A sketch and a mystery involving chickens

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a sketch or anything really, so here’s a semi-random page from my sketchbook. After flipping through it, I’m noticing that the eye-and-diary thing is a pattern.

A Triptych of Dead Writers with a Triptych of Epic Love Letters

I said I was going to draw a portrait of Kafka and pair it with a love letter, but decided that it would be so much better / creepier if I just went ahead and drew three. It’s an adorable matching set of great, dead writers! Huxley is creepy, Hemingway is stoic, and Kafka is mad sexy. (I took some liberties.) And, yes, I spilled coffee on Hemingway. Lets us just pretend that it’s rum. It’s fitting that way and it seems like something Hemingway would do, so it stays.

A love letter to Aldous Huxley:

I am continually fascinated by the manner in which you respond to the word ‘pneumatic’. I’m pretty sure I just called you a commodity, but since you don’t seem to mind, Imma keep on keepin’ on. Bring on the kink and don’t be stingy with the hallucinogens.

 

A love letter to Ernest Hemingway:

Great sex.

 

A love letter to Franz Kafka:

Eat something. Still nervosa vibrates from your fragile eyes and your words give away effortless pain. It would be a fittingly tragic conundrum to choose between your gift and your sanity. If I could choose for you, I wouldn’t. Either that or I would choose your gift, playfully flick the winged beasts that live on the sides of your head and say, “I know you’re sick, but seriously don’t burn anything.”

Dino Buzzati: Disturbed, Handsome, Brilliant. Worthy of muse status.

I would be so lucky to find a muse like this. Tragically lucky.

Yes, brilliant. These images will bounce around my head for the next few days (I am in a cloud and will face certain death and exile to Niflhel with dignity. I knew it would come back to me eventually!) Click on the links for more Poem Strip images.

Must find English translation of Le Notte Difficili. Also The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, even though it is a children’s book. BUT it’s a children’s book written by a dead, swarthy Italian artist. Slightly Disturbed? Yes. Handsome? Yes. Brilliant? Yes. Good, good, good. Also, I could learn Italian? No, this is unreasonable. I’m much to impatient.

On a side note, I’ve decided to put my creative energies into a project which I’m tentatively calling a faux-children’s book. Something I will actually finish one day. (?) Don’t worry: it will be dark, cursey, and full of regret and absurdism. You will read it and wish you hadn’t because you’ll know too much about what goes on in my head if you didn’t already.

Also, I’m thinking that Franz Kafka will be the subject of my next Portrait of an Intangibility will be accompanied by a love letter. This post is getting more and more uncomfortable, isn’t it? It’s okay. I’m here for you. And so is Dino Buzzati.

The Mountain Impass and Buckaroo Banzai

Clarity and the bright places come for me in waves now, which is a notable improvement to the murky, dark shit I was wading through before. Hence: curiously colored boulders and an unreachable shore! Oooh, it looks so nice and surreal! I’d visit this place wearing a bikini and a parka. (I’d need both.) I’d heroically fashion myself a slingshot and try desperately to propel pebbles far enough to rustle leaves on the other shore. This would be impossible. I’d move on to ascend the mountain of rainbows and possibly lick it on the way up to make sure the mountain isn’t made of Peeps. Upon discovery of Peep Mountain, I’d scramble to the top so I could eat my way to the bottom. Regret would overcome me. A nap would then follow. Eventually, I’d swim across and either A) admire The Mountain of Rainbow Peeps from afar, make camp, a fire, and wish I’d taken some Peeps with me to roast or B) drown.

So, the next Portrait is still to come but I have this as a temporary replacement. I actually did complete a portrait, but it ended up looking just enough like Jeff Goldblum that I couldn’t post it for fear that it would seem like bad fan art. I do love me some Goldblum. Which reminds me of the insane magnificence of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! Facetiously hip things make me enjoy life a bit more.

Portrait of an Intangibility, No. 1: Soren

I had a bit of trouble naming this one. His name is Soren, but trying to describe his mood without using too many words was the issue. (And I’m warning you now: I totes failed). He’s just arrived at the acceptance stage after going through a complicated and esoterically abusive emotional tragedy. You know that feeling when you’re physically and emotionally exhausted and all you want to do is go *insert personally appropriate comforting action here* but you can’t because you are in the middle of something, so you stay and finish it, but when you look at people you can’t seem to focus on their eyes? Yup, that. For now, the subtitle is “the Multifarious Sepulchre” and hopefully this will be the first in a series I’m calling “Portrait of an Intangibility”.

On a side note: this is a bit unintentionally appropriate today, as Etta James has died. The world is a less beautiful place without you.