This is obviously just the attribution to the quote, and I was kind of out of steam. But the cactus came out cool. I made the saguaros wavy because that’s actually how they look when it rains. They store up so much water they get little rolls like fat. When they don’t get any rain, they shrivel up and get skinny and look sad. I like them fat and jolly like this.
The prickly pear has one pad shaped like heart, because when you go among prickly pears, there’s always one pad shaped like a heart.
Usually I guess I go a little brighter for the summer bulletin board, but overall I’m satisfied. I know it’s not summertime for most of the country yet, but it’s definitely summertime here in the desert.
This is the second part of the Joseph Wood Krutch quote from A Desert Year. This image is also kind of minimalistic compared to my other work, and the photo also doesn’t quite do it justice.
If you zoom in you can see that the raindrops have a sort of Eric Carle thing going on. I wanted then to look sort of luminous and I thought I could use use the metallic markers on the black paper but that wasn’t bright enough. So I colored a variety of blues with a bit of green and purple to cover a bit of white paper and cut the raindrops from that, and the effect is pretty good. I added some staples to make it look wetter.
The Desert Year is a lovely piece of naturalist writing originally published in 1952, by a professor named Joseph Wood Krutch. He wasn’t a desert dweller—he was an east coast guy—but he came out to Tucson once and found himself enchanted. So when his next sabbatical came around, he took a year to immerse himself in the Sonoran Desert, joyfully observing the land, the climate, the flora, and the fauna, and recording his observations into this classic work of nonfiction.
These bulletin boards are a bit bare compared to some of my work. I’m not sure this picture does the “clouds” justice. I was trying to make them look textured , with a silver lining. It’s more clear in real life. I could have done more. But I’m presenting my comic to the American Literature Association conference this week and I needed to be reasonable with my time. I was trying to finish this Friday but I lost an hour dealing with my insurance company and that was that. I had to come in today. But this was my last day of the 2026 school year.
Letters are all cut freehand in a font I just created based on curved lines. I don’t know why H and A came out so much smaller than everyone else but it kind of works.
This is the first part of a quote he wrote about his first glimpse of the monsoon. The second part is on the the middle bulletin board. The monsoon is still a ways off this year, but they are calling for an El Niño year, which can only be good for us if it actually happens
It didn’t quite match the vision in my head but on the whole I’m pretty pleased with this card. The lettering is basically balanced and the cat is pretty cute. I got some very wonderful new art pens and all the fine lines are from that set, and then the thick ones are Sharpies.
Our school mascot is a lion and this card is for the outgoing librarian, who sadly had to leave yesterday. But hopefully she carries the spirit of the lion with her wherever she goes.
People keep asking me what it is and I’m like, “It’s very obviously a fish with a mustache wearing a top hat.” A fancy koi fish, to be precise. Like how is that not obvious? I feel like, while I may not be the greatest artist in the world, when I make a picture of a fish with a mustache wearing a top hat, it looks exactly like a fish with a mustache wearing a top hat.
It goes with the jackalope and the catterflies. I actually finished it last week but I was so tired I forgot to take a picture of it. He took so much extra time to make because I accidentally put his face on sideways and it was a lot of work to fix it and cover up the mistake.
The sakura blossoms, of course, symbolize the fleeting nature of life, youth, and beauty.
Originally I was going to make 7 of these “part real, part imaginary” banners because there are 7 columns but already there is a giant sun? sunflower? occupying one of them and I think it’s possible I might be asked to create a large Dewey Decimal System poster for another, plus it’s time to change out the bulletin boards and then comes the mad rush to lay out the literary journal and get that to the printer’s so it’s ready for the release party, immediately after which I’m going to Chicago to present my new comic book at the American Literary Association convention.
So, we’ll see. But this fish with a mustache and a top hat is a vision realized. Originally I thought he might also wear a monocle but that would just be silly, right?
As promised, the second set of fun chimineas and fiesta flags.
And here’s a bonus:
Not much to say about this. I had fun with it but there was so much going on in my life it took me like 3 weeks to finish. Tomorrow is the last day before break.
This is probably the latest winter holiday bulletin board I ever did: Friday is the last day of school and I just got it up yesterday. I’m not thrilled with the fact that the flags are just suspended in space but I needed to be done. I spent a lot of hours on it but I never have enough time.
But this is a very Tucson kind of scene. I love that chiminea on the left and wish it were real and in my back yard.
I noticed the kinders all putting their hands up to the fires like they were trying to warm up. I must add that, even though it was cold when I had this idea, it was 82° when I finished and the kinders were pretending to warm their hands by the fire. That’s Tucson for you.
I’ll post more chimineas tomorrow. The third bulletin board just says “STAY WARM” in big letters. I probably won’t post it at all because it’s not that interesting.
This banner was many weeks in the making, not because I spent a lot of time working on it, but because i spent so much time working on other things. There’s a lot to do in a library. So I stayed late twice this week and, I confess, cannibalized the flowers from another project completed some years back. Sometimes I save pieces of old bulletin boards. That saved a lot of time.
The Girl, who is now a young woman working on her mother’s hydroponic farm, asked me to draw this gag, which I did, 98%, and then just…forgot? It’s the brain fog.
I love this joke because it is accessible to an absolute tiny percentage of people. But it is very relevant if you like internet memes and you work on a hydroponic farm.
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.
qwertyvsdvorak 