Once I was finally able to scan pictures again, I did some scanning of old pictures that only got the camera treatment before on my blog.
But why stop a drawing at just the pen and ink, when there is potential for so much more?
So, I took the Microsoft generic paint program and my generic photo editor to not only this pen and ink of the Jungle Princess, but a few other pictures as well.
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This is what she looks like after being attacked with color by my arthritic old hands. (There was a day when I could have handled intricate details more cleverly, but that was many, many days ago.
Anyway, I have added new dimensions to Leopard Girrrl with color.
Now I need to add more complications to the basic story of the picture.
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Here is an older pen and ink.
This is Dorin Dobbs, one of the dueling plotlines’ protagonists from the novel Catch a Falling Star.
But, of course, Dorin is a more complex character than this old black and white.
So, color needs to be added.
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I had this one actually already painted in…
But in order to use it in this project, I needed to enlarge it to make it fit into the other picture.
Making this unlikely pair work together in a story is one of the challenges of doing surrealist stories. They have to be grounded in realism, but also bring jarringly different things together. Like the Jungle Princess going on an adventure with Norwall’s Lying King.
But, putting these two together is still not enough. Let’s try some other things.
The Jungle Princess together with Tomboy Dilsey Murphy is an unusual pairing.
Or what about the blue faun from Laughing Blue?
Or even Annette Funicello?
Ridiculous, I know. But don’t they look like satin sofa paintings?
Yes, editing a book is like giving scissors to a monkey. Things are going to be cut. The cuts will be totally random. And then you need to paste if all back together yourself and try to make sense of it all again while cussing the damned monkey under your breath so that the monkey doesn’t hear it… unless on this project you are your own monkey.
I have now spent about five years taking my first published novel, the crappiest thing I ever wrote, published by the worst piratical publisher ever to board the sailing ship of my writer’s imagination, and expand it by rewriting and adding story elements that I never reached in the original.
It has been a terrible, blood-boiling effort to turn nonsense, corny jokes, numerous real science fiction ideas, and an overly-excited imagination into a coherent story that is intentionally a cross between Frank Herbert’s Dune and Douglas Adama’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
One of the main flaws of the book is the typical imitation-Dune problem of way too many characters to keep track of. Not just characters… too many planets, alien creatures, robots, alien cultures, star-born weirdnesses, and plot curlicues. My solution to this; add in lots of illustrations (I had originally sold the idea to the publishing pirates with illustrations included… which they cut down to five… and then eliminated completely,) and create an extensive set of appendixes that allow confused readers to look up the weird names and nouns that confronted them on every page.
The plot is overly complex and Dune-like specifically because of how it came to be. I was playing a space-based role-playing game called Traveller with three to eight middle school and high school students who were mostly former students of mine in the 1980’s. They created the player characters who become the lead characters in the book. Both the Aero Brothers, Trav Dalgoda, Tron Blastarrr, and many others were created by the boys. They then went on adventures that began in my imagination, but then took their many twists and turns through where the players wanted to go, what they wanted to build, buy, or steal, and what they chose to do about their many life-and-death encounters.
Book 4 is the manuscript, now finished, that I am editing and will soon publish.
I have reached the fun part of the story where critical things begin to happen that make life-and-death changes to the lives of the most important characters.
The end of the original story will occur in the next book of the series. Book 5 has about fifty percent of its content already written. I will have to write and paste in the extended content for the other fifty percent.
It will end up being not the worst novel I have ever written. It will be the worst five novels. Unless the monkey with the scissors works a miracle or two.
They put one of those magic-absorbing collars around my neck and tied a leash to it. Then they gave the leash over to the quiet boy in the blue jerkin while the mouse-boy and the gnarled old sorcerer tied my hands behind my back.
“So, can we learn sex magic by using this captive?” said the rather loud and obnoxious mouse-boy.
“Shut up, Mickey,” said the sorcerer. “There’s no such thing as sex magic.”
Of course, the sorcerer was wrong about that. I had learned necromantic sex magic from the necromancer. He had taught me the life-force-sucking kiss spell from the goblins he let me suck dry to practice. He also taught me the full-body magic transfer. If the sorcerer knew that, it must’ve been the reason he lied to the mouse-boy.
The quiet boy led me by the leash, but only very carefully, not trying to jerk me forward or make the leash hurt me. He had golden hair and the prettiest blue eyes I had ever seen on a Sylph boy. His blue jerkin had a sign sewn to the front that read, “Never kick the apprentice if the master is near.” He wasn’t wearing pants under the jerkin, only a white loin cover that he apparently had tucked in carefully. I admired his firm, round buttocks. But, of course, I wasn’t about to tell him that.
They took me into the castle in the willow tree. And my mouth surely dropped open at the sight. It was beautiful.
The iron gate was built into the roots of the tree with gatehouse towers carved directly out of the willow wood. But, no… not carved… shaped by magic, as I sensed with my magic tingle.
The inner court was all carved wood, as the willow was practically hollow all the way up to where the limbs branched away into the darkness above. The numerous stairs, landings, walkways, and castle-room facades were all lit by fairy candles which were both small, and exceedingly bright.
“This is our home, Derfentwinkle,” said the quiet boy.
He knew my name? And that was how the sorcerer took my power over Kack, the Demon Head, away from me. I resolved to learn their names next. I knew the mouse-boy was Mickey.
“It’s nothing like the mudhole where I live,” I said. “What is your name, quiet boy?”
“Don’t tell her, Bob. She doesn’t need to know it.”
“Shut up, Mickey. My name is Bob. As the wererat just told you.” He smiled at me, and a thrill went down my spine.
The sorcerer led us all up a winding stair that led to an audience chamber. There was a big, burly Sylph sitting on the throne, but he was no mere warrior-king. The pentagram on his chest glittered with magical energy. I got a powerful tingle from it. He was definitely a wizard… and definitely the boss here. Why was he sitting on the throne of Wotan, the deceased Erlking?
The sorcerer then pulled me in front of him.
“This girl is Derfentwinkle, the necromancer’s apprentice. It turns out that her master is old Bluebottom, my former classmate, better known to you as Kronomarke, waster of time and slayer of the Good Knight Pollinard.”
“She was driving the bone-walker?”
“Yes, with the help of a severed demon head to use as a repository of her master’s magic.”
“And why haven’t you killed her yet, Eli?”
The question chilled me to the bone. The wizard’s guards stepped forward, lowering their halberds.
“Because I chose not to. She’s my captive. I choose to keep her for whatever usefulness she might have. She knows little magic and is not a danger to us.”
“I hope you are right about that, Eli Tragedy. Your very name means you can be disastrously wrong.”
I glared at him until he turned his stupid bug eyes towards his fat ladybug wife.
“Very well, then. But keep her safely in the cage you built to hold the harpy Sir Launcelot captured during the last siege.”
Up to that point, I had believed I could escape any time I really wanted to. But a cage built to hold a harpy? I would never escape that with lockpicking skills. And what if the harpy was still inside?
My mind was made up, however. If they weren’t going to kill me immediately, then I didn’t intend to escape.
Yes, I admit it. I am a goofy old coot and an embarrassment to my children.
That’s my role in life now. Eye rolls abound when I am around.
There are several reasons why, which I intend to list here in detail in order to embarrass my children further. But it basically boils down to the fact that I am a writer, and though I write mostly fiction, another way of saying I lie a lot, a real writer tends to reveal more of the naked truth about himself than a child can stand.
Who wants to see their father naked? Especially when he is old… wrinkled, spotty, and mostly fish-belly white.
Speaking of nakedness, one of the things that my children are most embarrassed about is the fact that I know a lot about nudists and naturists, in fact, I know many real nudists, and I have been nude in at least one social situation with other naked nudists. And, even worse, I admit it in writing where my children and their friends can see it. Of course, none of them read this blog anymore for that reason.
I have written novels where there are nudist characters based on some of the real nudists I have known. The novels with nudist characters in them so far are, Recipes for Gingerbread Children, The Baby Werewolf, Superchicken, The Boy… Forever, and A Field Guide to Fauns. And these novels might not embarrass them so much if they read them to discover that the novels have something to say that really isn’t about their father being a crazy naked coot. But they won’t read them because I am embarrassing to them.
And there is the verified fact that I am something of a conspiracy theorist. I firmly believe that the actor/theater owner William Shakespeare only offered his name to the real writer of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward DeVere. There is actual evidence that is so, though it was a secret that DeVere took to his pauper’s grave after spending away his entire family estates and fortune. A pauper’s grave that no interested scholar can find the location of to this very day, although maybe he’s buried in the same place of honor as the actor/theater owner, as there are cryptic clues to that as well.
I also believe that Dwight Eisenhower met with alien civilizations in the 1950s and the Roswell Incident was a real crash of more than one spacecraft from other star systems. There exist real deathbed confessions that confirm those details, and the government has been covering up the facts for decades.
The conspiracy-theory skills I have as a crazy, embarrassing coot have resulted in books like Catch a Falling Star, Stardusters and Space Lizards, and the Bicycle-Wheel Genius.
And lastly, I was a school teacher in middle schools and high schools for thirty-one years, which means I can create kid-characters in fiction that are very realistic and have a good-but-comic quality that make readers generally like my stories.
So, my children are probably right to be seriously embarrassed by my very existence. Of course, I, like all old coots registered with the Crazy, Embarrassing Coots of America, the CECA, am totally immune to being embarrassed by the embarrassment of my children.
If I am trying hard to get stuff done before the end of life, I have made some headway in 2021, I have published Twenty-One books in my lifetime all published with three different legitimate publishers and one criminal publisher. Oh, and all currently available on Amazon. Of the soon-to-bees listed above, I have published Cissy Moonskipper’s Travels along with an unlisted novella, Horatio T. Dogg, Super Slueth. AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers is finished and undergoing final edits. And I have added a working rough draft of The Necromancer’s Apprentice, a satire I hope won’t be sued by Disney Corporation.
I now own a third of the farm you see in the foreground of this picture. The farm on the far side of the road is Uncle Harry’s farm that was sold when Uncle Harry passed away long ago.
In a sense, I have already had my say in the books I have written. The themes are my fundamental thinking, the horrid insults flung at me in my internal monologue by my inner critic, the rough nuggets of supposed wisdom that I have not only cut my writer’s teeth on. but, in some cases, chewed on relentlessly for decades until it comes out again as sweet as honey. Or, sometimes, as sour as the bile and vomit created by extended illness. Whatever its quality, the writings I will leave behind me are my fair say in an attempt to help the world evolve.
There is still a considerable record of having had my say in middle school and high school English classes. That say, that attempt to influence the future, has already been written in the memories of students that sat through my classes. They endured a lot, put up with a lot of mistakes by me, but also, hopefully learned some real lessons.
Here’s the current gist of what I have to say;
We are in a time when the environment is out of control and getting worse. It will probably kill us all, including all other life on Earth. But we are creative enough and smart enough to invent our way out of that problem. If only the stupid people and the greedy-evil people will let us.
We are also in a time when there is a definite threat that our leaders are going to embrace the easy and profitable path of being a Fascist. We have to hope there is enough empathy and morality left amongst our people to avoid this and find a fairer way for all.
And that is not all I have left to say. But it will do for now.
Some characters need to have their story told for reasons that are buried deep in the author’s personal history and damaged psyche. For me, Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf, was that kind of character.
The book, The Baby Werewolf, is a different kind of horror story. The central question of the book is this, “Am I a monster? And do I know why or why not?” And Torrie has to answer that question because he was born with a rare genetic disorder called hypertrichosis. It is the “werewolf-hair disease” where hair growth happens in unusual places on the body and in Torrie’s case, everywhere but the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. He is a perfectly normal boy who really only looks like a monster. But how you look can have a profound impact on how people treat you.
And the character of the boy who looks like a werewolf and thinks he is a monster is based entirely on me. Unlike Valerie Clarke whose origins I can pinpoint, I have to honestly admit the way Torrie thinks and feels and acts are all based solely on me and me alone.
You see, when I was a boy of ten I went through a horrible traumatic experience that threw my whole life into darkness. And I kept it secret from everybody. In fact, for a few years, I kept it a secret even from myself.
It is not that I really didn’t remember I had been sexually assaulted by an older boy. The nightmares and remembered pain were a constant even when I couldn’t admit to myself what had happened. I defended myself from it all by burying the knowledge deep, and worrying about things that only sexual-assault victims worried about. I embarrassed myself twice in seventh grade by wetting my pants in class, all because I couldn’t go into the boys’ bathroom at school. Whenever I would have sexual urges of any kind, I would lie down or sit on the heating grate at home, burning scars into my lower back and the back of my lower legs. I fretted about how to fight monsters. And I knew from the movies that if a vampire bit you, you could become a vampire. And if a werewolf bit you, you could become a werewolf. So, if a sexual predator bites you, do you not become a…??
In all honesty I probably became a teacher at least in part to protect other kids from the same kind of thing that happened to me. And I had to write this book to tell the story of how not to be a monster.
The true monster in this monster-movie tale is actually Torrie’s uncle, the person who actually psychologically abuses him. And the villain proves himself to be a sexual deviant, trying to create kiddie porn in his photography studio.
I suppose I just spoiled the whole whodunnit part of the book. But the murder mystery was never the point of the novel. The message of this novel is that no child is ever a monster unless he actually chooses to become one.
And that is the kind of character Torrie Brownfield is. The autobiographical kind. The kind that brings the author’s worst fears about himself to light, and tries to answer the question with… “No, I am not a monster.”
Alien anatomy provides it’s own problems. How do green aliens blush?Cartoon anatomy can employ very different proportions than realistic anatomy.
Actual anatomy should be studied with live models and strong light.
…And making a human form look real depends on how you render the shading and shadow to reveal 3-D shapes in 2-D.
Anatomy is reflected in figures who are not nude. But you can’t get the figure in clothes to be accurate without understanding how the nude body underneath is put together.Figures in motion are best drawn from photos. No model could hold these poses, especially not a juvenile model.
And it probably becomes an issue if you are only drawing children’s anatomy.
You have to have parental consent for a child to pose nude for you. This picture not only shows adult male anatomy and deer anatomy drawn from photos, but a nude girl who was 13 when the photo was taken, but 22 when she gave me permission to use it. And, of course, I returned the original photo when this was done. The girl was the daughter of Canadian nudist friends.
This picture was drawn from a model that was actually a nude statuette rather than an actual human being. The important factor in creating nude art is that it is not sexual or intentionally erotic. It does not focus on genitals or breasts, and can, in fact, obscure those parts of the body completely and still be a nude.
There is something fundamental about an artist creating a nude portrait. And the more authentic they are the better. Hopefully they don’t get me branded as a pornographer.
Today’s Art-Day Saturday post is about the pictures I have drawn to establish in my mind the characters that make up the fictional world of Norwall, Iowa. Specifically, the kids in my YA novels.
Milt Morgan, wizard of the Norwall Pirates
I do manage character development and detailed descriptions by creating early on a picture of what the character looks like for me.
Sherry Cobble, nudist, twin sister of Shelly, also a nudist
Mike Murphy and his girlfriend, Blueberry BatesEdward-Andrew Campbell
Brent Clarke, first leader of the Norwall Pirates
Dilsey Murphy, everybody’s big sister
Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf
Grandma Gretel Stein, Todd Niland, Sherry Cobble, Sandy WickhamFrancois Martin, the Sad Clown who Sings
Anita Jones, the girlfriend of Superchicken
Valerie Clarke, the most beautiful girl ever born in Norwall
Catch a Falling Star 