Tag Archives: surrealism

Architecture for Clowns

Try not to be upset with me for drawing a naked lady. You see, she is not really a lady, she is a caryatid, a stone pillar for holding up a building.  Besides, I have been recently very ill, and drawing naked ladies makes me happy, even though it is a sin and means I will probably burn in hell.  I am a hopeless sinner in this regard.  I got kicked off Pinterest for liking an oil painting of a naked lady.  I think it was a painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau.  How could I be so terrible?  You should check out my post about his sinful, horrible paintings so you can see how terrible I am for yourself. (Bouguereau)  carytidOf course, This post is not about naked ladies at all, so why am I fuming and ranting and telling all my darkest secrets about that?

This post is about architecture, about giving structure to things, about holding things together and holding things up.  Is it clever that I drew this picture of an ornate pillar and placed it in this post so it looks like it is standing on later paragraphs and holding up the introduction?  I find weird surrealist things like that help me write stuff that makes a few people laugh.  It helps me because I can focus on nonsensical side-stuff like that (mixed up with obscure puns and alliterations like “pillar” and “placed” that, when cooked together with goofy rhythms in over-long sentences end up sounding funnier than they really are), and then I can say stuff that is actually funny because I don’t realize how wrong, or weird, or silly some of these words I am futzing it all up with truly are.  (And I am amazed that the Pinterest police haven’t come and kicked me off WordPress for using a word like “futzing”, even though they don’t know what it means.  Heck, even the spell-checker didn’t object to the word!)

But someone like me who is trying to be funny needs structure more than anyone else you can think of.  Why?  Because the sad-clown-crying-on-the-inside is so very true.  The dark dips of depression… pain, illness, and more pain… family stress from others in my family who also suffer…  That’s what makes the laughing so very necessary.  You need the lighter stuff to fill up the room (somewhat like a really big fart) because you depend on the sheer buoyancy of it to lift the entire house up and keep it from sinking to the very center of the earth.  (And the stink of it can also help keep you awake when otherwise you might never get out of bed again)… (But please don’t light any matches around my house.)

So, in conclusion, this stuff I write does have basic structures, basic rules.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It has a theme, a point that needs to be made,  And then it needs to end with some kind of a kicker line or punch line… because when that finally hits me square in the face (like a pie thrown by a pie-whacker clown), it helps me remember… I am still alive, and I can still laugh about it.

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The Whole Enchilada (Though it’s not an enchilada, it’s a Paffooney)

I finished it in black and white.  I know it doesn’t make sense as a whole, but it is surrealism, and it is supposed to be cut up into separate parts, as I will show you later.

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Progress on the Paffooney

Here’s today’s progress in the art project.

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A New-Old Project

What is the meaning of the naked piano player?  Remember the naked guy playing at the beginning of episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus?  I had a friend who painted a naked boy playing piano in high school art class.  He was a band geek.  He later proved to be gay.  I asked him why he painted that.  He said, “That’s me being creative.”

My oldest son is now in the Marine Corp boot camp at San Diego.  He says in his first letter home that things are going great.  He was a self-taught piano player.  He played beautiful music, including classical pieces by Mozart, by ear.  He even composed his own music.   That was him being creative.  So, why did he want to become a Marine and be regimented and told what to do?

Before I started this crazy naked-piano-player drawing, I had a dream.  I was performing in front of an audience, naked.  I should’ve been embarrassed out of my old mind.  But I wasn’t.  I think it was because that was me being creative.  Sometimes total randomness and surprise is creativity.  Definitely being completely open and honest with the audience, being naked, if you will, is being creative.

So here is the start of another colored pencil Paffooney project.  I think I will call it, “Baring the Creative Soul.”

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I will keep you posted on my colored-pencil progress.  This is just the initial sketch in graphite.  It does not mean I am contemplating learning piano, or deciding I have suddenly become gay after 57 years.  It means, “This is me being creative.”

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Making Fan Art

My homage to “the Ghost Who Walks” was carefully chosen.  I scanned my Phantom comics from Charleton looking for the right pose.  I found an image of him punching toward the viewer.  I thought, “Why don’t I put that view on horseback and have him riding toward me and punching.”  Why did I think that?  Who knows?  As an artist, I’m kinda erratic and crazy that way.  I guess that’s why I claim to be a surrealist.  I do believe all comic book artists have to be surrealists to do their job.  That’s true whether they do super heroes, ducks who hoard money in vaults and wear spats, pigs who wear a coat and a tie but no pants, or alien monsters hungry for the nearly naked flesh of Dale Arden.  Uh… maybe I’m revealing way too much about my thought processes here…  So here’s step one, the pen and ink.

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Then I had to give it some colored pencil treatments.  Black and white with crosshatching is cool, but it is also like bare bones, without life and energy.  So I used the powers I have over cheap Roseart pencils and madly scribbled in colors carefully balanced to show just how truly chaotic my perceptions of action and adventure really are.

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Now, I know the Phantom’s horse is either black or pure white, depending on which version or generation of the Ghost Who Walks is being depicted, but I did a yellow horse.  I know… I know…  I did pansy colors when I really should’ve gone fire red or all bloody crimson.  I’m completely violating continuity.  But I never completely do what I intend to do.  If I don’t screw it up at least a little bit, then it really isn’t me.  Besides, what else is there to yell at myself about and twist words around to make it sound like I’m being all comedically gifted and funny?

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Publishing in the 1940’s

Yes, I think I was born entirely in the wrong time.  I could’ve been a great pulp fiction cover artist.   Of course, I would’ve done great work and starved to death, because that’s what most of them did.  It was, however, a time when art was blazing with brightly-colored surrealism.  I was inspired by the artwork in this book; Pulp Culture, the Art of Fiction Magazines by Frank Robinson and Lawrence Davidson.

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I used to find secret treasures like this in my Uncles’ bedroom when I played there at Grandpa’s house in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.  They were full of cowboys with sixguns, pirates and skeletons, poisonous snakes, nearly nude ladies, and science fiction heroes from the future.  So I decided to create one of my own.

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What’s it all about?  Surrealism’s quest to make life more like art.  Pretty heroines can strike back at the heart of evil with goodness, and sweetness, and most importantly, nearly nakedness.  We can skew the future by applying the wisdom learned in the past.  You know, pure unadulterated fantasy.  And hopefully we will be making a skew towards goodness and the light, not darkness and evil.    

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Humpty Dumpty and his Girlfriend Esmeralda the Elf

Humpty Dumpty and his Girlfriend Esmeralda the Elf

Sometimes you just have to put together something crazy. This is a combination of colored pencil, ceramic egg-man painted with acrylic, and a photoshopped photo. Definitely a looney Paffooney.

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April 16, 2014 · 2:18 am

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright!

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright!

William Blake is a favorite poet of mine because he had a super-vivid imagination and he was basically loonier than pig who wears a bow tie and coat, but no pants… and eats bacon. He could look at a cloud, and he claimed that he could see the entire heavenly host arrayed there.  He believed in free love and open marriage, but was strictly faithful to his one beloved wife.  Contradictions are what makes him who he is.  His book Songs of Innocence and Experience, an early independently published book full of poetry and artwork, contains the poem about the Tyger (Blake’s personal misspelling) that inspired the Paffooney presented here.  The Tyger represents danger… rather than evil… and the danger inherent in God’s creation rather than the devil or Satan.  The poem is often paired with the poem about the Lamb, or the poem about the Worm.  Opposition.  Juxtaposition.  The very essence of surrealism.  So, I have tried to place a certain amount of menace in innocence in opposition to each other in this drawing.

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April 3, 2014 · 1:22 am

Some Days the Loonies Are Out

Some Days the Loonies Are Out

Here is a study in Looniness… I have always wondered where the edge is… the border between silly, cute, and creepy. I believe I have found it with this bizarro character study. I attempted to add to the effect by making characters seem unbalanced, off kilter, and even growing out of other characters’ ears. The background pulls at your perceptions and senses as much as the primary objects do. And so… I pull a Salvador Dali with a mixed bag of Dr. Seuss, Disney, and Warner Brothers. Melting and fused toons in place of watches and human bodies. If this isn’t surreal, then I don’t know what is. Okay, I admit it. I don’t know what is!

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March 26, 2014 · 1:26 am

One Blue Night

One Blue Night

I was always the one on the outside looking in. The sad fact is, all of us who are too creative and sensitive for our own good feel that way. We wish we had what see in there, but miss the beauty inherent in being on the outside. Stalker… peeping faun… magical wishes… and dreams in the dark blue of the night.

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February 7, 2014 · 3:35 am