Author Archives: littledragonblue

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About littledragonblue

Dreamer, Writer, Artist, Lover

Jackalope!

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So, the thing about true cryptids is that they’re all made up. Some cryptids turn out to be real animals, but most of them reside in the collective unconscious, inspired, I believe by the intersection of the natural world with the boundaries of human knowledge. The jackalope, as far as I can tell, is a 20th century cryptid, created, I’m guessing, to sell southwestern merchandise, and perhaps to share the mystique of the desert and inspire romantic thinking about the region. It may not have the same glorious history as some fantastic creatures, but it holds a place in the hearts of many.

I was asked to create banners for the seven columns in the library, and when I asked what I should depict on the banners, I was told “I don’t know. A mix of realistic and magical?” What’s a more appropriate mixture of realism and magic, than a taxidermied bunny with antlers sewn to it?

I wish I could say there was a greater meaning behind this mythology, but I just don’t think there is. I think someone just made it up for marketing purposes.

But I love it, and the kids seem to like it too. One of them told me his nickname at home is Jackalope, and he was quite touched by the homage.

More to come, of course.

A Page from “Letter from the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo”

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The author Dawn Burns asked me to create an illustration for her short story, “Letter from the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo,” which will appear in her forthcoming collection, A Green Glow on the Horizon: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attractions Survivors (Cornerstone Press, 2026).

The book and the story are forthcoming. It’s not entirely clear whether this illustration will also be forthcoming in the actual book. But I had a little inspiration after reading it and created something I really love.

The otters are based on a photograph I took at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in 2022. He was doing these elaborate backflips every time he passed the underwater viewing window, and I saw the golden ratio in this one. My entire conception of the illustration was centered around that memory.

The purple plastic gorilla cup gave me the most trouble. I vaguely recalled their existence but not well enough to accurately reproduce one, and I couldn’t find a single photo anywhere on the internet. Believe me, I tried. I spent as much time looking for an example of a purple plastic gorilla cup from the 20th century as I did drawing the rest of the picture. My google-fu is powerful and I usually find what I’m looking for, but these cups were instant trash the moment you finished consuming their sugary contents. I doubt anyone saved one let alone posted a photograph of it 40 years after the fact. So I kind of had to make them up. These are not the plastic purple gorilla cups that you would get at the zoo in the ’80s and ’90s, they are just a tribute to those cups.

This Bonus Board

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Threw this one together in record time. Last night I thought I would get up early and go in and do this work and finish early and leave. But then I thought, “Hey, it’s August 1. I should look at the calendar to see what I’ve got going on this month.” And I realized I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. And then I didn’t get to sleep until almost dawn and had to get up and run to this appointment and then have breakfast afterward, around the time most people are finishing lunch.

Blah blah blah, didn’t get in until 2:30, the air conditioning still isn’t fixed so it was 90° in there, and it was “Meet the Teacher” day so it was a total madhouse with hundreds of people wandering around.

Still managed to knock this out in under 4 hours. It’s not fancy but it does the job.

I knew last night I was going full rainbow on this one. I showed the background to the librarian before I did the letters and she loved it and I said, “I’m being very subversive” and then her daughter said, “You made a Pride flag,” and then I said, “Shh, we can’t say that,” and she said, “Why not?” and I said, “Because some people are humorless.”

“Humorless” in this case is a euphemism for “bigoted asshats.”

Anyway, the office manager loved it and it really makes huge impact on the space. And also, little queer kids will know.

Back to School 2025: the Hawaiian Shirt Trio

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If you can believe it, school starts Monday.

I can’t quite believe it but I decided to act like I did and get the breezeway ready. Originally I intended to come back today (Thursday) but then in Monday I decided I didn’t want to be rushed, and good thing, too. Because it turned out that not only would I be decorating all 3 bulletin boards in the breezeway again, they also wanted me to do the one by the principal’s office.

I didn’t have any huge inspiration but I decided I wanted to make a hibiscus and then it just made sense to go along with that theme. Which is hilarious because the breezeway is, of course, in the Sonoran Desert. But it’s frankly as humid as a tropical rain forest this week. So that’s cool.

I could have made MORE FLOWERS or made the flowers fancier or added smaller leaves or other design elements, but I had to go feed the Bear’s cat and then I had to give Miss Kitty a yoga lesson and ALSO I still have a whole day of work on that fourth board tomorrow. A dragon’s gotta pace dragonself.

The lettering is based on the De Latto font. The leaves are monsteras.

Attempted Guitars

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Usually, things come together for me. Occasionally they don’t. Sometimes I give up.

i spent 2 days trying to make nephling number 3 a 3-dimensional card with an electric guitar with real strings but I couldn’t find a satisfactory way to attach the strings and after the 7th time they fell out I gave up and drew a 2-dimensional electric guitar, which I am also not happy with. But camp is only 2 weeks long and if I didn’t actually mail them something they wouldn’t actually receive it.

So this is something I made that never aligned with my vision and I had to just accept it as it was and call it finished. And that was the whole “giving up on perfection” part of my artistic process that allowed me to create all the stuff in this blog. Sometimes you have to call it “done” or “good enough” even if you don’t feel like it is.

I started a big (like 2′ x 4′) painting but it will probably be some time before that’s finished. I’m working on a nonfiction book, a sort of biography about the Coyote’s life. It’s a very interesting life. I mostly know the whole story by heart because GOLLY does that guy like to talk and if he can’t think of something new to say he just returns to his greatest hits. Fortunately, it’s a very interesting life. Most of the book is about the parts I was in, but he was 55 already when I met him.

There’s this other thing I want to share here, about my relationship to art, but perhaps that’s another post.

The New Dawn

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Finally had a couple days to finish this painting I started last summer. I wanted to paint something for my aunt, who was mourning my grandmother very deeply. This kind of complements the kind of art she already has in her home. I was already tinkering with some similar imagery and theme in another painting I’m planning, so this ended up being a bit of a study for the bigger work (which is mostly sketched).

Maybe I’ll actually paint the other one, too. It’s meant as the companion piece for this other painting from 2023. It’s supposed to be “what it would look like if you loved yourself.” I assume it would look like me completing and selling my creative works on a regular basis.

Anyway, THIS painting is imperfect but I hope it has the intended effect. It’s supposed to be joyful, expressing how every morning is a new beginning, and that we are allowed to feel good about ourselves regardless of what happened yesterday.

If I painted more I’m sure I would be better at it. Also this probably would have come out better if I painted it on canvas instead of a scrap wood. Her left eye is a little wonky because it corresponded with a weird bump in the wood that I didn’t sand down correctly. I didn’t have the right brush for some of the details and I tried to use other random items and my fingers and I just gave up on her fingers. But I think it’s nice. I always learn a lot with every project.

Stay Cool

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I kind of phoned this one in because I had very limited time and was kind of distracted and there were 3 bulletin boards to cover before the end of the year. But the breezeway looks nice for the Cub Club kids and summer staff and any prospective families who come tour the school.

Closer views:

And then there was this smaller bulletin board on the other side of the library door:

The Pencil Eaters, Volume 2

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Somehow or other, I did it again: a literary journal written and illustrated by children. I used tax credit donations to pay for professional printing, which saved me about 5 hours and really provided a superior product. Although these books cost a little more than $7 each to produce. This year we have fiction, poetry, 3 interviews (1 real, 2 not), 4 songs (3 original, 1 a parody of “Eye of the Tiger” called “Nose of the Panther”), a very silly book review, and a lot of drawings is lions, plus a few other things.

Tuesday we had a release party and literary reading. The kids catered it so there were a LOT of cookies. We had about 40 people I’d say, which is not a bad turnout for a literary reading.

If you would like to support the arts and writing programs, you can visit this site: https://www.tusd1.org/donate

Select “Lineweaver Elementary” from the school menu and “Writing Program” from the item menu. If you are an Arizona resident, you can apply this money to your state taxes and even if you’re not a resident it’s still tax deductible.

13 Ways of Looking at The Waters 13: The Spider from the Darkness

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Whew! That’s a wrap on the black and white pages. I still have the colored pages (front and back cover, inside and outside) to finish, but they’re well underway. Hopefully by the time you see this, they’ll be done as well.

“The Spider from the Darkness” is the story I wrote to replace the second Lorena story, meaning I wrote it well after I wrote the others. However, it was the first page I finished when I started illustrating the comic. I love the water lily and the heart and the spider and the semi-feral girl and the butterflies and even that silly asymmetrical sun, which shouldn’t work, but somehow does.

If all goes well, I hope this comic will be available in print at some point in the near future, and, if possible, I hope I’ll be able to bring it to some nice conference–ALA’s 2026 gathering in Chicago would be my preference–where I can discuss it with other Bonnie Jo Campbell scholars and perhaps entice new readers to The Waters.

13 Ways of Looking at The Waters 12: The Girl Who Came to Land

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If you are among the chosen few who read my unpublished novel The Girl Who Followed Her Own Counsel you might see some parallels between this story and one of the Little Red Riding Hood variants in that novel. The point is: either you grow up or you die. There’s no option where you stay a kid forever no matter what your family does to keep you there. If you keep living, you’re always going to become an adult, and, sad as it is, your grandparents are always going to decline as you rise.

I had what one might call a prolonged childhood, by choice, in which I was able to keep a youthful outlook on everything until I was about 35. Adulthood never really suited me, though, and I’m happy to move on to my crone phase. I’m happy to be a witch. I was never cut out to be a grown up.

Perhaps not coincidentally, my grandmother lived to 96 and only passed away about a year ago, when I was 49. Now I’m grandmother-aged myself. You can’t stop the progression of time. You can’t stop your children from growing up.