I’m 5 years old and I loved Snoopy.

My mother worked in an academic library when I was even younger than that, and when I would visit her library I would go find the Peanuts Treasury. And I would read and read. And Snoopy was my favorite.

I like very much the variation of the lettering here. I would call is “typography” there, but it sounds grandiose.

I _think_ it was done in 1975, but I’m not really sure, it may have been 1976 or 1974. I’m somewhere around 4 to 6 years old. It’s not like I was including copyright information on my drawings at that point.

Unlike the various Star Wars drawings I did, which I remember were done at the kitchen table in our apartment in Alhambra, I’m not sure where and when this one was done. Again, this makes it difficult for me to date the drawing.

Feeling better today than yesterday. It’s going to be a great day.

Take care, y’all.

And it’s been a while, so….

*Onward*

Made with the same marker as Girl With Flower Top, a nonetheless much darker image. Menacing, scary, aggressive.

I wonder what would have happened if I could have gotten the melancholy and the aggression to work together.

Then again, maybe I did.

I did a lot of drawings of vampires when I was in my teens. The myth of vampirism is yet another powerful myth to play with. Vampires definitely fall into the category of “melancholic aggression.”

I’ve always liked this drawing of mine, by my 16-year-old self. Just a marker on paper if I remember correctly.

It’s definitely a drawing that was made with the aesthetic of “do it fast and do it now” — I think I may have been sad at the time given the melancholy of the pose. I’m not sure what is going on with her arm though. I just had no concept of anatomy and I was not trying to be realistically physical.

Anyway, after scanning this morning I thought I’d try adding color using PhotoShop. It works. Very rough, but it gives a bit of depth lacking in the original.

I need to work on patience and flexibility this week. I’m feeling especially impatient and inflexible this week. Well, maybe just yesterday.

These are not my best qualities.

Noodling in PhotoShop is rather calming though.

The day begins soon. Good morning.

This is a bit more polished. Notice the careful cross-hatching on the body of the dragon. There’s a literalness to this rendering that I quite like.

I mentioned before that I never was much for sword and sorcery stuff., but dragons are fun to draw.

The Wikipedia article for Dragon has some silly stuff in it, but amongst the dross are:

Chinese dragons (among others) are generally seen as benevolent, whereas European dragons are usually malevolent. However, malevolent dragons are not restricted to Europe, and also occur in Persian mythology (see Azhi Dahaka) and other cultures. The malevolent dragon is a prominent figure in Christian myth and iconography. Some Catholic Saints are depicted in the act of killing a dragon: for instance, Saint George, or, in Italy, Saint Mercurialis, who was the first bishop of the city of Forlì.

And also:

Dragons are often held to have major spiritual significance in various cultures around the world. One example of them in religion would be some biblical references that seem to hint that the dragon is a type of archangel, one of which by the name of Lucifer, rebelled against God to become known as the seven-headed red dragon called Satan. Some take this as a sign that dragons are an evil force, however other parts of the Christian Scriptures (depending on the version) seem to indicate that God created multiple dragons, not all of whom rebelled. In many oriental cultures, they were, and in some cultures still are, a being to be revered, and were representative of the primal forces of nature and the universe.

I like dragons. I’m reminded of the significance of the dragon in the film _Excalibur_. I really like that movie. I wish it were less violent and sexual than it is, but I suppose as a powerful myth, it does need such *substance* to “flesh out” its messages. Given that my middle name is “Arthur,” I was probably drawn a bit to Arthurian Legends. Mage, a comic series by Matt Wagner, was one such legend. I remember reading it (heh) religiously. Such beautiful work in that first series. I distinctly remember reading it during a break at my driver’s ed classes. The comics shop was just 2 blocks away and I devoured “Mage” for its’ contemporary and cryptic retelling of the Arthur saga.

Magic is green.