Tag Archives: artwork

August 26, 2016 · 5:54 pm

Paffoonies Still Working

This is actually a writer’s literary site meant to promote novels, and one day possibly earn money from writing instead of simply filling my closets with prose and old manuscripts (along with the wife’s many, many shoes).  But since I am also an amateur artist of the irradiated subspecies known as “cartoonist”, I also have many visuals to share.  I think in pictures as often as I think in words.  So one of the features of this blog is that I tag artwork with a made-up word I coined myself.  It allows the curious (or those immune to nightmares) to get an almost instant idea of how afflicted I am with cartoon-ism.

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Yes, I tested it out.  If you do a picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” you get a free gallery of my artwork, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  You might even find my picture of Clint Eastwood… but beware, he shoots first if you try to “make his day”.  If you are brave… or foolish enough to try it, it should come up something like this;

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So, there you have it.  A cheap and easy 200-word post from a bad idea that’s still out there working.

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August 24, 2016 · 3:48 pm

The Many People That Are Me

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Yes, I am a wizard.  That is a complicated thing to say.  It is complicated because a wizard has to be a wise man, and wisdom has to begin with the idea that you know practically nothing about anything… but you can find out.  So one version of me has to be my wizard D&D character, the wizard Eli Tragedy.  This is because I know practically nothing about anything… but I am willing to not be stupid and look stuff up before I tell you anything and pretend it is a wise thing to say.

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I have been thinking about who I am because I want to re-do my About the Author page.   And that leads to the difficulty of explaining who Mickey actually is.  You see, I am actually lots of different people in my head.  Mickey is the cartoonist, the humorist, the clown.  He is not the every-day me.  He is the goofy and foofy and lovey-to-drawie part of me.  And yes, I know some of those are not real words.  Mickey is like that.  He speaks Mickian Goof Speak.  I have no control over that part of him.  I am not certain where this Mickey-part of my soul originated, but it may be the result of too much TV when I was a kid.

And of course there is the Teacher-Me, Reluctant Rabbit, the person who stood in front of groups of twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds for three decades and tap-danced, told stories, stood on my head, and begged them to internalize at least a lesson or two of what I tried to teach them.

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Teacher

And the wizard part of me was just barely wise enough to realize that a teacher can open doors, but you can’t shove a kid through.  They have to take the critical learning step themselves.  They have to want to learn something.  But even though they actually do the learning themselves, they will come back to me in later years saying, “Oh, thank you, you taught me so much!” when really all I did was be a guide on the side and stayed out of their way.

And, of course, there is the Cowboy Me.  I live in Texas.  I was a Belmond Bronco in high school, but I became a Cotulla Cowboy for 24 years of my teaching career.  I ended up as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  I have worn the hat a lot in my life, being as much of a straight shooter as the Shakiest Gun In The West can be, always trying to shoot the six-guns out of the bad guy’s hands rather than shoot people.

So how do I explain a thing like that?  Probably the way I just did it (ironically).  I should use Paffoonies I have created over time and waffle about stupid stuff that might make people laugh when they realize how self-contradictory it is.  And I should say it like I mean it… because I probably do.

 

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August 23, 2016 · 2:20 pm

Stardusters… Canto 9

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Canto Nine – Aboard Wing One Under the Cloud Cover

“What do we know about the place below us?” asked Biznap.

“The continent is called as a whole Pincara Bolo,” said Starbright, reading from her monitor.  “In Galactic English that means the deadly wastelands.  According to the Pathfinder’s Geophysical Guidebook it is one of the most densely populated places on this high-population world.  The city directly below us is the regional capitol known as Kabiss Pincaralay, the Ruined Palaces.”

“Why do they call it an awful name like that?” asked Farbick.

“If they are like us, they call it that because they were too stupid to call it by a better name,” answered Starbright.  “The Guidebook says they are a very warlike people and their mega-structures in this city have had to be rebuilt and repaired more times than anyone could keep track of.”

A break in the orange-brown cloud-cover revealed the city beneath them.  It was an endless maze of gutted structures, craters, and smoldering ruins.  There really didn’t seem to be a habitable structure anywhere.

“Life signs?” questioned Biznap.

“Scanners indicate there are only a scarce few small life-forms.  None seem to be any larger than a Skoog Monkey,” said one of the two crewman whose names Biznap had not bothered to learn.    Skoog Monkeys were small furry primates from the planet Misko Skoogalia, a part of the Telleron Empire that had been easily colonized because it had no intelligent creatures on it.  Skoog Monkeys were green-furred and just smart enough to make pleasant pet animals.  They also came in handy as a quick snack on long journeys.

“Odd,” said Biznap.  “One would expect a capitol city with so many buildings to be better inhabited than that.  Surely they are masking their presence from our scanners, somehow.”

“Really, I doubt that,” said the stupid cadet.  “This planet is listed as Tech Level Nine just like the planet Earth.  It is a society just beginning to discover the capability of space travel.  We are Tech Level Fourteen, and should be invisible to their primitive detection devices.  They can’t have developed much beyond primitive sonar and radar capability.”

“What?”

“Sound waves and radio waves bounced off objects for the purposes of detection,” supplied Starbright to the Commander.

“There!  Straight ahead!” said Farbick.  “I see a big, intact, domed structure with what appear to be electric lights.  That has to mean some kind of people.”

Biznap looked and saw it too.  It was an impressively large structure, larger than things like football stadiums back on Earth.  Usually Tellerons tried to avoid such things as population centers, but if they had any hope of finding a population at all, it would probably be there.

“Okay,” said Biznap, “Land near there.  We have to risk contact sooner or later.  It might as well be here and now.”

*****

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August 11, 2016 · 6:33 pm

Drawing Nude

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God didn’t really want me to write this post.  How do I know this?  Well, my computer is old and quirky (sorta like me) and it constantly spits up and farts when it is most inconvenient.  I had half of this post already written when it decided to release some toxic venom.  By its own volition it suddenly highlighted and erased the whole post except for the title and a random letter “r”.  And WordPress automatically and supposedly helpfully did its little “save the changes immediately” thing.  The whole post was gone in a flash.

Why did God do this?  Well, this isn’t really a “How to Draw Nude Figures” post as it may at first appear.  It is, in fact another in a series of “Why I Am An Artist And Not A Pervert” posts that attempt to justify why a potential “dirty old man” like me spends so much time drawing pictures of naked girls.

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My latest art project is a picture of Brekka, the Telleron tadpole, completely nude.

I am currently drawing the illustration above for my novel Stardusters and Space Lizards.  It shows the scene where Brekka, admittedly a female, although not a human female, has just been accidentally swallowed and then regurgitated by Lester, her friend who is a man-eating plant from an alien solar system.  So excuse number one would have to be, “She’s naked because it fits the story.”  I will stand by that one for matters of illustration.  And you will note, there isn’t anything even remotely sexual about the situation… er, I think I would rather not be subjected to Freudian analysis on that one.

Here are three previously posted nude drawings that I used for previous attempts to corrupt the minds of readers and viewers.  I got a lot of views for these posts, and may at least partially benefit from using the “naked” and “nude” tags on those posts.  Illegitimate excuse number two, then is, “drawing and posting nudes increases the number of people who pay attention to my work.”   My most popular blog post this year has been Be Naked More in which I rationalize my interest in naturism and walking around naked, even though I am certainly far from brave enough to do so in public.

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And I further claim that it is not a sexual thing to draw someone naked.  One of the fundamental truths about art is that every person I draw or paint or write about in a novel is really me.  The only person who stands revealed by the work of art is me, and it is a portrait of what is inside my head.  Of the five nudes in this post, only one of them was not drawn from a real life model.  (And no, I am not counting the butterfly, or the Gryphon, or Lester as nudes… so stop thinking I’m just playing word games.)  (Lester isn’t even a real thing… man-eating plants don’t exist… so stop it!)  But none of the subjects were ever uncomfortable about posing for me.  Of course now that I have suggested that lame excuse number three is, “All nudes are really me.”  I probably have you thinking about the real meaning of the title of this post.  I have psoriasis, I do tend to feel more comfortable with no clothes on, and do tend to write and draw when I am sitting on my sickbed naked.  But I am wearing clothes at the moment.  Considering the content of this post, anything else would just be creepy.  So, stop trying to picture me all hairy, fat, scabby and nude.  After all, you chose to look at and read this thing.  Maybe I’m not the one who needs to explain why I am an artist and not a pervert.

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August 7, 2016 · 3:29 pm

Growing the Gallery

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My bedroom walls serve as a gallery of my Paffooney artwork.

I have been collecting pieces of colored-pencil Paffoonery for a very long time now.  I am a life-long scribbler and doodler.  You are bound to build up an ocean of old drawings that you could easily drown in if you live that way long enough.  I recently found a few more in an old scrapbook I had squirreled away in the library between cartoon books.

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These are all drawings I did for my three kids when they were little.  I suppose that gives them sentimental value.  They are all imitations of copyrighted characters.  But I am not selling them.  I haven’t actually stolen anybody’s intellectual property yet.  But it makes a good filler post as I continue to rest and work on other things.

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August 6, 2016 · 6:34 pm

Tim Burton Movies

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Last night the Princess and I went to see Alice, Through the Looking Glass, the latest Tim Burton movie.  Of course we loved it.  Burton is one of the most interesting story-tellers of our time.  Did you know he is two years younger than me?  And also, like me, he began as a cartoonist and is totally dedicated to the idea that every artist is a surrealist and must exaggerate, elucidate, equivocate, and numerous other things that start with the letter “e” and end with the suffix “ate” simply because that’s how surrealism starts.  You notice a little bit of weirdness in real life and blow it all out of proportion with lies and coloring of meaning and relentless “what-iffing?”  If you don’t see surrealism in those last two sentences of purple paisley prose… then maybe you can see it visually in Burton’s many masterpieces.

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Tim Burton began his legacy as an apprentice Disney animator specializing in stop-motion animation.  But he was just another creative nobody like me until the launch of his small-budget monster hit, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Of course, any time you can pull in huge profits for little investments, you will have Hollywood executives ramming the heads of their unpaid interns like battering rams against your door so they can get in and throw money at you.

Hence, Batman.

 

Batman was the first time I actually took notice of Tim.  And not just as a director of a film… eventually two films.  He was gifted at assembling a cast.  And this would work to his advantage as several singular talents attached themselves to him and worked in his movie projects repeatedly.

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And his repeated collaboration with Danny Elfman and his music was easily as great a master-stroke of genius as John Williams with Spielberg and Lucas.

He has repeatedly used his movies to describe and rewrite his own life story as a misunderstood genius flubbing horribly in the quest to fit in with a world full of “regular people”.

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Poster for the film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (directed by Tim Burton), 1990. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

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His sense of humor, of course, is distinctly and colorfully bizarre.

Dark Shadows

DSTF-0046r JOHNNY DEPP as Barnabas Collins in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ “DARK SHADOWS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

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Burton is, just like me, a child of the 70’s.  He references things like the old gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, that were a part of his impressionable youth just as they were mine.  He picks stories about things he truly cares about, and that is also just like me.

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So, in a rather bizarre coincidence that is entirely appropriate to surrealists, I love any Tim Burton movie simply because it is a Tim Burton movie.  He is probably me in an alternate dimension.  And as such, I already know I will love his next movie, whatever the heck it is.

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August 4, 2016 · 4:14 pm

Truthfully…

Truthfully… for a fiction writer, a humorist, a former school teacher of junior-high-aged kids, telling the truth is hard.  But in this post I intend to try it, and I will see if I can stand the castor-oil flavor of it on my tongue.

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  • The simple truth is, I rarely tell the unvarnished truth.  And I firmly believe I am not alone in this.
  • Yesterday I battled pirates.  (While this is not literally true, it is metaphorically true.)  They were the scurvy scum o’ the Bank-o’-Merricka Pirates who are suing me for over ten thousand dollars despite my efforts of the last two years to settle 40 thousand dollars worth of credit card debt.
  • I hired a lawyer, but in spite of what he told me, I expect to lose the lawsuit and be wiped out financially.  I also believe Donald Trump will win as President.
  • I am a pessimist.  And it helps me through life.  I am always prepared for the worst, and I can only be surprised by happy and pleasant surprises.
  • My son in the Marines has developed an interest in survivalist gear and chaos-contingency plans.  We are now apparently preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse.
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  • I like to draw nudes.  I have drawn them from real-life models who were paid for their participation.  But no bad things happened.  It was all done with professional integrity even though I am an amateur artist.  Chaperones were a part of every session.
  • In high school I identified as a Republican like my father.  In college I became a Democrat (Thanks, Richard Nixon) and voted for Jimmy Carter.  I argued with my father for eight years of Ronald Reagan and four years of George H.W. Bush.
  • My father has now voted for Barack Obama twice and will vote for Hillary this fall if he is still able.  We spent most of our conversations this summer exchanging “Can you believe its?” about Donald Trump.
  • Blue Dawn
  • I have been collecting pictures of sunrises for three years now.  I stole the idea from my childhood friend who now lives in Florida and takes beautiful ocean sunrise pictures over the Atlantic.  But I do it because I know I don’t have many more sunrises to go.  I have six incurable diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, and COPD.  I could go “BOOM! …dead” at any given moment.  I believe in savoring it while I have it.
  • I was sexually assaulted when I was ten years old.  I can only tell you this particular truth because the man who assaulted me and inflicted physical and emotional pain on me is now dead.  It is liberating to be able to say that.  But I regret forty years’ worth of treating it is a terrible secret that I could never tell anyone.
  • Telling that last truth made me cry.  Now you know why telling the truth is not easy.

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  • I really do love and admire all things having to do with Disney.  And when I was young, I really did want to find a picture of Annette naked.  There was no internet back then.  That quest helped me learn to draw the human form.  I know how bad that sounds… but, hey, I was a normal boy in many ways.  And I don’t draw her naked any more.
  • Finally, I have to say… in all honesty… I don’t know for sure that everything I have told you today is absolutely true.  Truth is a perception, even an opinion.  And I may be wrong about the facts as I know them.  The human mind works in mysterious ways.  I sometimes think I may simply be bedbug crazy.
  • (P.S.) Bedbugs are insects with very limited intelligence.  They cannot, in fact, be crazy or insane.  Their little brains are not complicated enough for that.  But it is a metaphor, and metaphors can be more truthful than literal statements.

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July 31, 2016 · 3:24 pm

What Do Martians Look Like?

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As Catch a Falling Star was a science-fictiony sort of comedy, one of the questions that I have pursued in internet research is the one I have presented here in the title of this picture-and-Paffooney-filled post.  Seriously, the image search of Google’s answer to that question is enough to make you snort milk through the old nostrils as you sort through them while stupidly drinking a glass of milk.  The milky nose-snorts are the reason I have not sited picture sources on this post.  Cleaning the computer screen took too long.  I have merely randomly snatched and pirated pictures.  The only picture of a Martian presented here created by me are these two;

I admit to being surprised by my actual research into the whole question of whether or not we have ever been visited by intelligent life from the stars beyond the sky.  While I have not found proof that aliens exist, I have discovered there is actual proof that the government, and NASA in particular, have covered something up.  And it goes beyond Area 51 defense research.  But now that I have got the attention of the NSA and the Men in Black, this post is only filled with a collage of the unreal, made-up, and mostly silly.

Malevolent Martians;

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Martians Who Make the Mistake of Liking Us;

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Inexplicably Goofy Martians;

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Cartoon alien rendered on white background. 3D model licensed from DAZ3D.

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Probably the only REAL Martians… from the future;

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July 30, 2016 · 12:29 pm

Islands of Identity

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Who am I?

Why do I do the things that I do?

No man is an island.  John Donne the English poet stated that.  And Ernest Hemingway quoted it… and wove it into his stories as a major theme… and proceeded to try to disprove it.  We need other people.  I married an island girl from the island of Luzon in the Philippines.  She may have actually needed me too, though she will never admit it.

Gilligans Island

When I was a young junior high school teacher in the early eighties, they called me Mr. Gilligan.  My classroom was known as Gilligan’s Island.  This came about because a goofball student in the very first class on the very first day said, “You look like Gilligan’s Island!”  By which he meant I reminded him of Bob Denver, the actor that played Gilligan.  But as he said it, he was actually accusing me of being an island.  And no man is an island.  Thank you, Fabian, you were sorta dumb, but I loved you for it.

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You see, being Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island was not a bad thing to be.  It was who I was as a teacher.  Nerdy, awkward, telling stories about when I was young, and my doofy friends like Skinny Mulligan.  Being a teacher gave me an identity.  And Gilligan was stranded on the Island with two beautiful single women, Mary Ann and Ginger.  Not a bad thing to be.  And I loved teaching and telling stories to kids who would later be the doofy students in new stories.

But we go through life searching for who we are and why we are here.  Now that I am retired, and no longer a teacher… who am I now?  We never really find the answer.  Answers change over time.  And so do I.

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July 23, 2016 · 2:18 pm

Doodle Burger

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Recently burger-I have been binging on drawing doodle-burgers.  Burger-I know that sounds a little bit off, but that is because it was written in Burger-burger-Speak-burger .  It-burger is easy to translate.  Burger-I have merely added the word-burger “burger”-burger to every noun-burger and pronoun-burger as either a suffix-burger or a burger-prefix.  So enjoy my recent burger-doodles and ignore my burger-burger prose-burger.

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This burger-doodle was drawn in the car-burger as burger-I have recently been visiting burger-family and have not had to do all my own driving-burger.  Burger-I drew it with pencil-burger and later went over it-burger with pencil-burger.  It-burger was inspired by a burger-guy that burger-I happened to see walking by in Belmond-burger.  It-burger is not a portrait-burger, but it-burger probably accurately reflects his inner-burger-burger-self.  Burger-Iowans are like that-burger.

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The burger-girl being hit on with flower-burgers by a burger-bunny-boy-burger was also drawn in the car-burger.  The longer burger-I look at it-burger, the more burger-I realize what a creepy cartoon-burger it-burger really is.

Burger-burger-Speak-burger is annoyingly hard to do.  And burger-I doubt that it-burger will ever be a commonly spoken language-burger.  But some fool-burgers taught themselves to speak Klingon-burger, didn’t burger-they?

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