Still being under the weather and filled with sinus head-pain, I decided to go back to a subject I love so much that the post will simply write itself. You know I love Norman Rockwell and his art, and I fervently believe that kind of mass media oil-painting does not put him in a lesser category than Rembrandt or Michelangelo or Raphael or any other painter with a ninja turtle namesake. He is a genius, and though he is not a realist in so many ways, his work is more truthful than practically any other kind of painting. If you are taken by surprise and didn’t know I had this passionate obsession, maybe you should go back and look at this post; Norman Rockwell
Now that I got that out of my system, here is another Saturday Evening Post artist that is often confused with Rockwell. His name is Amos Sewell.
Sewell was an amateur tennis player who was talented enough to win tournaments. He was an employee of Wells Fargo who was headed towards anything but an art career until he decided to make a leap of faith in 1930. He started as an illustrator for Street and Smith pulp fiction, and soon caught the notice of the big-time magazine markets for his art. He published art for Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentlemen Magazine, and Women’s Day.
Like Rockwell, he was able to find the funny in everyday scenes, like the dance party to the right. That young man at center stage is trying so hard not to step on the feet of the red-headed girl, that you want to laugh, but can’t because it’s obvious how embarrassed he would be, and the charm of the picture leads you to shun the thought of interrupting. The scene is so real the boy would hear you laughing as you looked at the Post cover.
More expert on this kind of art than I am is the Facebook site that I first got turned on to Sewell by. Children in Art History
There is no doubt that Amos Sewell belongs in the same pantheon of artists as Norman Rockwell, Thomas Kinkade, or Paul Detlafsen. They are all artists who achieve in their work exactly what I have always striven for. I want to be able to hold the mirror up to our world the way they did. I want to capture both the fantasy and the reality in the subject of everyday family life. I also want to share this work with you because I cannot stand the idea that such artistic ambrosia could one day be forgotten in archives where no one ever looks at it and feels the message in their heart.
It happens a lot in the course of a long life. And sixty-four and three quarters-years is a long life as far as I’m concerned. But still, disappointments come hard.
They come harder when you’re a child. Two years is forever when you are only six. Four years would seem like your whole life. But even though I know there is a good chance the thing longed for will eventually be possible, it is still hard to wait even longer.
I confess now that I had a perfectly evil plan for last weekend while my wife is off at a religious conference in California. You see, she wants nothing to do with my crazy obsession with being a nudist. So, if I want to go to the nudist park again, I can’t expect her to go along or have anything to do with it.
It has been four years since I went to Bluebonnet Nudist Park for the first time in July of 2017. That trip, which I enjoyed very much, was directly followed by a trip to the hospital for an EKG reading that indicated a possible heart attack and turned out not to be a heart attack after all. After a week’s stay in a hospital room under the care of a cardiologist, and there was a little matter of being sued for an unpaid debt by Bank of America,
that was followed up before 2017 was over with my personal bankruptcy.
So, my wife is now on a sort of vacation without me, and I wanted to go be naked with other naked people for the second time ever last Saturday. It would’ve been a day with more of Bluebonnet’s members present than the day I went before. I was hoping to meet and get to know other people who believe relaxing in a natural setting together with no clothes on is a healthy, healing thing to do.
Number two son got sick, however, with a virus that might’ve been Covid, even though he has been vaccinated. And while we were quarantined, awaiting the test results, I came down with that virus too. Needless to say, I was disappointed in having to cancel my evil plan. Of course, I could’ve simply put it off till this holiday weekend. But I am not completely recovered. I developed skin sores that would not have reacted well to sunscreen or sunburn if I tried it without sunscreen. So, plan cancelled.
Of course, the disappointments in the title are plural. And I did not write about this topic only to show off my ability to draw pen-and-ink nudes. (Although that reason certainly played a role in the decision.)
From the 7th of July to the 16th, my wife was going to take me to Iowa to see my octogenarian mother for the first time in two years, thanks to the pandemic. I was going to get the chance to see my father’s grave site and headstone. I was going to see my sisters. And…
Well…
The notice now on the table waiting for my wife’s return says the county tax assessor wants to hold a hearing on the value of our house and property in Denton, on the 12th.
It seems like I have waited forever. And things are simply not destined to go my way. I guess I just have to keep my britches on and hang on for another time.
My wife brought treasure back from the Philippines for my kids and me. She spent over a thousand Filipino pesos at a book store over there and apparently bought out the store’s entire supply of “How-to-Draw-Manga/Anime” (though the amount she spent is not so impressive when you realize the exchange rate for a Filipino peso is .025 of an American dollar). Anyway, I happen to love the Japanese anime-style cartoons. I have since I was a kid in the 60’s watching Astroboy in black and white on the old Motorola TV set. So, just as you would expect, I had to go on a drawing binge, copying ideas from the books, but putting my own spin on them.
It is not the first time I have gone on anime-drawing binges. Let me provide some proof of that from past posts;
This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.
This is a second shameless plagiarism and imitation of Rumiko Takahashi by Mickey the Manga Wannabee.
So, there’s my original content for today. The day after the 4th of July, I am celebrating one of the ways that Japan conquered the United States after World War II. Yes, manga-style cartoons have far more kids carefully copying a cartoon style with big, cute eyes than probably ever tried to draw like Walt Kelly or Al Capp.
No, this post doesn’t mean I’m converting to Shinto, Taoism, or Buddhism, though I could given what I know about each of them.
And the title is not referring to thoughts of suicidal cults getting their fatal orders from a comet.
No one lives forever. We were never meant to. And it would not be a good thing in the long run. One can get weary of anything… even a good life.
I posted this picture today only because the WordPress gallery system let me pull up images by date rather than by scrolling all the way back to 2014.
And I like this picture. It is very calming and serene.
I like to draw and create graphic artworks on paper of canvas with colored pencils or paint.
This is the most recent drawing I did. It is an illustration for Horatio T. Dogg. You can probably tell that it is actually two separate drawings spliced together. The one on the left is a much older drawing. It is noticeable that my skills have eroded somewhat over time. Arthritis in my hands and color-blindness creeping up on me make it much harder to match the style and the blending of colors is much harder to make smooth as color vision creeps towards gray, white, and grayer.
But I am not giving up. I can still create beautiful things. And I will keep trying to do that until the very end.
This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.
This is a second shameless plagiarism and imitation of Rumiko Takahashi by Mickey the Manga Wannabee.
Yesterday I used a Paffooney I had stolen to illustrate my gymnasium adventures, and in the caption I gave credit to the wonderful comic artist I shamelessly copied it from. The second imitation Takahashi that I did yesterday is now displayed next to it above. I am now compelled to explain about my goofy, sideways obsession with Anime and Manga, the cartoons from Japan. I love the art style. I have since I fell in love with Astroboy Anime as a child in Iowa. Rumiko Takahashi is almost exactly one year younger than me. As a cartoonist she is light years more successful than me. She has been crafting pen and ink masterpieces of goofy story-telling longer than I have been a teacher.
Her artwork is a primary reason I have been so overly-enamored of the Japanese Manga-cartoon style. I love the big eyes, the child-like features of even adult characters, the weird poses and still-weirder comic art conventions of this culture from practically a different planet. She has created comic series that are immensely popular in Japan, and have even put down sturdy roots in this country, especially with young adults since the 80’s. She is the world’s number one best-selling female comics artist.
Just as we Westerners have to accept numerous ridiculous things to appreciate the stories told in American comics (for instance, brawny heroes running around in tights with their underwear on the outside of their pants, nearly naked ladies with super powers diving into battle next to men encased in armored suits, and talking animals), the Manga-minded must also practice a bizarre form of the willing suspension of disbelief. In Ranma 1/2, the main character is a boy marshal artist who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water. Much of the romantic comedy of that work revolves around boys and old men finding themselves in the bath house next to naked young girls. For some reason that sort of naked surprise causes the boys to spout fountain-like nosebleeds. In Inu-Yasha the whole thing is about fighting demons with swords. Inu-Yasha himself is part demon. Apparently part-demon is a good thing to be. Japanese villains are spectacularly susceptible to fits of crying rage and tantrums. And everybody looks more like American white people than orientals. Oh, and there are talking animals.
Rumiko is a master of pen and ink. Here is a sample of of her black and white work.
And she does color well too.
The little people are a special style of Manga character called a Chibi, and all regular Manga characters can turn into one at any moment.
And, of course, to read actual Manga you have to master reading backwards. Americans read left to right. The Japanese read right to left. You have to open a Japanese book in a manner that seems both backwards and upside down.
This illustration shows how American publishers flip Japanese comics to make them more accessible to American audiences.
So now, by uncovering the fact that I am addicted to and seriously affected by Japanese cartoons, you have one more bit of evidence to present to a jury in case you decide Mickey needs to be locked up and medicated for a while. Japanese comics are a world of great beauty, but also a world unto themselves. It is an acquired taste that has to be considered carefully. And of all the many marvelous Manga makers, Rumiko Takahashi is the one I love the best.
I think the most important thing to know about being a writer… I mean, really being an honest-to-god hard-thinking if not also hard-drinking author… is that you don’t have a choice. If you are a writer, you have to write. Words on a paper. Ideas communicated by putting squiggly little alphabet marks in some language and form that you know and can effectively express yourself in.
You write because you have to.
You have to because you love it. All of it… everything.
Life, love, laughter, learning, and longing… All of it.
You make yourself naked by putting your innermost truth out there for all to see.
Not clothed in lies or distracting details. But the innermost truth… the words that are written on your heart.
And it’s not about positive or negative. All writers have both stewing together within them. I am a pessimist by my practical, logical nature… always expecting the worst to happen. But when the plan comes together, the story gets written, the thing you love is revealed… I can also glory in it. Your truth or mine. No matter. The truth is simply the truth. And once you are weaned of mother’s milk, and your infant mind is filled with words, you need it daily to live.
And you find it in great gobs in larders and cupboards where it has been stored in writing for you to consume with gusto by reading.
Or you find it under stones you have turned, barely enough to keep you alive… and you praise God for it, for even this tiny little bit is a miracle to sustain you.
And sometimes they will ask you, “What’s it like to be a writer?”
And I will say, “I can’t really tell you. No mere words can explain it. If you already are one, you already know what it means. And if you don’t know what it means, I weep for you.”
Back in about 1968 my Grandma Beyer was seriously scandalized by an artist named Paul Detlefsen. Detlefsen did a lot of covers for the “Ideals Magazine” that Grandma always had on her coffee tables. He scandalized her by putting a painting on the cover that showed a young boy taking his pants off, the rear view only, so he could go skinny dipping with a group of naked boys. Truthfully the picture shown above is by Detelfsen, but it is not the one that offended her. I have discovered that this painter of old-timey things like blacksmith shops and one-room school houses has painted at least four different versions of “the Old Swimmin’ Hole”. And Grandma was easily scandalized when we were kids. She was a very conservative woman who loved Ronald Reagan and his politics most severely and thought that Richard Nixon was a leftist radical. She didn’t like for people to be naked, except for bath time, and maybe not even then. She is one of the main reasons, along with this painter whom she adored, that I came to learn later in life that “naked is funny”.http://www.freeplaypost.com/PaulDetlefsen_VintageArtPrint_A.htm
Grandma Beyer also seriously loved puzzles, and besides “Ideals” covers, Paul Detlefsen did a beaucoup of jigsaw puzzles. (Beaucoup means a lot in Texican, I tend to think in Iowegian and talk in Texican and completely forget about the need to translate for those people who don’t know those two foreign tongues) One of the puzzles we spent hours working on was “Horse and Buggy Days” that I pictured here. They were the kind of puzzle paintings where every boy was Tom Sawyer and every girl was Becky Thatcher. And there were a lot of them. Here is another;
Grandma had this in puzzle form also. We put the puzzle together, glued it to tag board, and framed it. It has hung on the wall in a Grandparent’s house, first Grandma Beyer’s and then Grandma Aldrich’s, since the early 1970’s. My own parents now live in Grandma Aldrich’s house, and that puzzle-painting may be hanging in an upstairs bedroom to this very day. Detlefsen is not known as a great artist. He was a humble painter who painted backdrops for films for over 20 years. In the 1950’s he switched gears and started doing lithographs that were turned into calendars, jigsaw puzzles, laminated table mats, playing cards, and reproductions you could buy in the Ben Franklin Dime Store in Belmond, Iowa and hang on your back porch at home. I believe I saw his paintings in all these forms in one place or another. According to Wikipedia (I know, research, right?) “In 1969, UPI estimated that his artwork had been seen by 80 per cent of all Americans.” That is pretty dang good for a humble painter, better numbers than Pablo Picasso ever saw. Let me share a few more of his works, and see if you recognize any of these;
Bobby brought the drowned body of Little Bob into the kitchen. He had carefully wrapped it in a rag that was in the clean pile where his dad kept the rags for working on the tractor.
“Oh, no! What happened?” Mom put her dish towel down on the edge of the kitchen sink.
“It’s Little Bob,” said Bobby.
“The turken with the black feathers on the top of his head?”
“Yeah, I found him in the horse trough. He was already drowned.”
“So, no mouth to mouth to save the stupid thing, huh?” said Dad from where he sat at the kitchen table reading the Mason City Globe Gazette from yesterday.
“Todd, don’t joke like that. It’s morbid.”
“I’m sorry, Sandy. I should be more respectful of the mutant turkey-chicken.”
At that moment, Grandpa Butch wandered into the kitchen from the den. “So, another chicken dreamed of being a penguin and drowned himself, huh?”
“Dad, don’t joke like that. It’s the turken we named after Bobby, Little Bob.”
“Oh, sorry, Bobby.”
Bobby smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. The sense of humor in this family was genetic. And probably a mutant gene at that. Bobby could grow up to be an X-man… Bad-Joker Boy, or something like that. Paralyzing criminals with stupid jokes.
“How did the stupid chicken come to be in the horse trough, do you think?” Grandpa Butch asked.
“Well, Horatio thinks it might be a rat that chased the stupid naked-necked chicken in there,” answered Bobby.
“Old Horatio talks now, does he?” asked Grandpa. Horatio, on hearing his name, padded over to Grandpa for a good scratching behind the ears. Grandpa had originally bought Horatio as a puppy almost fifteen years ago now.
“You mean he’s still talking,” said Dad.
Grandpa Butch laughed at that. He looked down at the old collie dog that he was scratching on. “So, you can talk now? Who’s a smart boy, then?”
“Bobby is the smart boy,” said Horatio. “He’s the only one in the family who knows I can talk.” Of course, no one but Bobby heard him say that. Everybody else heard something like, “HROWLWrrrrrUmmmph…” and then followed up by slobbering noises.
“Horatio and me will use Horatio’s detective skills to find and execute that murdering rat.”
“Horatio is a detective too, is he?”
“Sure, he is… Horatio T. Dogg, super sleuth!
“Wow. Last name and everything. What does the T. stand for?”
“It stands for the word THE. And Dogg is with two G’s at the end.”
“Well, isn’t that something?” Old Butch Niland smoothed down the hair on the back of Horatio’s neck. “But don’t be surprised if this old boy doesn’t have the get up and go it takes to track down and eat any old criminal rat. His best rat hunting days are in his past.”
“But he’s still a pretty good old boy, isn’t he?” reminded Dad.
“Being old means I am definitely not a boy!” said Horatio. Though nobody but Bobby heard him say it.
Well, the lab said it was not Covid. It was not even the flu. Apparently Number Two Son just had a very bad cold. And I am pretty sure I have only got what he has. Same symptoms, but started two days later. So, I don’t even have to worry about going in for a Covid test.
This post, it turns out, is number 3,002 on this blog. The milestone post is the second one from yesterday.
I am juggling three books at once. I am writing another novella, Horatio T. Dogg, Super Sleuth which I am now using for Tuesday posts. I am editing AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers, getting it ready for publication. And my main work in progress is He Rose on a Golden Wing, in which I am on rough draft chapter… er, Canto 6, though I’m not dead certain since I stopped numbering them and am simply citing classical music pieces to signal each new section of the story. The idea being that the reader should listen to that specific music while reading that section, just as I listened to it while writing the first draft.
That’s basically what all of life is… random silliness… God being Goofy… “Hyuck!”
But it is not really totally random. Rather, Goofy is off-kilter and meandering, but blessed with an overall pattern. And when he is a clock-cleaner and gets bonged on the noggin by a construction beam, he doesn’t step off the edge and fall to his death; he magically steps from suspended beam hanging from the construction crane to the next one and the next one hanging forever in mid-air.
We merely tumble endlessly through life as if it were a screwball slapstick comedy with moments of real grief and real pain and real love sandwiched in between the slices of your daily bread that you have probably prayed for… at least at some point in your life.
This illness that struck while wife and daughter were away had the side effect of preventing me from visiting the nudist park on Saturday where I had hoped to meet more nudists and do a bit of research for future nudist tales. So, I guess that was probably the reason God struck us with Apollo’s Arrow of Illness. The whims of Heaven are ever inscrutable. At least until I figure out how to responsibly “scrute.”
But however life proceeds from this particular place in time and space, it has turned out better than it might have otherwise. I am not saddened or forlorn due to this outcome.
Catch a Falling Star 