Tindaisies

Left: Original drawing and Right: Pancake doll based on drawing

Harold Wideman

Harold is prototype number 2 in my pancake doll project. The first was Alice O’Grady.  Harold is the father in  The Widemans vs the Narrowsmiths (link this) story that I drew three years ago.

Harold went together easier than Alice.  Reasons for this include a rudimentary pattern was already made and a procedure had been established – and the Jeff Beck CD didn’t seem to hurt, either.  =D

Front

Back

The biggest change I made with Harold was opting to embroider his facial features (and the hairy chest) rather than using permanent marker.

I really like the effect of the outlining stitches, they seem more “definite” and appropriate for a sewn object. The lenses in his glasses are painted on the cloth with acrylic paint. I also elected to not sew the limbs at the elbows and knees because that seemed to stiffen them which was opposite to the effect I’d wished for.

The hair was sewn directly into the seam where the front of the head joins the back, exactly like Alice’s hair only much shorter.

Left: Original drawing and Right: Pancake doll based on original drawing

Aunt Lucille

Lucille is the aunt in the infamous Baked Spaghetti Casserole story.  Lucille’s fingers are separated with black thread, in keeping with the quality of the simple line drawings that inspire me to make these dolls. Lucille came together yet easier than Harold, but her hair was a real challenge. Harold Wideman’s and Alice O’Grady’s hair were sewn into the seam that joined the back of the head to the front.

Back

With Lucille, because her beehive hairdo is piled on top of her head, the back would have been bare, which I found unacceptably odd. Four tries later, I arrived at a very simple solution.

Aunt Lucille's Baked Spaghetti Casserole

Here is the baked spaghetti casserole. I used variegated orange embroidery thread for the spaghetti and liked the glossy quality to the thread because it looks convincing enough to make around the mouth turn orange, as greasy spaghetti will do.

Hmmmm…..

Harold and Lucille and the Baked Spaghetti Casserole...

Here they are, together. The unfortunate thing is, Harold looks exceedingly uncomfortable. Is it because he has succumbed to the wiles of Aunt Lucille and is worried about Mrs Wideman finding out, or is it because he is worried he will be offered some of the Baked Spaghetti Casserole?

Maybe I should make Mrs Wideman next …!

Solomon Grundy

Where does the time go? Why does it seem the older we get, the faster time flies? The weeks zip by in a blink. I design a quarterly publication, three months pass by and before I know it, I am in meetings again.  I had my first meeting for the summer issue, today. As if that’s not enough, I’m staring at another approaching birthday in the upcoming week, in fact, I know a number of people whose birthdays are in April, but now I’m prattling – just practicing for my old age (which is how many quarterlies away)?

Solomon Grundy’s  entire life blows by in one short week.  The verse is  a 19th century nursery rhyme and each day represents the Seven Ages of Man. I admit, I like the Sesame Street version better:  poor Solomon Grundy washes a part of his left side each day and at the end of the week, only half of him is clean.

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end
Of Solomon Grundy

This is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday prompt “Fleeting”

Yeah, another poem.

Click the image for a larger, clearer version.

These days, I almost prefer writing these poems to drawing, maybe because I pressure myself far more when drawing. These poems are just fun to come up with.

They are the result of a combination of a beat running through my head, a germination of an idea and then conjuring up as many rhyming words that I can find and then fabricating relationships – as far fetched as necessary – between the words to make the whole thing work.

This poem is about not being afraid to think too big… or too small. I think. Either a deeper meaning is eluding me or this is as deep as it gets… in either case, the previous sentence applies.

Sailing

Henry McHale
Who’d never been further than the town of Snorzdale
One day built a boat from a metal lunch pail
That he got from a coupon in a heap of bulk mail
And set sail

With him he took: the finest brown ale,
a plate of steamed kale,
a well roasted quail,
one lobster tail,
and licorice he bought at a two-for-one sale.

He saw a blue whale
And a jet trail
He spent his time playing a diatonic scale
On a horn that he made from large a garden snail
And rendering his miniscule memoir into Braille

He ran into a gale
It registered 2 on the Beaufort Scale
And that was the most thrilling part of the tale.

A silly poem for this week’s Illustration Friday theme, which is canned. Isn’t it true that often people don’t see the true scope of their own talents?

Here is the poem for easier reading: (yes, I wrote it …)

Mary Margaret Ferdinand
canned.
Whatever it was she had on hand.

The breadth of her canned
collection spanned:
a minute hand,
a kick stand,
a wedding band,
an ampersand,
and a pineal gland.

Side by side the jars would stand,
in a line on her baby grand,
as Mary Margaret played Dixieland.

No one could make her understand
why her performance was in high demand.

She thought it was only because she canned.

This is a very quick, very silly cartoon I drew about a year ago.

When you’re a kid, you make sense of the world either by trying to figure it out for yourself, or by believing what wiser, older adults tell you…

When we were kids, my siblings and I thought those floaters you get in the front of your eyes came from eating too much cholesterol. Therefore, this drawing is a nod to all those childhood myths you either fabricated on your own, or a wives tale some well meaning adult told you.

So, here’s the story to go with the cartoon:

For anyone who came by here because they put “baked spaghetti casserole” into a search engine box, I am sorry I don’t have a recipe for you. Maybe one day I’ll even post one!

It appears that baked spaghetti casserole will never die.