Twitter… where it’s @

 

I will now be posting most of my doodles to Twitter. I will continue to post them here, as well, but blog traffic isn’t what it used to be. Twitter has more immediacy and reach in today’s culture (albeit at the expense of any sort of permanence), so I thought it prudent to utilize both as a way of spreading the craziness in my head.

C’mon, follow along as my doodles get twitterpated!

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The Joy of Driving?

I recently read an article about the driverless vans that made a trek of over 8000 miles from Italy to China. While this is impressive from a technical standpoint, all I could think was “Where’s the fun in that?”

It was hard enough for me to give up my manual transmission when I inherited my wife’s Honda as my daily driver. I felt I had been removed from truly being a part of the driving experience. I was no longer a driver…I was a steerer. (And don’t even get me started on how much I despise cruise control.)

Now this. A car that doesn’t even need a steerer. Blechh! Does anyone really want to be merely a passenger in their own car? Who has ever, when hit with the sudden impulsive desire for a spur-of-the-moment road trip, called up a cab? Or, upon seeing a beautiful, winding country road, thought “Man, if only someone would drive my car down that road for me!”?

So, if and when this technology becomes available in consumer vehicles, buy it if you so desire. But just know that there will be at least one car out there actually being driven by a human. One who has a BIG grin on his face as he downshifts into third and giddily steers his car into a backroad hairpin turn.

Exonerated by the Egghead Brigade

Okay, so these guys probably spent a fortune in taxpayer money to “discover” something I could’ve proven for free!

Take Note: Doodling Can Help Memory

Now, if I can just get a grant to prove my theory that society didn’t start having struggles with obesity until AFTER the government made companies start listing the fat and calorie contents on food packaging…..

{Thanks, Linda, for the heads up on the Yahoo article.}

Oh, wow! Mayonnaise!!

Wait. His name WASN’T Trippy?

Remember when you saw your first “Draw Me” ad? Maybe it was in the back of a comic book. Or on a matchbook cover. Or in TV Guide.

You old-timers know what I’m talking about..the ones that promised you an exciting career in cartooning if your rendition of the supplied art was deemed worthy of a scholarship to the prestigious Art Instruction Schools. There was Cubby the bear, a pirate, a cowboy…and, of course, Tippy the Turtle. My main memory of those ads was that, even as a kid, I knew there was no real creativity involved in just copying someone else’s art.

Don’t get me wrong. As a child, I did my fair share of copying other people’s work, and even (gasp!) tracing it on occasion. But I was working on my technique, not my creativity, in those instances, and I knew it. I think that differentiation is lost on a LOT of people.

Anyway, before I get too soap-boxy, I present for your viewing pleasure my take on Tippy. Hope you enjoy it. And if you can draw it exactly as it looks…well….you have too much time on your hands.

And you need therapy.

You! Come Pleat Me!!!!!

Soooooo sorry for the bad pun. But I saw Jerry Maguire listed on TV last night, and couldn’t help but doodling my rendition of what I believe to be the most horrifying, soul-destroying, shudder-inducing line ever uttered on the big screen.

You want a smile? I’ll give you a smile, pal!

It’s sad to watch a friend rapidly descend into perma-grinning insanity.

But it sure as heck is fun to draw them on their way down.

Surly Curmudgeons

Curmudgeons…hate to be around ’em….but I LOVE to doodle ’em.

That can actually be said for a lot of the things I doodle. Possums? They stink to high heaven, but add a certain comic element to a doodle that a plain old cat or dog would be hard pressed to provide. The same goes for dragons and gremlins.

The comic element part, not the stinky part.

However, I’ve never actually sniffed a dragon OR a gremlin. And now that I think of it, I imagine they’re both probably pretty pungent aroma-wise, too.

Then again, a dragon could exude the soft, sweet scent of peach blossoms, and a gremlin could smell like hot buttered bread. Mmmmmm…hot buttered bread. Makes you want to go out and bite a gremlin, don’t it?

The enlarged detail pics are there because I love the texture that colored pencils create, and that can only be fully appreciated when you zoom in. And also, if you stare a long time into the eyes of the curmudgeon on the left, you’ll be overcome by the irresistible urge to send me vast quantities of cash (small denominations, unmarked bills only, please).

Woot like ya mean it, dangit!

Woot…

It’s a little known word derived from the Norse wüt , which means “Hey, Dagmar…come get your stinky goat outta my cabbage patch before I have to go and get all viking on you!”*

It also just struck me as the appropriate sound for a guy with no bones to make as he’s straining with every fiber of his being to point at something.

*getting “viking” on someone is not really as scary as it sounds, depending on who’s doing the viking-ing. It can range from burning and pillaging all the way down to simply forcing someone to listen as you recite a 13-hour long epic poem about a man and a bucket of curdled milk. Or, if the person dealing out the vikingness happens to be a woman of rather zaftig proportions, she may choose to mete out her Nordic vengeance by singing opera.

This latter form, of course, has been banned by the UN and the Geneva Convention as cruel and unusual punishment. 

That is the ugliest… uuhhh… What IS that thing?

Mangy cat? Unusually hirsute iguana? Kinkajou with severe dust allergies? I don’t know.

But for some reason I’m really thankful right now that the internet isn’t scratch-n-sniff.