Here you see me doing some serious art-starting. I am working on ideas about how clowns can be compassionate. I am hoping this is true, because I am one… a clown, I mean. But I have some serious noodle and doodle work to do. So I will start with a doodle of Klown Kops from Klowntown’s finest. More will be explained later… and more will be doodled too.
Filed under clowns, compassion, doodle, humor, new projects, Paffooney Posts
I find this to be a beautiful picture worth the time spent creating it. It is a digital doodle. That means I started with a simple doodle out of my head.
This is the original start, laid down on my computer tablet with a stylus and a digital art program called Drawing Pad Sketch Desk. It is a simpler drawing program than most digital artists use. My daughter recommends Krita. That is far more complex and sophisticated than I was ready to start with.
This is the rather ugly doodle scratched out with layout colors and basic shapes. Had this been colored pencil on paper, I would have wadded it up, shot it into a wastebasket, hopefully for three points, and started again. But the digital pad allows infinite and complete changes.
After fixing and fixing and fixing… and adding a rose in the hair… and something green to match the eyes, I came up with something I wanted to create a finished project out of. I did not take a screenshot of every little change, so you must imagine how I got here from Miss Ugly Puss.
Because of arthritis in my hands and creeping color blindness in my eyes, I use AI Mirror to reprocess my drawing and offer clean-up solutions. I don’t really like the rose that the program made out of my original drawing, so I changed it before the final. Then I used the Picsart AI Photo Editor to supply a background of roses. Thus, I reached the picture you see in the first Paffooney I posted here.
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While watching Netflix yesterday afternoon, a retirement activity that becomes the majority of my social life when the diabetes demons are eating me, I started doodling a fox. It was a pencil doodle at first. And I was not drawing from life. I was drawing the fox in my head. I suspect it was the fox from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s masterwork, The Little Prince.
Yes, that fox. The wise one that knows about taming little princes, and loving them, and being reminded of them in the color of wheat fields. I began to need that fox as my doodle pen uncovered him on the blank page. There he was. Surprised to see me. Either he was leaping towards me in the picture, or falling down on me from the sky above. I don’t know which. But I realized I had to tame him by drawing him and making him as real as ever an imaginary fox could ever be. You will notice he does not look like a real fox. I did not draw him from a photograph, but from the cartoon eye in my mind where all Paffoonies come from. And this was to be a profound Paffooney… a buffoony cartoony looney Paffooney. It simply had to be, because that is precisely what I always doodle-do.
And so he was a fox. He was my doodlefox. I had tamed him. And then I had to give him color. And, of course, the color had to be orange-red.
And so, there is my fox. Like the Little Prince’s fox he could tell me, “What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that we can see rightly.” And I put him in a post with lyrical and somewhat goofy words to give you a sense of what he means to me, in the same way one might explain what the thrill of the heart feels like when a butterfly’s wing brushes against the back of your hand. Yes, to share the unknowable knowledge and the unfeelable feeling of a doodlefox. A demonstration of precisely what a Paffooney is.
I joined an art challenge Facebook group that regularly pits doodlers against each other with four minutes to doodle in and a place to post the results. And we do it for absolutely no prizes or titles or even ranking, just for the love of doodling. So here is a recent 4-minute doodle by Mickey posted on that selfsame super-silly group;
If you are having trouble believing that I dragon-doodled this in only 4 minutes, please notice that that the left side of the dragon’s face is clearly the area I was rushing to complete as the time was running out. I doodled this in black ink with a ballpoint pen. I timed it. And I have drawn numerous dragons before. So you could rationalize that I really worked for hours upon hours to be able to do this four minute doodle.
Filed under doodle, drawing, Dungeons and Dragons, humor, Paffooney
A breakfast-table doodle done while waiting for kids to get ready for school.
The advantage in life for a pessimist is that you always prepare for the worst, and when the worst happens, you are ready to deal with it. The only time you are taken by surprise, is when something good happens.
So, I was expecting the San Jose Sharks to beat the St. Louis Blues in their championship series. And last night, the Sharks took them down 4 goals to none.
I owe Bank of America money, something that doesn’t go well with being retired and in poor health, and out of money. I am putting my finances in order and preparing to have to pay them. But I got a letter from a collection agency that has taken on collecting the debt.
So, bad things happen in tandem with other bad things. And sometimes being prepared is just not enough.
As a science fiction writer working with apocalyptic themes, I have been researching the problems that could be the end of humanity, if not life on Earth. As the video explains, the way we have used the Earth’s resources, wrecked Earth’s environment, and overpopulated the Earth to unsustainable levels have already left us at a point of no return. We are doomed by our own hands.
So… sometimes being a pessimist is a real bummer.
But terrible things happening doesn’t leave us without resources. Human beings are adaptable and resilient. We may not all live happily ever after, but we are capable of preserving the species through chaos and catastrophe. And if we don’t, it isn’t like we have lived in vain.
In fact, I have already taken steps to deal with the pirates of Bank of America. And the Blues are playing a best-of-seven series which is now tied at one game apiece. Doom looms. But I am not worried. I have already accepted that the very worst will probably happen. Odds are I will be pleasantly surprised more than once.
Filed under autobiography, doodle, drawing, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, pessimism, Uncategorized
Here you see me doing some serious art-starting. I am working on ideas about how clowns can be compassionate. I am hoping this is true, because I am one… a clown, I mean. But I have some serious noodle and doodle work to do. So I will start with a doodle of Klown Kops from Klowntown’s finest. More will be explained later… and more will be doodled too.
Filed under clowns, compassion, doodle, humor, new projects, Paffooney Posts
I have had to report racing heartbeats every night since I’ve been wearing the monitor. It has been recording things that I have missed. But do I really have to worry? No. The doctor hasn’t called to say go to the emergency room. I am now waking up every day with more confidence. Yay! I am still not dead! Every day is a blessing. And there is treatment to help non-lethal tachycardia. I have reason to believe I won’t be dead tomorrow too. So I will keep on writing and living and living to write, and to honor that resolution I will share the happy-doodle Paffooney that I doodled this morning after waking up not-dead.
Catch a Falling Star 
DoodleFace!!!
I drew this face as a doodle while watching an episode of Iron Fist on Netflix. I don’t think it is anybody in the show I was watching, actor or character or comic book villain, but I can’t help but think that Doodleface is a great name for a Dick Tracy villain.
Of course, a doodle is a drawing done with only half-attention being paid. I was not ignoring Iron Fist as I drew this. I did not take time to plan it out with a pencil sketch. I started drawing the right eye, thinking it w ould probably become a girl’s face. When I tried to match the first eye with a second, it came out mismatched enough that she morphed into a villain. Bilateral symmetry equals beauty. Asymmetry equals comedy goofball or possibly villain. As I framed the eyes and developed the center of the face down to the chin, the chance to make a Natasha or an Olga Badenov sort of villain dissipated to the point of masculine villainy. That probably explains the curly hair, since the villain Bakuto in Iron Fist had curly hair. But curiously, this drawing-while- watching-TV fellow is not Bakuto. This guy has no beard. And in the episode I watched, Bakuto had a beard. And Bakuto also ended the episode with a knife sticking out of his general heart-area, not a good sign for his personal health and wellness, though in a comic book plot… well, who knows?
So, if Doodleface is a Dick Tracy villain, how did he get his name and what is his special thing? Pruneface was pruney in the face. Mumbles couldn’t talk so you could understand him. Flattop had a head that was flat on the top like a table. So Doodleface is obviously a master of disguise. He must possess a magic pen acquired in the mysterious Orient in the 1920’s, one that clearly allows him to redraw his features at any given time so he cannot be recognized. And hopefully, he draws well enough that coppers won’t just take one look and say, “Hey, dat guy over dere has a squiggle drawn all over his mug! Dat must be Doodleface!!!” (Of course it has to be three exclamation points because… well, cartoon exaggeration!!!)
And all of this is, of course, evidence that even when I am watching a fairly good show on TV (Iron Fist is not Daredevil or Luke Cage in its levels of amazing Marvel comics goodness) my mind and my drawing hand are both still busy doing their own thing as well. Doodling is an artsy-fartsy way to kill time and fill up empty spaces. My entire blog is basically the same in this purpose. But I am able to use the doodle imperative to create and be creative, to learn and to grow, and possibly make up something worth keeping.
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Filed under artwork, commentary, doodle, humor
Tagged as artwork, doodle, goofiness, wasting time and art supplies