got kicked off for copying an artful nude off my list of recommended pins to my computer instead of any of the Pinterest boards. I think it was a Waterhouse oil from the 1800’s, but I don’t know for sure what the problem item actually was. Pinterest for a while was extremely sensitive to depictions of female breasts.

But getting kicked off of Pinterest was a good thing for me. Though embarrassing… at least a little bit… it did help me cure the problem I was having with Pinterest filling all my hours that should have been used for writing. It also helped me self-censor a bit more effectively. The last thing I want to do on social media is give offense. I do not wish to promote my brand in any way similar to how Donald Trump does it on Twitter. And it allows me to bring my artwork, with the appropriate link to WordPress to old ladies collecting recipes and Disney cartoons everywhere. I am happy to back on Pinterest. (And please don’t tell the Pinterest administrators how I did it. I promise to behave.)

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Filed under artwork, collage, collecting, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, self pity

Tagged as goofiness, humor, paffooney, Pinterest

September 5, 2016 · 4:06 pm

Making Hay

I call this post “Making Hay” as a goofy farmer reference. I spent an hour this morning weed-whacking the yard that hasn’t had any attention for the month of August. I know… lazy me… lazy arthritic, diabetic, lung-diseased me. At the end of the hour I had a quarter of the yard weed-whacked and a great pile of hay lying in the middle of the sidewalk where it has no right to be according to the city. And, of course, I did not have any energy left to rake it up.

So I came inside to re-learn how to breathe, to stop losing fifty percent of my body weight in sweat, and to rest my aching bones. And while I was recovering, or possibly re-animating myself, I decided to try re-photographing an old work of art. My portrait of Prinz Flute, the wizard-prince of Tellosia, is difficult to photograph because the colored pencil has a developed a sheen to it over time that reflects glare every time I try to photograph it. The result isn’t that great. But hey, I’m tired from making hay.

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Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, humor, paffooney

August 27, 2016 · 4:43 pm

Sculpture Anatomy

Here is a collage that represents one of my hoarding-disorder collecting diseases enabled by the internet. The rules for this collection are basically;

Only photographs.
Only human bodies, or people parts.
Only artistically created people parts made of non-people stuff.
Naked is not only allowed, but preferred.
1. This is a porcelain doll, not a real girl… just so you know I didn’t break any rules.
The point is, art is a depiction of us. No matter how you create it, what it visually portrays is a reflection, like the one in the bathroom mirror every morning. Beautiful, grotesque, sexy, repulsive, adorable, or disturbing… it is who we are. The point is also, it allows me to point, click, and save and create a collection that I don’t have to hide from my wife. Because, well, you know… it’s art.

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Filed under artists I admire, artwork, collage, humor, nudes, old art

Tagged as artwork, collage, humor, nakedness, nudes, sculpture

August 26, 2016 · 5:54 pm

Paffoonies Still Working

This is actually a writer’s literary site meant to promote novels, and one day possibly earn money from writing instead of simply filling my closets with prose and old manuscripts (along with the wife’s many, many shoes). But since I am also an amateur artist of the irradiated subspecies known as “cartoonist”, I also have many visuals to share. I think in pictures as often as I think in words. So one of the features of this blog is that I tag artwork with a made-up word I coined myself. It allows the curious (or those immune to nightmares) to get an almost instant idea of how afflicted I am with cartoon-ism.

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Yes, I tested it out. If you do a picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” you get a free gallery of my artwork, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You might even find my picture of Clint Eastwood… but beware, he shoots first if you try to “make his day”. If you are brave… or foolish enough to try it, it should come up something like this;

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So, there you have it. A cheap and easy 200-word post from a bad idea that’s still out there working.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, cartoony Paffooney, goofiness, Paffooney, Paffooney cartoony, Paffooney Posts

Tagged as artwork, autobiography, drawing, goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, photo Paffooney

August 24, 2016 · 3:48 pm

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.

lil mickey

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

Tagged as artwork, autobiography, goofiness, humor, Mickey, paffooney

August 11, 2016 · 6:33 pm

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.

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.

Creativity

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

Tagged as artwork, drawing, humor, nakedness, nudes, on nudity, paffooney

August 7, 2016 · 3:29 pm

Growing the Gallery

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

Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, filler post, humor, old art

July 30, 2016 · 12:29 pm

Islands of Identity

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.

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.

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

Tagged as artwork, Gilligan's Island, humor, island girls, paffooney, teaching, the search for identity

July 23, 2016 · 2:18 pm

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

Tagged as artwork, Burger Speak, doodles, goofiness, humor, paffooney

July 16, 2016 · 3:57 pm

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.