Author Archives: littledragonblue

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About littledragonblue

Dreamer, Writer, Artist, Lover

Yesterday’s Mandala…Today!

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Fancy and off kilter

Fancy and off kilter

This one skews a little to the right but features a nice sense of depth. The center is pretty symmetrical but then it just sort of meanders off to the side and starts ballooning. It features a lot of my favorite colors, too.

This might be kind of a lean week. There’s some family stuff coming up and I’m not sure how much time it’s going to take up. Today marks the 9th consecutive day that I have sworn to myself I will clean my office and failed to do so. Washing the floors seems far out of reach. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a weeks. Tonight we went to see The Martian instead of doing anything remotely useful, and now I have a headache. So, mandala.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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I discovered this joke in a Garfield comic. Just kidding! No one's ever found a joke in a Garfield comic.

I discovered this joke in a Garfield comic. Just kidding! No one’s ever found a joke in a Garfield comic.

I don’t believe in holding historical figures to our modern standards, but I also don’t believe in celebrating shameful chapters of history. It’s important to study the past from every angle and to acknowledge the parts of it that make us uncomfortable along with the parts we want to glorify.

There was a bravery to the life of Christopher Columbus, the explorer, in sailing across the ocean in a direction that none of his people had ever sailed before. Columbus was acting in accordance with his time and his station in life, and according to the morality of his culture; by the standards of the time, he deserved glory and accolades for his success. Yet, there can be no bravery in the exploitation of people who couldn’t compete with him in terms of weaponry, and were unaware that his overtures, designed to gain their trust, did not reflect truly friendly intent.

There’s no honor in being the progenitor of the American slave trade.

We can’t hold Columbus entirely responsible for the genocide on the mainland, and yet his arrival in the western hemisphere still marks the beginning of the subjugation of native people in the Americas by white people of European descent. It’s 2015, and I don’t think we should be teaching schoolchildren a happy cartoon story about what happened in 1492 without discussing the enslavement and eventual murder of most of the continent’s original occupants. I don’t think we should celebrate Columbus Day as a national holiday. I think it’s a lot more honest to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day and talk about what really happened, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

I like a day off as much as the next person. It just seems like we should be more careful with our shared history, and more conscious of how our decision to frame that narrative reflects on our culture, and on people who continue to experience racism and oppression as a result of the brutality of history.

Dragon Affirmations

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I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. People don't understand me, but they like me. Some of them. Some of the time.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. People don’t understand me, but they like me. Some of them. Some of the time.

It’s been a roller coaster of a week. I have seriously failed to clear off the top of my desk for five consecutive days. In fact, in trying to put the front room back together following some drywall improvements and in advance of a visit from my father-in-law and his new bride, I ended up dumping a bunch more stuff on the desk. It’s probably too trashed right now for even the cat to get on top and knock things to the floor.

Basically what I’ve accomplished today, aside from have the flaming death metal airbags in my Honda replaced and receiving my 7th or 8th (I’ve lost count) Review of the Day on Yelp, occurred purely on the interpersonal level.

As far as creative achievement, I got nothin’. Thus, mirror affirmations.

A Barrel of Monkeys

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Don't be sad. You're still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

Don’t be sad. You’re still more fun than a barrel of fish or a barrel or pickles.

When you think about it, a barrel of monkeys sounds like a real nightmare. Once you open it up, the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak. You’re not going to be stuff them back in. There are going to be raucous, unsanitary primates swinging from your chandeliers and diving into your Cheerios.

I guess when you think about it, sliced bread really isn’t all that great either. It’s not like cutting a slice of bread is some kind of major imposition on your time or energy.

The thing that would really improve my life in a way remarkable enough for me to craft a metaphor concerning its greatness would be a housekeeping robot, one that could tidy up and accomplish deep cleaning tasks. My allergies would especially appreciate a non-breathing apparatus capable of dusting on a regular basis. Yes, I intended to clean my office today, and yes, I chose to do something more interesting and meaningful with my time. So it’s a little bit gross in here, but not as bad as it would have been had someone unleashed an actual barrel full of monkeys.

Dragon Comics 114

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I really do have a headache and The Man is asleep so there's no one to block out the light.

I really do have a headache and The Man is asleep so there’s no one to block out the light.

Even without a migraine, I’m pretty photosensitive, which is why you’ll see me wearing sunglasses 90% of the time the sun’s up, and sometimes even when it’s not. With a migraine, the light sensitivity is much worse. But I’m committed to drawing webcomics every day, or something like that, so here I am powering through. And as I’m sitting here I’m seeing these aggressive flashing lights out of the corner of my eye. Something weirdly sharp and sort of painful and disorienting. But I’m only seeing them at certain angles, to the point that I’m starting to worry that I’m hallucinating or having a stroke or something. Every time I try to get a line on what’s bouncing off my eyeballs, the lights disappear, like a UFO whenever there’s a reliable witness in the area.

Eventually, though, I look over my shoulder, at which point I notice that there are 2 cops standing in my driveway, and the lights on their squad car is flashing violently all over the place. So I’m not having a health crisis. I just live in a horrible neighborhood.

When Harry Potter Fanfic Mashups Go Wrong

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I guess I could have worked a lizard in there somehow but I could only think of Daniel Pinkwater novels and a minor character from Fullmetal Alchemist.

I guess I could have worked a lizard in there somehow but I could only think of Daniel Pinkwater novels and a minor character from Fullmetal Alchemist and this is weird enough as it is. Do kids still read Daniel Pinkwater?

The odds that anyone gets all 5 references here are kind of slim. Harry Potter’s pretty universal among a certain cohort, as is Snoopy, but there’s not a tremendous overlap there. I’m sure kids recognize Peanuts, but I don’t know how many of them, outside of the music theater group, know You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. A lot of people love His Dark Materials but the first movie flopped and it’s not as popular as it ought to be considering how the book is. Guardians of Ga’hoole is a terrific story, too, but it’s even more obscure. The movie was straight up awful, and there are so many books that you have to be pretty committed to the story. I highly recommend it, though, if you would like to read something that riffs off of Lord of the Rings, is written for kids, and stars a large cast of owls. And then I threw in a terrible, but catchy, pop music song from 5 years ago.

So, like everything I do, its potential appreciative audience is already minuscule before I even ask anyone to read it. But here it is. The idea’s been cracking me up for a couple weeks already. I’m dying to see if anyone else gets even a chuckle out of it.

At least it pleases me.

I like this black and white style too. I’ve been using color and fancy backgrounds to cover up inadequacies in the artwork, but it’s time to scale back and let the lines start speaking for themselves. I have another idea that will look better in this style too, or at least in black and white with only a few colored accents.

Fractured Imperfection Mandala

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Sometimes you've just got to slam it out. With a baseball bat.

Sometimes you’ve just got to slam it out. With a baseball bat.

I actually like how off kilter this mandala came out, like broken shards reassembled, some pieces shattered to powder, never to be seen again, the remaining chunks exhibiting some semblance of organization. Fractured. Imperfect. Also, the colors remind me of pastels, rather than crayons.

Today I finally got a hold on that comic I’ve been mulling around for weeks. It’s no Legoceros and Arasquid, but it’s something. And it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Of course, while I happen to find it amusing as hell, the odds that any individual will get all 5 references that contribute to the joke are fairly thin, because I am obscure. Anyway, you can not get all 5 references tomorro

Pumpkin Is the Spice of Life

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Look, it's that time of year and I really felt like it needed to be said.

Look, it’s that time of year and I really felt like it needed to be said.

It may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s my opinion. I like pumpkin pie as much as the next person, and I can enjoy pumpkin (strictly in the months of October and November) in a variety of forms: soup, pie, perhaps in a savory dish like ravioli. I even enjoyed the unusual mashup of the Danish kringle with pumpkin yesterday. But, I have to draw the line. I don’t need my tea to taste like pumpkin spice, or my Oreos. Pumpkin spice, I believe, goes with actual pumpkin.

Anyway, I’m trying to get into the Halloween spirit. I need to find someone who wants to watch all the scary movies that have come out recently: The Babadook, Good Night, Mommy, The Visit. (No spoilers!) And The Man has acquired a pumpkin, which he promises to turn into a pie. Typically, I do the cooking around here, but I don’t have a lot of patience for fidgety things like pie crust, especially since I like mine gluten-free, which makes them twice as tricky. But the man is good at measuring things in a way that I am not. In fact, in his day job, he is a metrologist: a measurer of very, very small distances for very, very precise purposes. So he makes the crust. And since he’s making the crust, he can make the rest of it too while he’s at it.

So, while it seems obvious that the world disagrees with me on this, given the proliferation of weird pumpkin spice flavored things this season, and the fact that every year there are more of them in stores, I like to make a distinction. Pumpkin spice is for pumpkins, and you’ll never change my mind.

Black Cat Bulletin Board

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A cat is watching

A cat is watching

Happy October! My funny little black cat, who has been the subject of at least two other blog posts, gets her chance to shine in the spotlight, or rather, glower in the shadows. I knew I wanted to do a black cat bulletin board this year, and I was trying to figure out how that would look on a black background. At the same time, after searching for relevant text, I found this Rainer Maria Rilke poem:

"Black Cat" by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Black Cat” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Ah, “invisible.” That was the key. I went in yesterday and blocked out the poem, then inked it with a silver metallic Sharpie, which died halfway though, so I had to run out to the nearest Walgreen’s and buy their last silver Sharpie, but even so, the text didn’t take that long. Maybe an hour. I went back in today to put it together. I had some big ideas about making the eyes sparkle with the gold and bronze Sharpies, but it didn’t look as great as I thought it would, and the bronze Sharpie was dying, even though it was new in the package. Anyway, yellow is more striking.

My kitty is fierce.

My kitty is fierce.

I used black construction paper for the ears, nose and mouth (the background is black butcher paper, so it’s a subtle difference) and the whiskers are the silver Sharpie again. Very minimalist, which took a lot less time than usual, but I did spend quite a while on the eyes.

More Insomnia Comics

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The heavenly cloud sleeping Monica dreams that she can write comics in her sleep.

The heavenly cloud sleeping Monica dreams that she can write comics in her sleep.

My inability to full recharge my brain each night on a regular basis is an endless source of inspiration. Sorry if the final panel is too creepy. I promise you, it’s worse on the inside. I was up until 3:30 or 4 a.m. last  night, and then up at 6 because the A/C finked out again and it’s still about 100 degrees here once the sun rises. And even though I fell back asleep after helping The Man fix it, FedEx rang the doorbell at 9. So my head is buzzing.

Also started a new bulletin board and finished a Panels piece today. Ain’t no rest for the wicked.