Winter took a seat on my deck this morning.
Study in blue and white
A Western Doodle
Curly was the meanest, rootenest, tootenest, doodle in the West, pictured here with his trusty sidekick, Butch the Scorpion. Curly pulled off many a sting with Butch, charmed the ladies, rode many a mile together in the dusty desert. Curly never uncurled to show what he looked like on the inside. Some say he hid a sentimental inscription by his dear, departed mother. Some others say he hid a nasty scar. Whatever the reason, as rough and tough as was his reputation, he was always quick to kindly joke a child’s tears into laughter, or help a little old lady across the street.
Dedicated to my friends and family in the Southwest.
There’s a word for it…
When conversation lags with family on holiday get-togethers, it’s always good to bring out the word board games. Lately, we’ve been playing a lot of UpWords®, an old board game which is a 3D relative of Scrabble (I’m actually surprised when I run into people that don’t know what it is). Basically, after several minutes of playing, you can see towers of letters forming in areas, in contrast to flatter areas, so you can sort of get the effect of a downtown and suburbs with words.
Today’s Christmas doodle was generated during a typical recent UpWords game in our house, in which participants take great care and much time in choosing just the right word or combination of words to gain points. Many times we think up words which are perfectly good words, but they just have not yet been assigned a meaning in the English language, so unfortunately we can’t use them. This doodle is dedicated to those words which have not yet been born. Merry Christmas, y’all!
Sheep, Pig and Rabbit reunited
Sheep and Pig have finally returned home to rejoin Rabbit in an emotional reunion last weekend. The three papier maché animals, along with a life-sized llama, made Heifer International newsletter headlines when they helped raise $3,000 for that most worthy cause a few years ago. Last weekend we retrieved them from storage at my church.
Poor Llama had to be put down, because of two broken legs. I blame her creator (me) for this, because she did not know what she was doing when she dove into all this papier maché making. Pictures documenting the creation of these animals, plus some shots of those who collaborated with me in the making, are here.
Now that my studio has definitely taken on an Orwellian character, I’m thinking about adding a couple more characters to my Animal Farm collection (now that I know better how to build a supporting frame for the papier maché). I’d like to add a chicken or two and a cow, and would really like to build a Percheron, but because of spatial limitations, might have to settle for a Shetland pony, or perhaps even a Przewalski’s horse. Then maybe we could stage a Rebellion of our own!
Humus erectus: Mulch Man
Missing link found in my back yard!
Looks mean and creepy, but he’s the champion and caretaker of all green living things, and very warm at heart. In future posts, I’ll bring him to life in an animation.
If you remember my earlier post, which could have been more aptly titled “Mulch Ado About Nothing”, I featured a monstrous but benign mulch pile. This is an example of what could happen if you leave a mulch pile lying there long enough. Evolution!
Kitty mind control illustration
I looked down from my desk the other morning to see this:
Now I know that she is lying next to me because she likes to be with me, but when she is staring at me like that it means she expects something, and if I choose to disregard the thoughts she is beaming telepathically at me and reach down to pet her, she will grab my hand, hold it and bite it while scratching me with her back legs, then jump up and run down the stairs and demand to be let outside, which is what she was expecting of me, pre-attack.
I did test this out, always hoping that someday she will learn gratitude and not bite the hand that feeds her, reaching down to pet her and sure enough, she grabbed my hand, bit and scratched me then ran down the stairs. This time, however, I was not seriously wounded – just washed my hand and I was fine.
This morning I did a digital illustration using that grainy closeup of her staring eyes as a start. 
Aldwyn 