Category Archives: Uncategorized

Autumn Desert Flowers I: Mexican Bird of Paradise

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Creating 3 bulletin boards that all matched was starting to feel kind of burdensome, and it occurred to me that the bulletin boards don’t all have to go together, so instead of starting with a grand theme, I decided to start with one idea. This is the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Latin name Caesalpinia pulcherrima) aka the Peacock Flower (aka a lot of other things). It’s a ubiquitous ornamental here in southern Arizona, but it seems to be native to the Caribbean, and is specifically associated with the Barbados, but also with Suriname. I couldn’t find a definitive place of origin, but I didn’t look very hard either.

Anyway, they’re very showy and stunning, very complex blossoms. The flowers begin to bloom from the bottom of the pyramid of buds and as each layer shrivels a new layer opens.

This image already seems to resonate with its audience. There are 2 Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes in the courtyard where the bulletin boards hang, and most of the kids figured it out. The actual flowers are less than an inch wide; these paper simulacra are probably 20 times larger than life.

Jesus Stands with the Marginalized

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This is a commission and it’s hand lettered so I guess I should put it here. There is some controversy at a local school district and those TPUSA d-bags will be there to scream about how their religion requires them to hurt marginalized people, so of course the Coyote, who is also a one of those radical priests who think Jesus wanted people to feed the hungry and welcome the immigrant and support the marginalized will be there too, wearing his collar and carrying this sign.

Summoning the Autumnal Spirit Triptych 2025, with Great Horned Owl and Amanita

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This one took 5 days! I mismeasured the letters in both directions so you really have to view the first 2 of these boards together because the text cut off in the middle and spills over.

Sometimes art is about forging forward regardless of existing mistakes.

Last week the Coyote and I were skinny dipping when suddenly the sky opened up in a much needed monsoon burst, so we heaved ourselves out of the pool and took cover under the porch, from which vantage porch we observed a juvenile great horned owl appearing to dance in the rain for 5 or 10 minutes.

The Coyote told me that this behavior is intended to keep their wings from being saturated so they can still fly even though they’re wet, but it did look like a lot of fun. Joyful.

I actually made the third panel first, and I absolutely delighted myself with every detail.

I was almost finished Friday and I potentially could have stopped but there was too much blank space, so I came back and added the stars and the blooms.

The feathers and the brooms all have 3-dimensional details that the kids may very well destroy but that’s what happens when you make ephemeral art for elementary students.

Lettuce Rejoice

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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.

13 Ways of Looking at The Waters 5: The Autumn Prince and the Summer Queen, page 1

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I haven’t said anything about the illuminated initial caps yet. I drew most of them before I drew the illustrations. Some of them I had a very clear vision and others I just sort of made it up as I went. I always knew that the first comic would start “Once upon a time,” and the initial cap would have a little farm scene with a barn inside.

This one also was very clear in my mind. I actually have that same garden swing, which The Man built for me in the backyard. I could not get it right. The arms and legs and bodies weren’t sitting properly in the swing no matter how many times I drew it. I made the made model with me for a reference pic. Then it was easier to adjust.

Feigned Glass Window I

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This commission for the Coyote is part 1 of 3. I finished it last night, and would have finished it sooner, but it took 4 days for my materials to arrive. When I finally got the last bits assembled, they looked markedly different from the rest of the work because the glue wasn’t dry yet, so I waited another day to take the picture.

Needless to say, this was difficult to photograph and the true majesty of the colors does not come through. Everything is washed out and leaning toward green. The inside of the mouth is actually purple, but this seemed to be the best I could do with the light available.

The backing is a panel from a tent pavilion, like the kind you can easily set up on the beach or something. The colored part is transparent packaging wrap I got at Michael’s. Every color has a bunch of other colors in it, so you get different iridescent effects in different light, or by layering the colors. I made layers of colors with matte medium in between, which changed the way the light interacted with it. The metallic lines are 1/4″ silver washi tape. The entire work is about 6 feet long and 3 feet high.

This one probably took close to 12 hours because I had no idea what I was doing. The subsequent panels should be much quicker. This project highlights my commercial failings as an artist. Here I have invented and mastered a ridiculous technique that no one else is using, and which I will probably never use again.

Stand by for panels 2 and 3.

Picture Books in Winter

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Forgot to post my holiday bulletin board last week. That fireplace does look pretty cool but I was kicking myself because I mismeasured somehow, which shouldn’t surprise me because I do it every time, but the chimney’s too short and the rest is so wide it almost covered the text and didn’t leave any room for picture books.

Anyway, this is my cozy winter bulletin board. I don’t remember this Robert Louis Stevenson poem from my childhood but it seemed perfect for the occasion. There are more stanzas to “Picture Books in Winter.” This is the last one.

Funny that it’s a poem for children about childhood but it’s really about the kind of nostalgia that kids can’t experience.

Lettering is freehand based on lowercase but with all characters having approximately the same height.

Gotta Get Away?

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Some people are islands, not in the sense that they stand completely alone, unaffected by anyone around them (that’s not even a apt metaphor; islands are obviously impacted by the weather, the water, geothermal activity, and climate change) but in the sense that they offer safety and security in otherwise inhospitable situations. If you’ve been treading water for so long you can’t keep your head up for another moment and are in danger of going under for good, an island is exactly what you need to survive.

Happy Halloween Season!

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The “G” in Gila is pronounced like an “H” in case you were wondering.

Hooray! Halloween! I’m definitely one of those people who believes the entire month of October is intended to build up to Halloween. In fact, I made this one at the end of September, and I think I did an excellent job of creating something that suited the entire autumn and can stick around until after All Souls’. I love how the entire design came out (even though I made mistakes with my own font) and may try to preserve it when I swap it out for my holiday design. I was thinking about making it all summer! If only I had also been thinking about all my fancy, patterned scissors, I could have save myself a lot of time cutting it out.

Gila monsters are venomous lizards, one of two venomous lizards that live in the region. They are not super interested in biting humans. In fact, The Man and I once attended a lecture about venomous reptiles of the Sonoran Desert, and the herpetologist delivering it asserted that there is a profile of the sort of person who gets bit by a Gila monster, and that nobody who doesn’t fit this profile ever turns up at the ER looking for help for Gila monster bites. The profile is thus: a young man, between the ages of 20 and 40, heavily tattooed, under the influence of alcohol. This tells you a lot about how dangerous Gila monsters are: not at all, unless you are the kind of idiot who gets drunk and harasses native fauna.

They literally have “monster” in the name. Why would you pick it up?

At any rate, their bite is only mildly neurotoxic and there are no recorded cases of death by Gila monster, although I gather it’s not exactly a fun experience either. I’ve lived here 17 years and never seen one in the wild.