Here is a portrait of Valerie Clarke and her Daddy, Kyle Clarke. They are important characters in the novel I am working on now, When the Captain Came Calling. Valerie is also a main character in Snow Babies. Here is what the double portrait looks like with a farmhouse background.
A picture like this might prove useful in a number of ways. For today it makes a good post when I don’t need to write so many words.
Filed under artwork, colored pencil, Paffooney, Uncategorized
Going through my old drawing portfolio, I found my children’s book project from my undergrad college years. I have no idea now looking at the illustrations what the story was even about. I lost the actual story, and I never made a cover for it. But here is a look at old hopes and dreams and a way of seeing the world that begins; Once Upon a Time…
I have no earthly idea what the heck this story is even about, but I do like the pen and ink work, and probably couldn’t repeat it if I had to.
Filed under artwork, cartoony Paffooney, fairies, goofiness, humor, Uncategorized
Well, I almost got a ticket in a school zone this morning. The sun was in my eyes and I was driving a steady 31 miles an hour in a twenty mile per hour zone. Fortunately the young officer apparently was fooled by my decrepit old man act (which I do incredibly well because I have had arthritis for forty years and I look like death warmed over in the morning… and I am not actually acting). I was let off with a warning and threats of a beating next time. Portents of bad times continue. I have another oil change warning light on my dashboard even though I just had the old Ford Fiesta at the dealer last week, having the engine put back in because Walmart blew it up. The conspiracy theorist in me was noticing particularly odd-shaped contrails in the skies over Garland and East Dallas. I have been told by fellow conspiracy theorists that the guvvamint is spraying nano-particles in the upper atmosphere to fix global warming so they don’t have to admit it exists and was caused by aliens. And I can believe these tinfoil hatters because they showed me proof that the CIA has altered their DNA with fluoridated water. Nobody could have that pointy of a pin-head without guvvamint help. So life continues to treat me the way Bugs Bunny treats Elmer Fudd. And I feel slapped silly.
But here’s the important thing;
Followed by;
And then;
So you can see that I haven’t given up yet. My flower petals burst with color. And the seeds that I have planted continue to grow and blossom anew.
I am once again needing to write an easy post because I am feeling quite ill. So let me talk about an artist thing that is totally boring for those who already know about this stuff and fascinating to anyone who always wanted to know art secrets from the secret tomes of drawing-wizards and painting-wizards. So here is some of the arcana gleaned from years of experimentation in the tippy-top of Mickey’s wizard’s tower.
Pen and Ink – When I first discovered I could make pencil pictures of naked girls, long about the magical-hormone-age of twelve, I began regretting the fact that pencil pictures easily smear. So, I had to find a further magical technique to make the pretties stay free of the dark clouds of graphite smudge. The magic wand I chose first was the ink pen with black ink. 
Of course, I am not using examples of middle-school me drawing naked pen-and-ink girls. Mothers, girlfriends, and wives make those things go away. But I am showing examples that have magical little elements in them that reveal my secrets. One thing that magically works is filling shapes and areas of the drawing in with specific patterns. The crosshatch work in the mermaid picture is obvious in the mountains and the mermaid’s hair. Not as obvious is the suggested scale-pattern in the mermaid’s fish tail. Notice how it only fills in the areas I need to suggest shadow and create 3-D form. The pattern that makes the floor for the hoola-hooper is a pattern that subtly suggests radioactivity.
This high school art project, the very first in incarnation of Rabbit Castle, shows my utter failure to effectively use pen and ink wash. I think I did get the wood pattern and the brick pattern right. But the filling of areas with diluted ink wash was a total mad failure of mud-making proportions. I decided against further using pen and ink wash in high school.
Water Color – I also experimented with adding life to drawings by using water color. Don’t look too closely at this horse-head bookend picture because I accidentally gave the poor pony severe-plaque psoriasis with watercolor, something I wouldn’t wish even on a horse made out of plaster or stoneware. Water color is difficult for me because I am highly controlled when I draw. I do not like the many “happy accidents” of the water-color world. I do not adapt well to runny color. So, water color also became a NO for me in high school.
Colored Pencil – I did however find magic when I first learned to blend colored pencil colors on the page and create full-color drawings. I especially like the fact that bright colors are easy to manipulate and contrast for me. I am somewhat color-blind (red-green color-blindness that is worse in my left eye than my right). I like colors I can actually see. If you look carefully at this picture of Bobby and Horatio T. Dogg, you will notice that this is solely made up of colored pencil lines and shading and color-blends. It was with this media that I found my true art mojo.
Mixed Media – So the style I most often use for the magic of forging Paffoonies is a mixture of my two favorite media… colored pencil and pen and ink. So here is the magic formula; 1. Draw first in pencil. 2. Go over the lines in black ink. 3. Fill in all areas with texture and color made from colored pencil.
The problem, as you can basically see, is the complexity of life on Earth and the convoluted way you have to understand the game to win it. I do not trust the ladders. They are not sturdy. They are not strong. And I fear the snakes. Will they not bite with poison? Will they not encircle me and constrict the very marrow out of my old bones? And when you play the game with M. C., he cheats. He plays in the fourth and fifth dimensions.
It is obvious that I don’t play the game well. You can tell, for instance, that I am struggling to get a camera to take a picture of a pencil drawing and get all of it in focus enough to bring out the nuances. It is the tricks of shading and juxtaposition of bizarre elements that got me the “A+” for this assignment in Drawing 303 at Iowa State University. I couldn’t capture some of the most subtle usage because the paper of the drawing has aged since 1978 and the shading is harder to make stand out against the graying and yellowing paper in the background. And it is increasingly hard to pick the thematic core of my message out of the hoogah-boog and chizzly-goober mishmash of my prose.
But it boils down to this, with school starting again, and money for bills running out, and arguments with the wife, and kids who sleep all day and play computer games all night, the whole two-steps-forward and one-step-back dance that I must do is making the game too hard to play. It is too hard to win. And I must simplify. No more hopping from double planes of existence into a room where you will fall up to the floor from the ceiling. And I must take success where I find it.
Heat of up to 105 and drought returning after months of deluge, makes me take pride in simple steps I have taken in the game. My flower wagon is blossoming only one blossom at a time, but there is bloom… there is success… and flowers seek the sun.
So what does my post for today mean? Don’t worry about it. M.C. Escher cheats when he plays the game. His physics break the laws of physics, and his genius turns around corners that are not really there. And maybe I only scored a “1” on my roll today. But it is a good one. And I have a piece in the game. I am a player on the board. And the next turn will come.
M.C. Escher’s faulty physics.
Here is the finished Astroboy Paffooney.
When I was a boy in Iowa, growing up in the 1960’s, I remember being seriously infected by the notion that true heroes were like Astroboy. I watched the show on a black and white Motorola TV every day at four after we got home from school. Astro could fly. He was super-strong. He could battle the evil monsters and machine men from my worst nightmares and always come out the winner. And though he was a robot, he was a boy like me. I thought a lot about Astroboy and I played Astroboy games with my friend Lester in our back yard. The theme song played over and over in my head.
The Astroboy March
Music by Tatsuo Takei; Lyrics by Don Rockwell
There you go, Astroboy, on your flight into space.
Rocket hi—-gh, through the sk—-y
For adventures soon you will face.
Astroboy bombs away,
On your mission today,
Here’s the count—-down,
And the blast—-off,
Everything is go, Astroboy!
Astroboy, as you fly,
Strange new worlds you will spy,
Atom ce—-lled, jet pro—-pel—-led
Fighting monsters high in the sky,
Astroboy, there you go, will you find friend or for,
Cosmic ran—-ger, laugh at dan—-ger, everything is go, Astroboy!
Crowds will cheer you, you’re a he—-ro, as you go, go, go, Astroboy!
What can I say? I was a stupid child with an imagination easily manipulated by television. My world consisted of Astroboy every afternoon, Red Skelton on Wednesday nights, and Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday evenings. I cried for the Astroboy characters who sometimes suffered and died during the adventure. I cringed when Astrogirl stumbled into danger. But I knew in my stupid heart that everything would be all right in the end.
When President Kennedy was murdered, or when the Apollo Astronauts burned, I didn’t really feel those events. I still thought a happy ending would come to save the day. I believed that I had the power to make things right the way Astroboy did. I was doomed to learn the hard way.
I had heard from my friends about weird things that a fifteen-year-old neighbor would do sometimes. I understood that he liked to “do things” to younger boys. I should have been scared to death of him. But, the cosmic ranger laughs at danger. I was ten when he caught me near his yard. He forced me down into a hidden place behind a pile of old truck tires. He got my pants and underpants down and forced me to stop fighting. I remember it as pain and shame and horror. It was a monster I never dreamed of, and no one came to my rescue.
We used to believe that the future held undiscovered treasures and wonder. We believed that when a hero was needed, one would always step forward. I wanted to be that hero. I would go forward, however, wondering if it all led to an unhappy ending. “Crowds will cheer you, you’re a hero, as you go, go, go, Mickeyboy!
(I should confess that this is an old post written in 2007. It was at a time when I was finally ready and able to talk about what happened to me 40 years before. My attacker has since died of a heart attack, and though he was never held accountable for his actions, I have forgiven him. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Strong like Astroboy.)
Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized
So, here is what it looks like now after watching The West Wing. I love that show. They do such a wonderful job of weaving story, theme, and relevant political issues together into a compelling series. It is like the very best and most poetic of the novel series. I have read two books of John Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga, and I think the TV show is better. Of course, I realize the novels are quite old and fusty in temperment.
I now have all three main characters colored in. Dr. Elefun on the left in his pinstripe shirt, Astro in the middle, and Mr. Pompous on the right in the back seat. I have most of the cockpit of the flying car done, and must start pondering how to make it fly in this drawing. I put a piece of cardboard under the drawing and that gives it a funky ribbed effect with the colored pencil rubbed over large areas. I am enjoying this homemade coloring-book art project. I have also added 173 words.
Filed under artwork, colored pencil, humor, Paffooney
Now that I have alienated so many of my conservative friends by doing the horrible political act of posting a post yesterday in which I took the terrifyingly earth-shaking step of coming out against racism, I must take it back down a notch and just be silly again. I discovered yesterday that most of my family members whose opinions I take seriously, agree with me. In fact, some of them are more radically liberal than I am. (Of course that goes without saying… I did, after all, defend Richard Nixon as being a good president in 1973… just before he resigned in Watergate disgrace. My political insights are always so keen.) There are also people whose intelligence I respect who don’t quite want to condemn what happened in South Carolina as racial terrorism They want to call it a failure of mental health care, the way Jeb Bush did on the campaign trail. Or they want to think of it as an “accident” that is being seized on by lib-tards to take away people’s God-given second amendment rights the way Rick Perry did (the only candidate for President on record for declaring that he is running while under an indictment for abuse of power as a governor of Texas). And I suppose it is their right to have their own opinions and feel the way they want to feel about it. Maybe they really don’t know any racist people anywhere… because they don’t read minds… not because they’re afraid to admit that racism exists. But I argued yesterday that everyone should love everyone else no matter what language they spoke or what color their skin was. Apparently that idea is too liberal for some of the people I know.
But that was yesterday. Today I am in recovery from political thinking and the philosophical brain-bruising I always seem to take whenever I make any of my disgustingly liberal lunatic statements. Today I just want to celebrate the fact that I have published a lot of artwork on the internet where a lot of people seem to like it.
If you try “Googling Paffooney” you want to do the thing suggested in my Paffooney ad for all Paffoonies (pictured above) and specify that you are looking for “Beyer Paffooney”. Google-tastic algorithms help Google figure out what the heck you actually mean by googling a silly, made-up word like “Paffooney” when you add my last name to it. Somehow that clarifies that you don’t want the pictures from Facebook posts belonging to women named Valerie, teacher websites that may be only vaguely connected to the fact that I am a former school teacher, and foolish enough to be honest about it in my posts, and artwork by any and all painters and cartoonists on the web. Adding my name somehow clears up for Google the fact that the artwork that I continually label and categorize as “Paffooney” is not that weird variety of other things. I am, after all, the only idiot on the web using that silly magic made-up word… at least that I know of. So I hope you give a look and try to like my Paffoonies, even though they are probably just as goofy and mixed-up as my politics. Here is a link to make it entirely too easy for you to do this weird thing;
Since beginning my career as a teacher in the 80’s, I have always had respect for student artwork. Often, I have had more respect than the artist did, as many of these artworks I have collected were retrieved from the trash can or the classroom floor. I collected these works of art, got students to sign them whenever it was possible, and always accepted any time the students offered to give me a doodle as a gift. I put them all in my old blue binder, itself a gift from a student, and called it my Classroom Gallery. Let me show you a few of the treasures I have hoarded over the years.
I do believe some of these artworks were intended to grease the wheels of justice and keep certain artists out of trouble… especially when they weren’t actually listening to my wonderful teaching. This example is one of many that put my name and reputation in large fancy letters made with scented markers.
Sometimes, however, I detected a more truthful take on things when I un-wadded masterpieces from the trash can. They would reveal a slightly different sentiment, though usually only a temporary one.
I also found a lot of masterpieces that were imitations of other things in their lives, things that meant more to them than English lessons, at least for that moment.
Some other things were more original.
And I even got artwork from other teachers. Noe Garza was a comic book artist. You should’ve seen his classroom Silver Surfer.
I have a lot of these things… so I can’t leave this post without showing you a few more.
I have discovered things about being an artist by blogging. I have discovered things by learning from other artists. I have also discovered things by trial and error. I have also discovered things by random acts of God. So let me share some of the ill-gotten picture secrets that I have added to my vast bag of useless incunabula-juice squeezed out with my arcane-secret juicer and internet blogger good luck.
#1. Save everything arty… as you see above, I have three different pictures of my Catch a Falling Star character Dorin Dobbs, all made from the same pen and ink line drawing. All the color is digital paint from my computer’s own paint program. Simple and cheap to do. Save functions multiply the pretty.
#2. Splice stuff together and make new stuff… I have the cheapest possible photo-shop program, but using its entire $7 value every time I paste with it, I am able to create new art out of old.
New art out of old;
#3. Weave things together to create unity… My art is not for its own sake. I am not Picasso or Van Gogh. My art is very much tied to the stories I tell as a writer of Young Adult novels. (Snow Babies is awaiting its turn with the editors of PDMI LLC Publishers.)
#4. Promote the art and writing of others… I have spent a ridiculous amount of internet time stalking artists like Loish and sharing their work on my blog. Writers too. I do my little book reports in order to connect the reading and the literary influences I have completed (or stolen from) and show where much of my own style and je nais se quois comes from. If the artist or writer is still living and notices what I have done, they will often return the favor (hopefully, if they don’t find my work to be an offense against the gods of art). If they can’t return the favor (because they are quite dead or thoroughly disgusted by me), I have at least associated my work with theirs in the minds of my readers,
#5. It’s all about digital photography… In order to share my colored-pencil menagerie of live Paffoonies on the internet, I have to get better at photography. I have taken far more photos of drawings in the last two years than I have drawn drawings. That has not been a life-long way of things. I love color, and poor photography skills turn out various shades of gray. Sunlight? Incandescent? Fluorescent? I haven’t discovered that secret yet, but it will never be uncovered if I don;t keep trying.
#5. Find connections that help pull your work together in one big, messy bundle… Facebook, WordPress, and Deviant-Art are all better forums if you can connect them. I did this by labeling everything Mickey with a meaningless made-up word that no one else in their right mind would use. The word is Paffooney.
A picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” gives you an almost complete gallery of my artwork and nonsense. Googling the word itself yields a link to a plethora of my old blogs. Do you not know what plethora means? Try it and you will learn that very good word.
Catch a Falling Star 