Category Archives: Main

This is the first unfinished drawing I’ve posted, I don’t want to blow it by just trying to finish it and get it out of the way. The person who requested it asked for a drawing based on this poem by e.e. cummings:

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
hangs

breathless

I feel like I took the whole thing too literally, with the buildings hugging (based on this) and the pseudo Mona Lisa smile, but that’s just where I am, not in a super sophisticated place as an illustrator, just trying to work where I’m at. Maybe it’s done just like this.

We’ll see where life takes us tomorrow.

“California as a person”

“I would rather be sorry than safe”

This first drawing started out as Mark Twain, and then Jackson came up and said, “Oh, Einstein,” so of course then I put his head on a pole and added a bunny. I really wanted to start adding color to these, but if I bust out the colored pencils the people at the end of the line won’t see their drawings until there’s another Clinton in the White House (Chelsea, most likely).

I was not able to find a strict attribution for this quote, because as we all know the Internet loves photos of Einstein overlaid with quotes that he didn’t actually say. So the source was not impeccable (its earliest source is a book of Einstein quotes published in 1996) but of course I didn’t even bother to try to verify in until I’d finished the drawing. So that’s a lesson learned.

The direction for this second drawing was “a crow or crows.”

I didn’t mean for it to turn into a rejected New Yorker cartoon, but I wanted them to be talking and I wanted to incorporate the collective noun for a group of crows, which as you know is a murder. I don’t know if single crows ask to join established groups but I’m pretty sure they’re smart enough to ask politely.

Thus endeth Day Eleven of National Blog Posting Month.

Today’s drawing is a blog post in itself. I say that because it’s too long to be a Tweet. One-hundred and forty characters is fascist.

ILLUSTRATED BLOG POSTS, OMG. Please join me as I explore this exciting new direction.

I’m still not done e-mailing people to ask them what they want me to draw and it’s been a week! What the hell, me? If you haven’t heard from me, you will soon; or, if you didn’t put a note on your PayPal donation telling me what to draw, you can e-mail me your instructions (fussy at fussy dot org). Honestly, I spent the entire day organizing this stuff and only got one drawing done.

Just to be clear, no one has yet asked me to draw anything with a sneezing fetish or sickness theme, so that drawing capped the least-efficient day of drawing request fulfilling in drawing request-fulfilling history. I guess this one’s going to sit in the box waiting for just the right person to come along, and then we’ll put it on their tombstone after he or she has hacked his or her lungs up or has been struck down by The Ungodly Head Cold of 2012.

And now I have to go make ravioli. Why are there only 24 hours in a day? I need at least 36 to fit everything in.

You know what turns out to be everso just a little nerve wracking for someone who has plenty of electricity, a healthy child, and who doesn’t know what it’s like to have no home at all right now? Drawing pictures for people who have given you five dollars. I’m trying to stay loose and just sort of, you know, channel it — and I know nobody’s expecting a timeless work of art, but it’s been a little awkward getting started. However, as part of my life list pledge to draw every day and shame myself track my progress by posting my efforts, I am going to show you some of the stuff I’ve been dropping in the mail.

For my very first drawing I wanted to make an owl wearing overalls. I didn’t question the source of this inspiration, I just went for it. But look:

It’s a sad owl, and he’s got a barn owl face mixed with eared-owl ears, and he’s wearing an overalls barrel, and I have no idea what’s up with the smiling flower pots.

So then I thought, maybe instead of making up zoological problems for myself I should try to draw something that’s right in front of me, so I went outside and I ended up with this:

This wonderful donor specifically asked for a drawing with “no boobs” in it, so my constraint was to draw anything else in the world besides boobs. As you can see, I can work with those kinds of restrictions; they might even free me up. My watchword with writing assignments has always been that constraints sometimes free us to think in new ways, and I think the same thinking applies to crazy little drawings, too.

Thank you again for all the donations, I’m closing it down tonight and sending all the money out tomorrow morning, and I’ll post the total amount of our donation then. I’ve already sent the $200 to Charity Water, so that’s done. I really appreciate the way so many people were able to come out and give.

Two drawings down, sixty-two drawings to go.