Glancing through some old sketchbooks only confirms my place among the ranks of the peculiar. I can’t decipher a lot of the thumbnails any more (some of them I still can) but my tendency to jot random small notes in an effort to explain myself to my future self provides no insight whatsoever. Some of them are kinda interesting in their own right, though, and I reproduce a few below for the viewers amusement.
Some favorite phrases include:
Sailing the sea of asparagus
They call him “Pimpbat!”
The porcupine & the rat were good friends, but should perhaps have considered the logistics of a long sea voyage a little more carefully.
“Blessed art thou among vegetables!” (This appears to be an annunciation of some kind of vegetable, as the turnip speaking has wings and a halo. Elsewhere on the page, a carrot is crucified while a navel orange in Roman garb looks on.)
birdfeeder–full of fish–?pelican?
The Mushroom Stair
Toad & the wet Snocket
An incomprehensible thumbnail which I evidentally attempted to clarify by drawing arrows labelled “purple thingy” and “rocks.” For once, the use of “thingy” provides no additional insight.
Birth of a spoon! (Death of a spoon?)
I have a cube!
Woman talking to weasel rider
dead leaves falling from j– (This could be “jug” or “jar” as my handwriting is crap.)
“Holy smokes!” the preacher shouted
In the fire he lost his hair
Now his head resembles heaven
for there is no parting there.
–(My grandmother used to recite this. I think it’s from the song “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” but I’m not sure.)
Lullaby for leviathan Sleeping sea serpent whale? mermaids? singing lullaby
“When the Tao is gone from the Empire, men go astray/warhorses breed on sacred ground.” (I assume that’s from the Tao Te Ching.)
A grim little thumbnail entitled “After the Honeymoon” includes this big of doggerel:
The owl and the pussycat went to sea,
In a beautiful pea green boat.
And three days out
the food ran out.
The pussycat sighed, with a tear in her eye–
But hey, it beats drinking your own urine and other indignities that castaways are often subjected to.
Tengu in harness (I kinda wish I could decipher the thumbnail on this one–it looks like two pointy blobs in the stocks.)
Dream – Bring me back a wave from the Lake of Dreams, and being me back a stone from the Sea of Stones, and and being me back…something of the something. Damn. (That’s verbatim.)
There’s just something inherently wrong about a mkele-mbembe pin-up.
Ram w/porno horns!
Stone Cold Steve Moa!
Cities in flower–iris colonnades?
(Yes, I know, somebody’ll say “I’d love to see a painting of “X”! I, too, would probably love to see this painting. There are other factors at work in the ‘ol hindbrain that determines what paintings actually crawl out of the sketchbook onto the page, though, and someday, I hope to figure out exactly what those factors are.)
