Salon, more detail

Salon, the underpainting

Just starting in on the painting- more soon! Thank you to everyone who sent birthday greetings! It helped!

ckb

This Little Piggy Went To Paris

Today was my birthday. I'm 56! I never wanted to get this old, but I'm here, so that's that.

Salon

First sketch for a painting for our friends T & P in SRQ. Surprise!

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Bluette

...with art by Joann Miro. What could be better?

Water Bearer

A quick water color sketch. I had a good day today, bought five boxwood plants, a couple of globe spruces and other nice things to plant around the edges of Bunny Hill. Also some gardenias for my window box. Mailed sample sheets to four children's book publishers. And then I sat out on the bench in the back and watched the rabbits practice their ultra slow mambo in the back yard. One rabbit, the girl I think, is gray with flecks of rusty brown and white and has a very smooth coat. The other seems male to me, with larger features and thick, rough fur. Just beautiful!

Damon Lindelof

Elvin genius,
co-creator and
show runner
(with Carlton Cuse)
of LOST;
he is also a
new daddy
and the
modern
Jules Verne.

Bunny Wall

This little Brush Rabbit bunny has boldly ventured very close to the little knee high wall just outside my studio window. His visits are so frequent I have to make sure he isn't there (and make a bit of a racket) before bringing Duncan our Scotty out in the yard.

TONIGHT IS LOST!

This show is an eye-opener. Especially if you are a writer. It challenges you to try to see the next bend in the road, to gather where the story is going. It forces you to run ahead, to scout the terrain. It makes you think like a writer. It charges your juices and in my case it makes me want to write!

The Secret Library

We have a library/guest room, in our Bunny Hill home. It looks a lot like this, except there are no foxes in residence (that we know of) and there are no giant roots poking through the roof. Yet.

I spent an hour last night huddled in a closet with four dogs and a weather radio. No, it's not some new therapy; Sioux Falls had a tornado alert! We have no basement here and the only windowless rooms are the closets. I brought a phone in with me and when Carroll called I said "Guess where I am?" I felt pretty silly, but still it was better than being pulled into a vortex. I think.

It looks like I am going to have a couple of gallery shows next year (of my non-Hagar work). That could be fun! I'll post more when I know more.

Viva Chihuahuas!

I love my Chihuahua's!

Brush Rabbit

Just before dusk I spied this rabbit at the far end of bunny hill. I grabbed my binoculars and a sketch pad and tried to draw him that way. Both rabbits in this sketch are the same one: I started to realize my geometry was off on sketch left and started reworking it in sketch right. I think I got the face and markings better in drawing 1 and the body shape, small and round as a rock, better in 2.

A family walked by on the far side of the chain link fence and he startled. I thought I lost him and then saw another rabbit some yards away. He looked scruffier and more dark gray and indeed, it proved to be a second rabbit. After a while the first rabbit closed in and a rabbit dance ensued, very much like a toreador and a bull. Rabbit 2 would charge and rabbit 1 would hop high in the air, rabbit 2 passing beneath. This went on for minutes and was quite fascinating. Mating or territory? Or even play?

I looked for rabbits in Wiki (click title above to go there) and after some surfing found that my rabbits are most likely not the Cottontails I thought them to be, but instead are Brush Rabbits. They have a 1 acre range, smaller still for females, so Bunny Hill truly is a bunny hill. I just love these guys!

The Player

Bunny Ears!

Here are my friend Ken Alvine (in the leather jacket) and I surrounded with other cartoonists at the wonderful Sioux Falls Cartoonist exhibition opening at Michelle's on Phillips Avenue, Friday night. It was a blast!

And in spite of my hermit-like tendencies, the next night Carroll and I went to the Midori Concert at the South Dakota Symphony and had a magical evening! Thank you, Angela and David! We had big, big fun!

Book of love - The Acappella Swingers

The Book of Love

"The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures
and instructions for dancing
But I... I love it when you read to me
And you... You can read me anything."

-Stephin Merritt

Irish Patchwork

My favorite hat.

"Only love interests me,
and I am only in contact with things I love."

Marc Chagall

Hagar the Green

Tuesday the 22nd is Earth Day!

A bunch of us syndicated cartoonists have done special Earth friendly comic strips. Hope you will peek at Hagar in the morning. Nobody's Horrible all the time!

Lucky was my first dog and I was her first boy. We were born on the same day in 1952.

She was reddish brown with black and tan and some white. She had dark Beagle ears that hung down in little "U" shapes. They popped up when someone said something interesting like, "Wanna go out?" or "Go for a ride?" or "Where's the baby?"

I was the baby. My father worked at home with my mother and older brother and myself. It was nice having everyone around. But sometimes mom would be cooking, or dad would be working, or brother didn't want me bothering him. But I wasn't alone. There was always Lucky. She was my baby sitter, nanny, fuzzy warm breathing pillow, best friend in the universe. And I now realize she thought of me as her puppy.

I was a little confused on this issue too. I bonded with her right away and as far as I knew, I was a dog, too. After all, we were smaller than everyone else, we both lived on the carpet, we were never apart and we were the only people in the family that couldn't speak.

One day I was in the yard of our small house in South Orange, New Jersey. And I somehow managed to get to my feet and toddled like a wind-up toy in rompers, right out of the garden gate. Lucky followed.

At some point she must have realized that this was wrong and that we were getting impossibly far from the house with the tall people who knew the secret of opening the dog food cans, and she began to get very, very nervous.

A woman was putting away groceries in a neighborhood about a mile from our house. She heard a dog barking loudly at her front screen door and when she went to investigate, the dog led her towards the road, running a few steps, looking back and barking. Intrigued, the woman followed, and what she found rattled her.

A baby, walking down the middle of the busy street, cars and trucks ZOOMING by on either side. Lucky ran into the street and circled me, again and again, barking at the cars, barking at the woman, always staying between me and danger.

"I'd never seen anything like it," the woman told my parents. "That dog saved your baby's life! She's a hero!"

In time I did learn to speak. I learned the secret of opening the cans of dog food. How odd that must've been for Lucky. On the one hand, she had someone on the inside now, someone who she could always count on for a little extra Milk-bone or treat. On the other hand it had to be hard to see her youngest slowly becoming, you know... human.

By 1960 we lived in Connecticut on a road as long and twisted as my grandfather's Blackthorn shillelagh. Lucky would walk me to the bus, watch me get on and then would run after it as far as she could. Then she would go back to the front porch and wait for the bus to bring me home in the afternoon. It always did, and she was always there.

When I was nine, Lucky got in a terrible fight with a neighbor's dog and her beautiful ear was terribly torn and bleeding. We brought her into the basement studio and my father had me keep my hand over the wound while he called Doctor Guthrie, the town of Wilton's veterinarian. This is back when doctors of all stripes still made house calls. He was there in minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

There was blood everywhere. Doctor Guthrie packed the wound and gently pulled my frozen hand away as he started to sew the ear back in place. "You saved that dog's life, boy," he told me, from his great height.

I had wept so much I was dry. I croaked out a hoarse whisper, "she saved me..."

She lived a few more years. Her face turned sweetly gray and her gate slowed. She didn't chase cars anymore. Except one time. My parents took my brother, my new adopted sister and I to Europe when I was thirteen. Lucky stayed behind with a friend. When we came home in two weeks, she was so excited she ran and jumped and played like she was young again. But alas, she wasn't.

Knock, knock, knock knock knock...

The garbage man stood at the front door holding her in his arms. She'd been trying to chase the truck, he said and then she just collapsed, as if someone had cut her strings. He was crying. We were all of us, crying.

"What about this one?" My father said, drumming his fingers against the glass. The tiny, Autumn-colored dog chugged over and stood against the glass. "I don't know," my mother said, looking around nervously. She was trying to read the license information taped inside the window when she noticed the dogs birthdate. "Dik, look at this- she was born on May 16th, this year- the day Chris was born! What are the odds of that happening?"

"Well, that settles it," said my dad. They were Irish-Americans, and as such believed in signs and portents. "She's coming home with us. She's one lucky dog!"

My grandfather used to say, "Never give your heart to a dog". Well, too late. I loved Lucky and always will. I've had many dogs in my life and I've loved them all. But Lucky will always have a special place in my heart.

She raised me from a pup.

Bunny on the Hill

Yesterday, I spied this bunny in a thicket. I can't tell you what it does for me to see one of these blessed, magical creatures nearby.

My new desk arrived yesterday as well, which is very good news. It's an architect's desk from Pottery Barn and I just love it. It will be especially helpful to me as I now have a separate desk for computing/writing and for art/drawing/painting. Believe me this is good. Having one desk with watercolor pots, computer drives, a light box, speakers and art paper all vying for space was chaotic, counter-productive and just plain bad mojo!

Today, I went for a stress test. It was not nearly as bad as I feared (but nothing ever is). The test was induced chemically. Last time I did this they had me running on a treadmill in a paper gown. This new method is a vast improvement!

When I got home, I tried, unsuccessfully, to save a wounded bird; walked dogs; had a great phone call with a new friend and started rebuilding my studio.

Life is good! Enjoy it all.. and make sure you stick around until all the credits run. Sometimes there's a little surprise at the end.

More Elephanto

H. is an elephant with a photographic memory. I'm working on the rest!

Carrot Cake

From Starbucks! The hardest part was not eating this while I was painting it. I blew the perspective on the fork. Ah, well! It's Sunday. Who needs perspective?

The Death of Charlie Pace

"So much for fate!" The greatest moment from the finest show on TV, LOST.

The Accidental Bunny

This melting ice puddle outside our front door looked strangely bunny-like to me. Then again maybe I have Rabbit Fever! In the woids of Bugs Bunny: "First you see spots before your eyes... then they start spinning 'round and 'round... and then all of a sudden- everything goes black! Hahahaha!"

Walkabout

Sadly, I had to turn down an invitation to speak locally today. I hated to do it, but I have been inundated with dozens of invitations like this since we got here and I just can't do them all. Imagine what it's like to pack up everything you own and suddenly move a thousand miles away. Most of our stuff is still in boxes in a storage unit- and that was broken into last week! I hope everybody will bear with me, just until the boxes are empty and the house is set up.

Invisible Man

He's a real nowhere man!

Cherry in a Saki Cup

Wild Ride

This is my chihuahua's cloth rabbit toy shoved into one of my Croc shoes. Art is not pretty!

François Crozat

Artwork by François Crozat © 1989 Barrons Educational Systems, Inc.

Wow. Just look at this painting!

It's one image of many from a beautiful children's board book. The warmth and detail of this artist's work is humbling. As near as I can Google, the artist is about 80 now and lives in France. The little rabbit wanders away from his family, at first enjoying the adventure. But soon the world turns dark and unfamiliar. He eventually rejoins his mother and siblings with the help of a kindly hedgehog. Just lovely work.

Every golden work like this is an alchemist's stone to me. Inspiring me to dare hope that I can someday make golden dreams from my own leaden pencils...

More About My Amyrilis

I transferred Sunny and Bunny the Amyrilis sisters to my window box today. Hope they make it! Here's a sketch of them when they were younger.

Shadow bunnies!

Friend Emmet sent this today and I had to share. Real magic in this wonderful world!

Single Cell

I drew this in the Minneapolis airport with a Pilot gel pen. We were on our way back home from Las Vegas.

Sudoku

When in doubt, doodle. It's Monday! Tonight The Big Band Theory is on, so smart, so funny, so true!

It's snowing like crazy here. I can see five inches on the wall outside my studio. It's beautiful, but will probably keep FED EX from getting in and me from getting out. Quelle damage!

Just the best day

I was at the SCBWI Dakotas Spring Conference all day and I had the best time! I met a lot of great people, talented, determined, kindred spirits all. Artists, writers, editors, teachers. I'm very, very tired now but blissed out.

It was so great to be in a room full of people with a shared dream.

Eddie

aka Lead Dog, aka Eduardo; my beloved brother-in-law. Painted this in Las Vegas. It doesn't really look like him at all, doesn't capture his wit or charm, but I like making little, on-the-fly sketches & paintings when I can. Eddie's just a great guy.

Glass of Crayons

One of my favorite things is to discover a glass of crayons on a table in a favorite bistro. This was at Spezia earlier tonight, a wonderful place. I had a pear salad, some spaghetti and a lemonade. I was in heaven (but without the hassle of actually dying).

The Black Cat

More about synchronicity!

Today a friend stopped by to see us and as we all sat around the living room table he asked if we'd seen any cats in the yard. I said no, but quickly added that there was a black cat we'd seen a few times just before we bought the house. But we had not seen it for many months.

As I was saying this, I stood from the table and turned my head and the black cat was not five feet from me on the other side of the front window, running! I was so stunned by this synchronicity that I ran to the front door and flung it open. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

Do Bunnies Wonder?

Happy Easter from Bunny Hill

I had the best moment today. I worked in the studio most of the day and finally about three o'clock I decided to take a break. I found this pair of rabbit ears I've had laying around my office forever and I popped them on my head and silently went into my wife's office. She finally looked up and saw me and snorted. "Go show Luvy," she said.

So I went into the hallway to go show Luvy (my mother in law). Before I reached her door to knock, her door opened up and she came out carrying a basket of laundry. She was wearing a pair of bunny ears too! Jung called stuff like this synchronicity. I love it!

Time enough for friends

For Laura Wells

The last time I saw you you admired my Kit Cat Clock
and I always meant to send it to you.
It never kept good time
and now it keeps none at all.
But I will keep that time
and other times
in my heart forever
where no leaf turns and falls
no minute hand advances
and there's always
time enough for friends.

Goin' To The Chapel

More hi-jinx from our daughter's Vegas Wedding 2.0. Herein my son-in-law Dan helps load the stretch Hummer with a random sampling of humanity from both families. A splendid time was guaranteed for all!

Bond, Gold Bond

This is a color pencil drawing I did this morning while trying to get my eyes to open. My cold is passing and better still, the snow on the roof has melted! Spring is almost here. Yea!

The Changling

My family is terribly Irish. The Browne's, The Kelly's, The Haggarty's, The Hosey's, we're Druids and Celts, through and though.

One of my favorite family stories in the Haggarty clan (my maternal grandmother's side) is that one of our ancestors was a Changling. A Changling is an Elvin or fairy child left by the wee folk in place of a stolen human child.

Although I've never had my DNA checked for the elvin genetic marker, I love thinking that I have a little Elf blood in me. It would certainly explain a lot.