Yes, the title of this piece is about the two characters I have labored all day to depict over and over.
Using digital tools and a drawing app on my touchscreen phone allows me to redraw parts of the picture or pictures in many different ways. The drawing app allows you to fill in numerous details over and over with complex details like patterned clothes already composed to be painted into the proper spaces.
Here’s what it looked like early in the process. Yes, I didn’t finish it before saving it the first time.
Filling in some spaces, I used my fingers instead of the stylus. Finger painting, illustrated by my own hand I added on with my own fingers and then added details.
I should have done this one first and then dressed them after instead of doing it backward.
I think these two odd friends need to become a poem. I am old. I think in poetry far too often. It probably is a symptom of dementia.
I am, unfortunately, a dedicated conspiracy theorist. No, not the braying, unintelligent kind like Alex Jones who has an unhinged and hidden agenda. More the Indiana Jones kind, seeking the truth no matter where it leads, but always relying on research, science, and creative methods of re-framing the facts in order to reveal truths that other people don’t see even when the answers are right in front of them.
An example of this is my firm belief that everything we think we know about the man known as William Shakespeare is based on an ages-old deception and is basically an unrevealed lie.
Of course, I am not the only literature-obsessed kook who has ever taken up this notion of someone else having written the great works of Shakespeare. I share the opinion with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Walt Whitman, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, Actor Derek Jacobi, and the great Mark Twain (also not the writer’s real name) .
It is very possible the standard details of the life of William Shakespeare have been fudged just a bit… or maybe quite a lot.
The biggest question that I can see when looking at the man we pretend is the actual author of the plays, is why doesn’t this man look like an author? As brought out in the video, the only example we have of the author’s own handwriting are six signatures from legal documents, three of which come from his last will and testament. And if the name is really William Shakespeare, then the Stratford man misspelled his own name. He wrote it as Shakspere or Shaksper. And the handwriting is atrocious, nothing like the carefully practice signature I sometimes put on my own handwritten work. How does that happen? I have seen signatures by many other authors, both famous and obscure, and nowhere do I see such careless script as what is allegedly the signature of the greatest and most acclaimed writer who ever lived.
The accepted life story of Shaksper doesn’t bear up under scrutiny either. In spite of being a wealthy businessman and mayor, his father can be seen to be provably illiterate, relying on associates and underlings to write the paperwork involved in his business and mayoral rule. There is no proof in the form of enrollment lists or written record of Shaksper having ever enrolled at or attended the school that supposedly taught Stratfordian youths to read and write. His wife and children and grandchildren were also provably illiterate. What other writer has such a lack of effect on his own family?
And Shaksper’s will details everything he owned and left to others at his death. Nowhere is there a mention of plays, manuscripts, poetry, or even books. The greatest author who ever lived owned no books at all? He was provably wealthy enough to buy books, and public libraries did not exist back then. How then did he demonstrate such knowledge of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, as well as the functioning of royal courts both in England and abroad? How did he get so many details right about places in Italy and Europe which he had never visited or seen with his own eyes? Something is definitely missing.
It is true that everything mentioned is merely circumstantial evidence. And yet, if all circumstantial evidence leans in only one direction, then isn’t the conclusion probably sound?
Do you not see the lines of the mask in this portrait?
But if Shaksper, the Stratford man, did not write the masterful literary works he has been given credit for, then who did? And why did he let the credit go to someone else?
Ah, I am betting you are beginning to smell a multi-part essay brewing. I mean to tell you who I think is under the mask, who it was I believe actually wrote under the pen name of William Shakespeare.
Despite my skepticism about the accepted wisdom in regard to the historical William Shakespeare, I do deeply love the body of work that is Shakespeare. My most favorite play is The Tempest, the final play in the canon. I also have read and loved As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello,and King Lear. I know that is not all of the plays, but that is probably more than most people have read. And of course, as an English major in college, and later as a teacher, I have actually analyzed, compared, studied, and taught some of these plays. So, the Shakespeare I know is the Shakespeare of the writer’s own mind, his communicated wit and wisdom, imagination and intellect.
And I do not have any disdain or disrespect to give the Stratford guy. To say that, in the Elizabethan world, the actor son of a tradesman with only a grammar school education could not have been the mind behind the literary masterworks is foolish. The Stratford guy owned and operated the Globe theater at a time when “the play was the thing”. All of London society, rich and poor, gloried in the theater, and Shakespeare did for Elizabethan plays what Babe Ruth did for baseball. He was a good enough business man to make himself a decent fortune. Although, apparently, this world-shaking author didn’t spend any of his money on owning books, which in my experience is extremely rare among writers. His life, bound up in an urban existence that never traveled outside of the country also somehow produced great works that were set in places in Europe, especially Italy, that described those settings in accurate detail. As a working actor, he also apparently had the time to study law and somehow learn the inner workings of the royal courts of more than one country. And the plots were not original. He took existing stories that already were a part of European literature and lore and wove them into rich tapestries of human striving, laughable foibles, and a deep understanding of basic human character. But I do have doubts that the businessman and actor from Stratford was the real writer of the plays.
I have already told you that I don’t believe Sir Francis Bacon was secretly Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe wasn’t either. And I have unsuccessfully made a case against Shakspere, the Stratford guy. So who could possibly be the real William Shakespeare? Well, I am not going to be able to make a decent case for him in the 100 words that I have left to end this essay with. So there has to be more to come. (And stop screaming obscenities at the computer screen. I am going to reveal the name before the end of this essay. And I promise not to make my case for him in coming days too boring and horrible.) I have to show why I believe that the true heart of Shakespeare could only have beaten within the body of Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford.
(The graphic above should say “Empiricism,” not “Empirism.” Ir is a typo.
Yes, Sir Francis Bacon is at least as interesting and obscure as William Shakespeare. But let me assure you, I can confidently state, “Shakespeare is NOT Bacon!” He is not eggs either… or any other breakfast food. Sir Francis Bacon was the breakfast, the first meal in the great Elizabethan banquet of literature, poetry, and culture. And William Shakespeare is a more important main course, the royal dinner, as it were. But it has to be acknowledged that Bacon was essential to the very existence of William Shakespeare. Breakfast always comes before dinner.
In 1845 a female author by the name of Delia Bacon (nothing suspicious about that coincidence, by the way) put forward an idea that William Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by a group of men under the leadership of Sir Francis Bacon. She thought the group intended to inculcate into English culture an advanced system of politics and philosophy which they themselves could not take credit for publicly. She would later write a book in 1857 called The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded which advanced the notion that the plays were written for Baconian purposes beyond mere theatrical entertainment. Numerous people, including the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson supported her in her quest to find proof, sending her to England to research the crazy conspiracy theories she founded by noting ciphers in the plays, and in the essays of Bacon, that led her to believe all she had to do was dig up the gravestone of Shaksper in the chapel at Stratford to find written proof in Bacon’s own hand that he was, in fact, the author or primary motivator of the plays of William Shakespeare. She spent one cold and creepy night in the chapel, just her and her spade and her crow bar, along with the bones of the Stratford guy, trying to work up the courage to do a bit of grave-robbing… and failing. It is a good story, but very poor archaeology. She was denounced by the literary historians and establishment figures who supported the Stratford guy. They said her scholarship was sloppy, her cipher analysis goofy and unfounded, and her conclusions more questionable than a pig in theatrical make-up. (My words, not theirs. English critic George Henry Townsend was entirely too stuffy and boring to simply be quoted here.)
Now, I, of course, strongly disagree with the Bacon lady. As I said in the very title, “Shakespeare is NOT Bacon.” But I do think there was merit in sniffing out old Frankie’s scent and fingerprints on the whole Shakespeare/Shaksper thing. The Stratford guy was not Shakespeare either. When he died in 1616 there was no public outcry at the loss of England’s most popular poet and playwright. Even King James who was Shakespeare’s number one fan and constant audience member, didn’t mourn the passing of the actor/theater-owner/businessman from Stratford.
Francis Bacon, on the other hand, was a powerful intellect, educated in the ways of science, the law, and government in the Elizabethan age. Bacon gathered other men of powerful intellect and accomplishment at Gray’s Inn to hold debates about things philosophical and things scientifical. It is not unreasonable to imagine that the man who really wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare sat at that table and participated in those debates. And Sir Frankie had good reason to keep lots of this business a secret. There exists evidence that though he was apparently happily married to a fourteen-year-old girl, he did a little bit of swaying toward the other gender too, a thing not too popular with the average Anglican Englishman. He also dabbled a bit in the occult (think witches in Macbeth sort of thing). And his essays indicate a strong correlation to the philosophies and ideals of the German Rosicrucian Movement. In 1593 during a Roman Catholic plot against Queen Elizabeth, Frankie managed to take a position on the investigation that totally offended the old virgin queen. He was on the outs with Liz for the rest of her difficult and anger-management-challenged life. He did rise to prominence under her successor, James I, but never-the-less managed to die amidst total ruin and scandal. There is a lot in Frankie’s life to indicate that he had a direct influence on the content of Shakespeare’s plays. Some of the characters in the plays may actually be, at least in part, based on Frankie himself. But this guy never hung out with the Stratford guy that anyone knows of.
So, if Shakespeare is NOT Bacon, or eggs either… and the Stratford guy isn’t Shakespeare, then who is? Come on! You knew I had a lot more to say about this crazy conspiracy thing, right?
I am still at it with my little screen and big electric stylus.
I decided to take this sister-picture done more than a week ago and make them into cowgirls with a pet goat. You may have noticed that I gave the older sister a four-fingered hand.
This picture isn’t completely satisfactory either. The goat’s sideburns make it look like he has at least three ears.
Grumpy Girl in this picture had a headband turned into tattoos by my colorblind inability to tell tan from peach. I also left too many outlines visible because I was too lazy to erase each and fill in the adjacent colors.
I am happier with this portrait of Zendaya, even though I finally realized that no one recognized her because of the tan/peach colorblind problem.
One work of comic strip art stands alone as having earned the artist, Winsor McCay, a full-fledged exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Little Nemo in Slumberland is a one-of-a-kind achievement in fantasy art.
Winsor McCay lived from his birth in Michigan in 1869 to his finale in Brooklyn in 1934. In that time he created volumes full of his fine-art pages of full-page color newspaper cartoons, most in the four-color process.
The New Year’s page 1909
As a boy, he pursued art from very early on, before he was twenty creating paintings turned into advertising and circus posters. He spent his early manhood doing amazingly detailed half-page political cartoons built around the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, He then became a staff artist for the Cincinnati Times Star Newspaper, illustrating fires, accidents, meetings, and notable events. He worked in the newspaper business with American artists like Winslow Homer and Frederick Remington who also developed their art skills through newspaper illustration. He moved into newspaper comics with numerous series strips that included Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. And he followed that massive amount of work up by becoming the “Father of the Animated Cartoon” with Gertie the Dinosaur, with whom he toured the US giving public performances as illustrated in the silent film below;
The truly amazing thing about his great volume of work was the intricate detail of every single panel and page. It represents a fantastic amount of work hours poured into the creation of art with an intense love of drawing. You can see in the many pages of Little Nemo how great he was as a draftsman, doing architectural renderings that rivaled any gifted architect. His fantasy artwork rendered the totally unbelievable and the creatively absurd in ways that made them completely believable.
I bought my copy of Nostalgia Press’s Little Nemo collection in the middle 70’s and have studied it more than the Bible in the intervening years. Winsor McCay taught me many art tricks and design flourishes that I still copy and steal to this very day.
No amount of negative criticism could ever change my faith in the talents of McCay. But since I have never seen a harsh word written against him, I have to think that problem will never come up.
My only regret is that the wonders of Winsor McCay, being over a hundred years old, will not be appreciated by a more modern generation to whom these glorious cartoon artworks are not generally available.
This is the finger-painted scribble doodle I started this art project with. I routinely start a digital art piece in this way, making either a fast face-like form with a scribbled outline and an application of brush strokes of basic color patterns with my fingers on the touch screen of my phone or an outline done on the layer above a photograph that I fill with color before removing the photo from underneath.
Then I push and pull and erase and add with my electronic stylus to fill in the details. This picture of the face in progress reveals what often happens when you have an arthritic finger. I slipped in working on the teeth. With pen and ink and colored pencils, the drawing would be ruined at this point. But digitally I can easily fix it.
This is the fancy little device I bought on Amazon to use on a touchscreen phone. It is electronic and clickable.
Here’s what it looks like after fifteen minutes worth of fixing.
So, I made this into a science-fiction girl. I think it looks good for a scribble-doodle.
I was a boy back when the milk man still came around in his blue-and-white panel truck delivering bottles of milk with Elsie the Cow on them. I don’t remember clearly because I was only 4 years old back when I first became aware of being a boy in this world instead of being something else living somewhere else.
There were many things I didn’t know or understand back then. But one thing I did know, was that I loved Elsie the Cow. And why would a farm boy love a cartoon cow? There were many not-so-sensible reasons.
For one thing, Elsie the Cow reminded me of June Lockhart, Lassie’s mom and the mom from Lost in Space.
Lassie’s Mom, June Lockhart
It may be that June Lockhart’s eyes reminded me of Elsie’s eyes, being large, soul-full eyes with large black eye lashes. It may be that she starred in a TV commercial for Borden’s milk in which Elsie winked at me at the end of the commercial.
Or maybe it was because Elsie had calves and was a mom. And June Lockhart was Lassie’s mom and the mom of Will Robinson, so I associated both of them with my mom, and thus with each other.
Elsie gave you milk to drink and was always taking care of you in that way. Milk was good for you, after all. My own mom was a registered nurse. So they were alike in that way too.
And she was constantly defending you against the bulls in your life. She stood up to Elmer to protect her daughter more than once. Of course, her son was usually guilty of whatever he was accused of, but she still loved him and kept Elmer from making his “hamburger” threats a reality.
And you can see in numerous ad illustrations that Elsie’s family were basically nudists. Although she often wore an apron, she was bare otherwise. And though her daughter often wore skirts and her son wore shorts, Elmer was always naked. And that didn’t surprise me, because no cow I knew from the farm wore clothes either. From very early in my life I was always fascinated by nakedness, and I would’ve become a nudist as a youngster if it hadn’t been soundly discouraged by family and society in general.
Proof that Elsie’s family lived the nude life.
Puppets from a Borden’s commercial
So there are many reasons why I have always loved Elsie the Cow. And it all boils down to the love of drinking milk and that appealing cartoon character who constantly asked you to drink more.
So, I am obsessively thinking about the granddaughter I do not have and may never have. My child was lucky not to have the problem that cost a possible granddaughter at the wrong time. It happened, tragedy though it was before the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade and would’ve put another life in danger too. But life and the world we live in can be cruel. The consequence may well be no grandchild ever. That kind of problem is serious.
But here I have made another picture of Susu, the imaginary granddaughter I talk to constantly. She is drawn from a model on TikTok that I thought bore a resemblance to both of the parents that might have been. Fortunately, she posts lots of singing and dancing pictures on both TikTok and Instagram. This girl doesn’t know she’s been posing for me. But clearly, I cannot make portraits that look like the model anyway. Without help, you will never Identify who this girl really is. And suing me for using her as a model won’t make any money for anybody since I have none.
“But, Grandpa. I already gave you my permission.”
“Susu, you are not real and only live in my imagination.”
“Oh, but you are a very good Grandpa and I love you.”
“Well, I love you too. Even though I know you are not real.”
Let’s begin with some stupid advice. I don’t have time to write a lot today because the Princess is ill and must go see the doctor in Plano. So the advice is; Set aside time for writing and always allow plenty of time for it. You will probably notice already that I am giving you advice that I am not taking myself this morning. So don’t follow that advice. It is stupid advice. I have given it to creative writing classes for years and thought I meant it. But looking back on real life, I realize, it has never been true for me. My best ideas, my best writing, always seem to come in the middle of the pressure-cooker of daily struggle and strife. I have battled serious illness for most of my adult life. I have the luck of a man who tried to avoid letting a black cat cross his path by crashing his bicycle at the top of a hill covered in clover with only three leaves each and then rolling down the hill, under a ladder, and crashing into a doorpost which knocks the horseshoe off the top. The horseshoe lands on my stupid head with the “U” facing downward so the luck all drains out. Bad things happen to me all the time. But it makes for good writing. Tell me you didn’t at least smile at the picture I just painted in your mind. You might’ve even been unable to suppress a chuckle. I am under time pressure and misfortune pressure and the need to rearrange my entire daily schedule. So it is the perfect time to write.
This essay, however, is about bad advice. And I am a perfect person to rely on as a resource for bad advice. I am full of it. Of course, I mean I am full of bad advice, not that other thing we think of when someone tells me I am “Full of it!” So here’s another bit of writing advice that is probably completely wrong and a bad idea to take without a grain of salt, or at least a doctor’s prescription. You should stop bird-walking in your essay and get to the damn point!
I know a lot about the subject of depression. When I was a teenager, I came very close to suicide. I experienced tidal waves of self-loathing and black-enveloping blankets of depression for reasons that I didn’t understand until I realized later in life that it all came from being a child-victim of sexual assault. Somehow I muddled through and managed to self-medicate with journal writing and fantasy-fixations, thus avoiding a potentially serious alcohol or drug problem. This is connected to my main idea, despite the fact that I am obviously not following the no bird-walking advice. You see, with depression, Bad advice can kill you. Seriously, people want to tell you to just, “Get over it! Stop moping about and get on with life. It isn’t real. You are just being lazy.”
I have been on the inside of depression and I know for a fact that not taking it seriously can be deadly. In fact, I have faced suicidal depression not only in myself, but in several former students and even my own children. I have spent time in emergency rooms, mental hospitals, and therapists offices when I wasn’t myself the depression sufferer. One of my high school classmates and one of my former students lost their battles and now are no longer among the living. (Sorry, have to take a moment for tears again.) But I learned how to help a depression sufferer. You have to talk to them and make them listen at least to the part where you say, “I have been through this myself. Don’t give in to it. You can survive if you fight back. And whatever you have to do, I will be right here for you. You can talk to me about anything. I will listen. And I won’t try to give you any advice.” Of course, after you say that to them, you do not leave them alone. You stay by them and protect them from themselves, or make sure somebody that will do the same for them stays with them. So far, that last bit of advice has worked for me. But the fight can be life-long. And it is a critical battle.
So taking advice from others is always an adventure. Red pill? Green pill? Poison pill? Which will you take? I can’t decide for you. Any advice I give you would probably just be stupid advice. You have to weigh the evidence and decide for yourself. What does this stupid essay even mean? Isn’t it just a pile of stupid advice? A concluding paragraph should tell you the answer if it can. But, I fear, there is no answer this time.
Catch a Falling Star 
Winsor McCay
One work of comic strip art stands alone as having earned the artist, Winsor McCay, a full-fledged exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Little Nemo in Slumberland is a one-of-a-kind achievement in fantasy art.
Winsor McCay lived from his birth in Michigan in 1869 to his finale in Brooklyn in 1934. In that time he created volumes full of his fine-art pages of full-page color newspaper cartoons, most in the four-color process.
As a boy, he pursued art from very early on, before he was twenty creating paintings turned into advertising and circus posters. He spent his early manhood doing amazingly detailed half-page political cartoons built around the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, He then became a staff artist for the Cincinnati Times Star Newspaper, illustrating fires, accidents, meetings, and notable events. He worked in the newspaper business with American artists like Winslow Homer and Frederick Remington who also developed their art skills through newspaper illustration. He moved into newspaper comics with numerous series strips that included Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. And he followed that massive amount of work up by becoming the “Father of the Animated Cartoon” with Gertie the Dinosaur, with whom he toured the US giving public performances as illustrated in the silent film below;
The truly amazing thing about his great volume of work was the intricate detail of every single panel and page. It represents a fantastic amount of work hours poured into the creation of art with an intense love of drawing. You can see in the many pages of Little Nemo how great he was as a draftsman, doing architectural renderings that rivaled any gifted architect. His fantasy artwork rendered the totally unbelievable and the creatively absurd in ways that made them completely believable.
I bought my copy of Nostalgia Press’s Little Nemo collection in the middle 70’s and have studied it more than the Bible in the intervening years. Winsor McCay taught me many art tricks and design flourishes that I still copy and steal to this very day.
No amount of negative criticism could ever change my faith in the talents of McCay. But since I have never seen a harsh word written against him, I have to think that problem will never come up.
My only regret is that the wonders of Winsor McCay, being over a hundred years old, will not be appreciated by a more modern generation to whom these glorious cartoon artworks are not generally available.
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Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, artwork, book review, cartoon review, cartoons, comic strips, commentary
Tagged as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay