This is a place I explore in cartoons and daydreams. It is a little town known as Animal Town for fairly obvious reasons. It is populated by silly anthropomorphic animals who wear clothes and keep naked people as pets.
Mandy Panda and little brother Dandy are my constant companions and guides when I tour the dangerous streets of wild Animal Town. In my cartoons, Mandy is an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands. She is also the cartoon version of my wife.
It was Mandy who introduced me to the government officials who run Animal Town. Judge Moosewinkle is the head of the Animal Town court system. He is a hanging judge, so I am very careful about littering and loitering when I am in town.
Constable Geoffrey Giraffe does all the arresting and police work. He used to work in a toy store, but quit his job there when he couldn’t get them to stop writing the R backwards on all their signs. Grammar infractions annoy him more than any other crime.
Linus the Kitten-Hearted is the mayor of Animal Town. They wanted to crown him as king, but he always says that’s only for when he’s in the jungle. In town he prefers to be a democratically elected leader. Of course, if you refuse to vote for him, he might eat you.
Most of my dreams in Animal Town are about the school there.
Miss Ancient’s Class of 5th graders is usually rather rowdy and difficult. You may have noticed there is a bare bear in the old buzzard’s class. The fact is, the bears in Animal Town are all naturists and refuse to wear clothes. This disturbs poor Miss
Ancient greatly, and it is therefore a real godsend that a fig leaf just happened to be drifting down through the air at the time this picture was made. Bobby Bare is not shy, but some things are better not put into a cartoon.
As a visitor to Animal Town, Cissy Bare took me to Mr. Rabbit’s class as her pet for show and tell. She is also a bare bear, and she also benefited from a passing leaf at picture time. You may notice students putting rabbit ears behind each other’s heads in pictures… something that human children do too in real life. But when I study this picture, I can’t help but think that maybe Mr. Rabbit started it. Now, Animal Town is located in Fantastica, a part of the Dreamlands. So that sort of explains how I ended up in school naked. My dreams are like that. You are in school in the middle of lessons before you realize that haven’t got a single stitch of clothing on.
When I am inevitably charged with public indecency for being in school naked, I can turn to Animal Town lawyer Woolbinkle Moosewinkle. He is totally incompetent and not very bright, but unlike most of the animals, he is friendly and on my side. Spot Firedog is a Dalmatian who knows how to use a newspaper. He is a reporter, publisher, and all-around good dog. He wrote an expose on me being naked in the Animal Town Elementary school.
Big Bull Beefalo runs the local hamburger emporium, which might seem like collusion to cannabalism, but Bull is a very gentle and very large soul. He is himself a vegetarian, but he is a gifted fry cook and chef. I can go to his restaurant when I get out of jail, though hopefully not as food.
So, Animal Town is a very different kind of place. It is the result of dreams and goofiness and uncontrolled spurts of cartoonist creativity. It is a cartoon sort of place where spontaneous and random humor happens.
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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Tagged as Saturday Art Day