I can’t help but notice nobody has leapt at the chance to own “Ground Squirrels Abhor a Vacuum”. I’d like to think this is because of Matthew’s particularly weird description, but given the abject failure of the Cross-Eyed Zebra t-shirt project, I’m starting to think that I just have bad taste.
That being said, you can all rest assured that next week’s auction will have something sickeningly cute to offer. I have been perusing the prompts and it seems the most popular suggestion, being followed by 21 people, is “Child Riding a Buffalo.” It was definitely my least favorite of the suggestions (sorry, Anonymous), mostly because I have lately come to realize that I stink at drawing children (over the weekend I was working on illustrations for an article about Baltimore public schools and after days of sketching children-sized-people-who-somehow-look-like-haggard-old-men I decided that the bright and sunny naiveté of childhood just doesn’t flow willingly from my pen). So I totally shot down the “Child Riding Buffalo” suggestion. Matthew suggested I draw a fat and ugly child riding a fat and ugly buffalo, just to spite Anonymous, but I’m going to face this challenge.
Child riding a buffalo it is.
Here’s my first attempt:
Cute, eh?
In other news, we have also been working on a project that we thought we were going to broadcast on Twitter. And so we got a bunch of you to sign up for Twitter. And then we totally dropped the ball, because this whole social media thing is exhausting. That being said, don’t dump your accounts yet, it might still happen.
The idea is we are going to do an Idiots’Books version of those daily affirmation calendars, except ours is called “Daily Affirmations for Realists”. I suppose we could call it “Daily Affirmations for Idiots” but not everyone embraces the Idiots moniker as enthusiastically as we. Matthew has written up a bunch, and I started illustrating them. But – when we sent them to our agent, she thought the idea might have legs, so asked us not to put them all out into the ether before she gives them a shot in the legit publishing world.
But to give you a sneak peak -since we like you and since you’ve bothered to come here at all – here are some of our favorites:
Our agent sent these and 30 more out to various publishers today. We’ll see if they reject them as soundly as graduate schools rejected Matthew.
If they do, all you folks who signed up to follow us on Twitter can rejoice. And you can keep me company in my rejection.
Those would make an awesome calendar. I would buy it. I might even give it as a gift!
I like gleeful-mad-child on should-be-worried buffalo. And the affirmations are very funny!
And, FWIW, I also like the drawing of the man with the creature-on-a-rope, though I don’t really know what is going on. Nor did the mention of the “vacuum” business help to clarify. Though I personally hate being asked to “explain” my work, I wouldn’t mind hearing a bit more about this piece, even if it’s just a title.
Jessica – Thank you. That means we can sell at least (maybe) two. Very soon this will be outselling the Zebra shirt.
Clare – to clarify: I was supposed to be drawing happy, uplifted children. The reason the man is wearing a baseball cap is because that was one way I was trying to make my people look younger (I don’t know why I thought this, as I know many an old geezer who wears a baseball cap, and not so many elementary school kids who do. I could probably blame this on my knowing-old-geezers-to-knowing-elementary-school-kids ratio, though.) After unsuccessfully drawing the head and upper body, I noticed he looked like he was pulling on something. So I added the rope. Many years ago in Alaska, one summer when there were no dogs around, we had lots of ground squirrels living under our house. One day, one fell down the outhouse hole. Someone luckily noticed the scrabbling around sound before dumping a load on him. So we had to fashion a little noose to fish him out. (There was also a coat hanger involved somehow, but I can’t remember exactly how – I just remember mom being loathe to contribute it to the cause because of how rare coat hangers are up there.) This took lots of fishing. The poor squirrel nearly drowned before we got him, but we got him. Getting the noose OFF of him took twice as long as getting it on him. Maybe that’s where the coat hanger came in. Anyway, the only thing I could figure this guy was pulling up on the other end of his rope was a ground squirrel. But the squirrel had to be in a hole. And the man needed legs. And then I was done and it was the best thing I had drawn all day.
Oh my gosh, that is a great story. Thanks for sharing it. It gives me courage that some of what inspires my work might be of interest to others. And it really is a very cool piece of art.
On a slightly different note, but having to do with what drives an artist, I once had a studio visitor ask me about the dimensions of my paintings. He wondered if the “golden mean” had something to do with my oh-so-mysterious choice. I think he was rather disappointed when I answered that it had to do with what I could squeeze into the back of my car.
Gleeful child on buffalo is absolutely hysterical. I mean it. And I would like to preorder the daily affirmations calendar (I know it’s not in the works yet, but it should be).