Tag Archives: artwork

July 24, 2015 · 1:36 pm

How to Be a Farm Boy Without Really Trying (or Wanting To)

Farmgirl is adapted from a picture borrowed from the Belmond Area Arts Council.

Farmgirl is adapted from a picture borrowed from the Belmond Area Arts Council.

I was born in Mason City, Iowa (the original River City of Meredith Wilson’s Broadway musical, the Music Man).  But my parents didn’t hold with no big-city Ioway sort of life, so we eventually moved to my mother’s home town, Rowan, Iowa.  It was roughly about 275 people (if you count the squirrels… which a lot of the townsfolk were… qualified squirrels).  My two maternal uncles and my grand parents were busy maintaining the family farm there, and though I lived in town because Dad was an accountant for a seed corn company instead of the farmer he grew up as… I got more than my fair share of farming-type opportunity.  You know the stuff… shoveling pig poo… cow poo too…   I got to help feed the chickens (and get chased by roosters, and get pecked by hens when we checked their nests for eggs, and watch the rooster rodeos as revenge for all the chasings… because roosters don’t lay eggs and the only thing they are really good for in an egg farming setting is lopping their heads off, and watching them flop around like rodeo bulls with no heads for fifteen minutes until they finally figured out they were dead, then plucking ’em and watching Grandma Aldrich cook ’em).  I got to drive a tractor, although they didn’t trust me to do more than the simplest of tractor-driving jobs like pulling the hay rake.  I got to shovel chicken poo out of the hen house and out of the brooder house.  (Notice how a lot of the world of the lowly farm boy centers somehow on poo?)  It was a rustic rural life reminiscent of Norman Rockwell… although he depicted mostly town life and not as much of the fields and animal pens (and poo) that are central to Iowegian farm culture.

Brent Clarke is a me character in my stories... but also one of my farm boy friends.

Brent Clarke is a me character in my stories… but also one of my farm boy friends.

Growing up a farm boy has a few advantages to go along with the many drawbacks.  First off, you learn young where babies come from.  Piglets and calves and puppies and kittens are not born in secret.  And it doesn’t take much spying out on farm life to learn how those baby animals are made either.  There is ample opportunity to learn what you are not supposed to learn at a young age from farm girls too… but we were gentlemen… and extremely embarrassed by the fact that baby people are made in the same grisly, awful way that baby animals are out in the barn.

You also learn to be somewhat self-sufficient.  I learned how to tend a garden.  I learned how to fix a flat.  I learned how to repair a roof and build a rabbit pen.  Hammer, pliers, screwdriver, saw… I learned to use them all and make stuff.  Crude stuff, sure… smashed-finger-with-hammer-stuff too.  I made a bookshelf in shop class that had a bit of Michael blood built into it.  But I learned things that boys should know, and really don’t any more.

So, I guess I am claiming that because I am an Iowa boy… a farm boy… and despite my many short-comings and short-changings my life has been good and worthwhile… being a farm boy is good.  And one of the greatest shames of the modern world is this… there just aren’t many farm boys any more.

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July 23, 2015 · 10:29 pm

Coloring Part 3 (Mickey Watches TV and Colors)

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So, here is what it looks like now after watching The West Wing.  I love that show.  They do such a wonderful job of weaving story, theme, and relevant political issues together into a compelling series.  It is like the very best and most poetic of the novel series.  I have read two books of John Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga, and I think the TV show is better.  Of course, I realize the novels are quite old and fusty in temperment.

I now have all three main characters colored in.  Dr. Elefun on the left in his pinstripe shirt, Astro in the middle, and Mr. Pompous on the right in the back seat.  I have most of the cockpit of the flying car done, and must start pondering how to make it fly in this drawing.  I put a piece of cardboard under the drawing and that gives it a funky ribbed effect with the colored pencil rubbed over large areas.  I am enjoying this homemade coloring-book art project.  I have also added 173 words.

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July 22, 2015 · 3:20 pm

Coloring

This post is about Mickey and his crayons.  Little Mickey always loved to color.  He always had a cigar box full of Crayola crayons that he treasured and kept where he could always reach them whenever the art urge struck.  (Well, except for that one time on the drive home from Mason City, Iowa when he left them in the back window of the 1960 Ford Fairlane and the sunshine melted the entire box… tears there for about a week.)

coloring page

But Mickey has grown up and graduated to colored pencils.  Radical change, huh?  The need to color stuff is still there.  So, what do I do about it now that Mickey is a rational, responsible adult?  Well, you know there is a surge in the publishing industry of adult coloring books.  I think that means that Mickey is not alone in the fevered fetish to put crayons… er… colored pencils… er, some kind of color to black and white pictures with plenty of white space to fill in.  This is something I do while watching television.  Other adults do it during meetings, at school functions… during sex…  It is something that occupies your hands and a tiny portion of your brain and fills in all the blank spaces with color.  And Mickey has the added advantage of not having to buy adult coloring books because he can make his own black and white pictures to color.

So, the crayons are out… er, the colored pencils, anyway.  Mickey has this new picture he drew that honors his childhood cartoon hero, Astroboy.  He is going to fill it in with colors and patterns and two-or-three color blends and have a whee of a time while watching Supernatural or The West Wing or Dr. Who on Netflix.  It is a hoot.

And you may be wondering why the narrator of this silly Paffooney post always refers to himself in the third person as Mickey when talking about his art?  Well, no one actually calls me Mickey in real life.  Mickey is the cartoon character who lives within me and controls the part of my brain and personality that paffoonies out all kinds of art.  It is not complicated.  Mickey is definitely me.  But not everything I am is Mickey.  Mickey will always be that little boy with the cigar box of crayons coloring an original picture of lions eating that bully in third grade who called him a sissy for liking coloring books.

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July 21, 2015 · 3:15 pm

The Unique Joy of Having Redneck Friends

redneck friends

Yes, I live in Texas… And yes, I know a redneck or two… or 600.  But it is a unique joy that almost has to be shared to be believed.  They do not think like I do.  To them, I am just a commie, liberal, tree-huggin’ atheist with very bad hippie-hair.  But not all of them are automatically unkind to me for who I am… in fact, some of them are my friends.

Now, I have to say that, being a Texan is not an advantage for making friends with rednecks.  The home-grown brand of Texas Mexican-hating, gun-loving redneck are suspicious of me because I was a gol’ dang Texas edjumacator for so many years.  You gotta be suspicious of anybody who teaches, cuz they want to make our children smarter than us.  That’s a gol’ dang liberal trick from way-back-when.  Who knows what kind of communist liberal ideas a communist liberal college edjumacated idiot wants to plant in the heads of our kids?  Oh, and people who are smarter than us are all idiots, because they have all them new-fangled ideas and facts and some-such, but we got common sense.  That makes us better’n them no matter how gol’ dang smart they are… gol’ dang ’em!  (I can’t even write these words without hearing that South-Texas Winchuk-family-from-the-Brush-Country accent in my head.)  Texas rednecks are hard to warm up to unless they’ve already reached the stage of wanting to grill your ass on the Winchuk family barbecue pit.  Then it is entirely the wrong part of you that gets warmed up because they don’t accept that the word “ass” is the Biblical word for donkey.

The majority of my redneck friends are actually from Iowa.  They are the people that I grew up with who knew me as a boy.  They know I am intelligent all the way to insane levels of intelligence.  And while they also believe their common sense trumps my intelligence, they have a soft spot in their hearts for the old egghead Superchicken they used to know in high school.  They mistakenly believe I am still a Republican by nature and probably support Ted Cruz for President, because he seems like a good Christian conservative fellow.  They argue with me about why they have a right to keep their guns and refuse all background checks or gun registration or licensing of guns because, sure you have to have a license to drive a car and get married because those are seriously important and potentially dangerous things, but we are talking about guns here.  They argue about why I should not be offended by their Confederate flags and why I really ought to listen to Fox News because they don’t lie to you like the rest of the liberal media.  And how did they get to be so sunburned on their backs of their necks and all over their political ideologies?  There was a time I voted for Charles Grassley.  But Republican Iowa… the Iowa of Republican Governor Robert Ray in the 70’s and President Eisenhower supporters in the 50’s… has changed right along with the entire Republican party.  They are now goose-stepping along to the conservative beat of drums worthy of Hitler and Goebbels politically.  But they don’t identify with fascism.  They believe conservative means good and liberal means bad… so Hitler was a liberal, right?  They vote in a way that allows racist-fascists like Iowa Congressman Steve King to goosestep all around the country saying ignorant and destructive things, and think that General Eisenhower wouldn’t shoot King as if the Iowa Congressman were one of the enemy were he to hear some of King’s rants in favor of the military industrial complex that Ike himself warned us against.  You can’t convince them that they’re wrong.  They are louder than you, and that makes them right.  But I love them.  I grew up with them.  And I know they are too Iowa-stubborn to ever change their Iowegian minds in a direction that might actually make their lives better.  So bless them and take care of them for me, Lord, because they have common sense… which makes them better than me.

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June 11, 2015 · 2:38 pm

Where-in Lies the Funny?

The author without his make-up and after imbibing extra caffeine.

The author without his make-up and after imbibing extra caffeine.

I am attempting to be a humor writer.  There’s a statement that calls for more than a little rationalization.  Why would anyone want to be funny?  Especially why would a manic-depressive sick-old former school teacher want to be funny and write books for young people that tackle subjects like suicide, lying, nudity, sex, trans-genderism, death, suffering, religion, alien invasions, and getting old?  (Well, okay, getting old is inherently funny… especially the noises you unintentionally make from orifices and joints whenever you try to sit, move, lift, eat, or breathe.)  I ask myself this question only because I need to get to 500 words and stretch out the hoopti-doo to cover up the fact that I already know the answer and it is short and simple.  Joking about the things that tear your life apart is the only way to handle things and not become a serial killer.  (Make that cereal killer, especially Kellogg’s cereal of any and every description.  I am a very loving and accepting fool at heart and could never kill even one person… probably even in self-defense.)  I recently took a Who-do-you-write-like test that I found on another blog at All Things Chronic.  Here is the link; https://painkills2.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/who-do-you-write-like/

That silly little analyzer took a bit of my purple paisley prose and churned out a horror-writer answer, H.P. Lovecraft.  The Lord of the Old Mad Gods and Moonbeasts is a particular favorite of mine, one of several writers whose novels I have read everything I can get my hands on.  I still sleep with the lights on at night because of The Dunwich Horror, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.  I am mad with admiration for his allusions to gibbering sounds and unholy terrors that taint and transfix our lives with fear to the very marrow of the bones.  I have to admit, I like the idea of being compared to him, in spite of the fact that he tries to inspire fear and madness, while I aim for goofiness and gaiety.   It is a delicious irony to try always to be Mark-Twain funny while writing with a horror writer’s convoluted and dictionary-intensive style.

And don’t get the idea from my mention of him in this self-reflecting ramble through jumbled ideas that I really believe I am as funny as Mark Twain.  I am not deluded or mentally ill… well, not deluded, anyway.  I am still learning to make people laugh with words.  And I don’t mean to be mean about it.  I don’t do George Carlin F**k-the-world-style humor.  I don’t even do Don Rickles-style insults.  I am more in favor of gentle humor.  I am not looking to call anybody names or trying to make certain folks look like Biblical-word-for-donkeys.  (Not even Republicans named Rick in yesterday’s post).  I want to show fictional people undergoing some of the dark things that filled my life with hurt, and doing it with the grace and good humor that only comes from a heart full of self-sacrificing love.  (Gee, no wonder I find comedy hard… I have chosen the most difficult and elusive kind of humor for my art.  I’d do a lot better with poo-poo jokes.)  (Oh, wait, I do poo-poo jokes, don’t I.  This one counts too.)Senator Tedhkruzh

I wonder if I made a mistake yesterday in portraying Senator Ted Cruz as a lizard man from outer space.  Was that a mean, name-calling sort of joke?  Or was I painting him in broad, humorous strokes with my colored pencils?  Once again, you can be the judge.  Here’s the picture again.  And you get to decide if anything I have ever said is funnier than it is just plain sad.

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June 6, 2015 · 2:13 pm

Ghost Posts

I am forced to cheat a bit today.  I am ill, and I am trying hard to keep my ghost inside.  But it is only cheating a little bit.  I am posting today.  I am using old cartoons.  I am doing less than the target 500 words, but I have gone over the target all week, and it averages out.  So this is a ghost post… not because a ghost writer is posting it, but because this writer is ill and trying not to become a ghost.  So here are the ghost hunters again.  You will help them most by NOT pointing at the ghosts and screaming.  That kind of scare can’t be good for their health.

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May 22, 2015 · 11:27 am

Visiting Tellosia

In the novel I recently entered in the Chanticleer Reviews YA Novel-Writing contest, I used the fairy kingdom of Tellosia to be the land of the little people integrated into hometown Iowa.   As part of my cartoon stories page, I intend to take up the tale of The Hidden Kingdom once again and expand and complete it.  I will post it as a web comic on Word Press.  I know I can’t make money giving it away for free… but I hope to have my stories and cartoons read a little bit more through the buzz I hope this generates.  And perhaps Petit Zam can come up with some fairy magic that will help… so I can cast a spell on you.

Here is installment one of The Hidden Kingdom;

HK1

HKx2 HKx3 HKx4 HKx5 HKx6

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May 20, 2015 · 2:39 pm

Paffooney Stories and Toony Cartoons

My House1 My house2 my house3 My House4Here is a page for collected stories that I mean to build on and expand.  It is my intention to file cartoons here and edit them and add more pages via posts.  So for a first attempt let me use an old cartoon that was rejected once by Heavy Metal magazine in the early 1980’s and rejected a second time by a cartoon magazine that no longer exists and I can’t even remember the name of…  I am thinking they had very poor taste in cartoon art anyway.

Now, of course, this a finished four-page one-shot.  It was intended for a magazine that sought this kind of full-color art and had an over-all science fiction and horror fantasy theme.  I was too light and colorful with this short for their needs.  Disney characters on the PJ’s might have been a legal problem too.  So I am left with an unsaleable example of my best colored-pencil art, done when I was still pretty much a clueless kid and not yet a teacher.  It was worth doing, but will never make me a single dime.

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May 18, 2015 · 11:43 am

Farming Family

the ClarkesI have been working on the beginnings of the novel When the Captain Came Calling.  It is not the first draft.  It is the third entire re-write.  I wrote this as a graphic novel before graphic novels were an established form.  Then I tried to rewrite it as a traditional novel, and it is now coming into its YA novel form.  But I can’t begin to explain this novel-writing project without telling you about the Clarkes.  Yes, they are a very important Iowegian family who farm and are entirely fictional.  (Kids, what other words do you know that begin with the letter F?)  They are based, at least a tiny bit, on my own family when I was a kid, but very specific parts of it.  My Uncle Larry, mother’s older brother who is now gone (but never forgotten) was the inspiration for Dash Clarke.  Kyle Clarke, the father in the picture, is Dash’s younger brother… though he is not based on my other maternal uncle.  The daughter in the Paffooney picture, Valerie Clarke, is based on my own daughter combined with a girl I had a crush on in grade school and a girl who had a deeply felt crush on me when I was a young teacher.  The Clarkes are third generation farmers, just as my own family were back in the time this story is set.  Unlike my family, the Clarkes do not come out of the 80’s with their family farms intact.  What grandparents built, the sons lose hold of, and the world becomes a much sadder place because of it.  The story is about a lot of things in addition to a family losing their farm.  It is filled with magic, telling sea stories and other lies, and the truth behind both the magic  and the lies.

I posted this today because today is the day I finished the Paffooney illustration that started the post.  Here is what it looked like in progress;

pencil sketchClarkes

Paffooneys are a made-up thing by which I name the whole great glob of artwork and stories I have created that represent the never-ending music in my soul.  I am not a singer or a song-writer.  The only way these tunes come to life is through the toons which I ignorantly call the Paffoons because the loons have nothing on me.

Here is a cover mock-up for the novel which shows another picture of Valerie Clarke, the most beautiful little girl ever born in Norwall, Iowa (a phrase that her Uncle Dash christened her with when she was small, and it caught on with the entire town.)Voodoo Val cover

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May 17, 2015 · 1:52 pm

My Mother’s Dolls

Tom Sawyer without the straw hat, as created by Lois Beyer

Tom Sawyer without the straw hat, as created by Lois Beyer

You may already know about my doll-collecting mania.  You may have already called the mental health people to come take care of the problem, and they just haven’t arrived at my door yet with the white coat that has the extra long sleeves.  But you may not know that my mother is a doll-maker and has something to do with my doll-collecting hoarding disorder.

In the early 1990’s my mother and I put our money together and bought a kiln while we were visiting my sister’s family out in California.  It wasn’t the most expensive model, but it wasn’t the cheapest, either.  We both had enough experience with ceramics that we didn’t want to buy a burning box that was merely going to blow our porcelain projects to kingdom come.  Mother had doll-making friends in Texas who taught her about firing greenware and glazing and porcelain paint and all the other arcane stuff you have to know to make expensive hand-made dolls.  Now, honestly, at the start we could’ve made some money at it selling to seriously ill doll collectors and other kooks, but we were not willing to part with our early art, and by the time we were ready to do more than just have an expensive hobby, everyone who would’ve paid money for the product was making their own.  So dreams of commercial success were supplanted by the hobbyist’s mania that made more and more charming little things to occasionally display at the county fair.

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The two dolls I have left to share on my blog from that era were both crafted by my mother.  She lovingly fired the porcelain body parts, painted the faces by hand, and created the wardrobe on her Singer sewing machine.  I made some dolls too, but never with the wondrous craft and care that made my mother’s dolls beyond compare.

Tom Sawyer was originally a boy doll who was supposed to be able to hold a model train in his hands.  My mother had the pattern for the little engineer’s uniform and hat that she would use on another doll instead.  He is named after the Tom Sawyer clothing pattern that my mother bought and sewed together to dress him in.  He has a cloth and stuffing body underneath his clothes together with porcelain head, hands, and bare feet.

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The other doll I have left to brag unctuously about is a doll named Nicole after the niece my wife and I have whom this doll bares a striking resemblance to.  She displays a beautiful little girl’s sun dress with quilted accent colors that my mother sewed from scratch with the help of a pattern she was truly fond of and used more than once.

These dolls were gifts to my wife and I, presented shortly after my mother bought out my share of the kiln when she retired and moved back to the frosty land of the Iowegians.  I haven’t kept them as thoroughly dusted and cobweb-free as they deserve because I have been a somewhat lazy and slovenly son… but I do love them almost as much as (and sometimes more depending on recent behavior) my own children.  (After all, porcelain kids rarely make a mess, overspend allowances, or hog the television too much.)

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