A very short story.

 

drypoint etching on Rives BFK paper. 3" x 3"

Feral Town

For the past two years, I've taken up drawing on post-its notes.



The original idea was to do something creative with little passing thoughts I had, in an immediate context, with the time I had available. I would scribble them out between teaching obligations, for the most part.



The whole thing hinged upon working on something that wouldn't turn into work. I've so far thought up and drawn over 400 of them.



So much for not turning it into work.







So I began making drypoint etchings of the series. I'd previously tried doing little gouache paintings of them, but they just took on an air of seriousness that worked against them. In paint they became meaner, and their cynicism turned into outright pessimism.

But the drypoints, for some reason, seem to work, and seem to retain a sense of directness without being too heavy. This is important in my little suburb of animalian dysfunction; I'd like it to be clear that I'm not wishing any of these little guys any ill will. I'm glad Maureen and Tom can work things out in their own hamster way.

A few have been making their way into the Monday edition of The Atticus Review, an online literary magazine edited by author and photographer David Olimpio.

You can also see most of the whole ongoing shebang on Instagram.

More to come... and maybe a shopping option.

March 1st is National Pig Day

...and even though he'd won second place,
Francisco considered the contest a bust.
He spoke seven languages.
He was a chess master.
And yet he'd been bested by
a Yorkshire named Mr. Taco
in what turned out to be
a glorified eating
competition.

Darla,
on the other hand,
beamed with
pride.

Inner Circle

Michael Flynn as 

The Angriest Bird.

Steve Bannon as 

The Thing That Needs To Crawl Back In Its Hole.

Ben Carson as

The Sleeping Leviathan

Kellyanne Conway as

The Plumed Dragon

Chris Christie as

The One That Got Away

Rudolph Guiliani as 

The Thing That Ought To 

Fly Away By Now

Jeff Sessions as

The White Goblin 

Scott Pruitt as

The Toxic Cloud

Tom Price as

The Fallopian Moose

Newt Gingrich as

The Spiteful Sprite

Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell as

What You Find When 

You Drain The Swamp

and Donald Trump as

The Phoenix That Launched

A Thousand Tweets

Some Creatures

 

 Katie boasted an impressive pedigree among mythological beasts; her father was a Minotaur, her mother a Satyr. Katie, unfortunately, hit the recessive gene lottery in the pairing.

 

The Gahzurtz

The Bearded Snickelthorpe

casein on paper, various sizes

There's a new Charlie Bumpers book coming down the pike...

...and while I can't tell you much more than that about the upcoming Bill Harley title, these three little things may happen somewhere in it. 

More with the wolves and the wolfish things.