School wall illustrating characters from Squirrel and Hedgehog, a North Korean children's cartoon.  This is from a country that has no animal life outside of state farms, if that.  North Korea sends out fleets of fishing boats that do not come back, crewed by starving soldiers.  It's people wear processed anthracite and limestone.  It is a country ruled by a psychopath fat runt.  There are no men left in North Korean, only slaves. Implacable. Ever righteous. Wolves, i.e. Americans. Well, I can guess where this is going. Captain Keoteo, wolf leader.   Presumably a repentant wolf who has screwed up.  But the ever-victorious tiny furry is magnanimous if stern!  Does anyone see a hedgehog in any of this? I just saw this.  This is just a stupid wolf guard, episode 31. Squirrel.  Any wild animal left in North Korea would be immediately clubbed and eaten. Weasels, aka Ja

What a lovely day for a birthday party picnic!  The sun is out and the birds are singing.  How dull, thinks the rabbit.  Billy decides to liven things up for the Mastiff family.  What fun they all are having! Billy is full of laughter and humor.  Living in 'scapeville is the cat's pajamas!

  A well-grown gopher took up residence in a thicket of mallow weeds in the vacant lot on Cannery Row. It was a perfect place. The deep green luscious mallows towered up crisp and rich, and as they matured their little cheeses hung down provocatively. The earth was perfect for a gopher-hole too, black and soft and yet with a little clay in it so that it didn't crumble and the tunnels didn't cave in. The gopher was fat and sleek and he had always plenty of food in his cheek pouches. His little ears were clean and well set and his eyes were as black as old-fashioned pin-heads and just about the same size. His digging hands were strong and the fur on his back was glossy brown and the fawn-coloured fur on his chest was incredibly soft and rich. He had long curving yellow teeth and a little short tail. Altogether he was a beautiful gopher and in the prime of his life.    He came to the place o

What seemed a good idea is now a chore. https://youtu.be/X6bsoyT86LE  

Drawn sometime in the 1980's, this sort of tableaux was my default subject.  In this picture, we see a battlefield a couple of years on.  This is not the work of evil people.  You see, these two brothers had half of Europe under their yoke, until stopped outside of Bucharest.  Their defeat was total.  Alone and unhorsed, the two laughed at death and fought a meatgrinder last stand.  The victors beheaded them and left the bodies to rot.  The right arm of the eldest brother was placed on his upright sword as a mockery.  The wars drag on.  The living envy the dead. This is a picture of peace and rest.

I had an acre of old pasture on the Colorado river outside of Austin.  I could do anything I wanted.  It was legal to shoot firearms anytime day or night, the fishing was decent, and the neighbors a mixed lot. One day Thomas Jonathon Jackson, Stonewall, did not come home.  That evening I found him panting under a willow tree close to the river.  He was partially paralyzed.  I took him home.  I knew he had been poisoned for I had also lost two other cats to poison, one for certain and the other a probable.   No matter how angry I was there was nothing to do about it.  I have no proof that the people I suspect did this thing.   Stoney showed up my first week at my river place one night while I was drinking beer and reading about Chancellorsville by Coleman lantern light, which must be what reading a map in No Man's Land was like.  He burst out of the weed covered barbed wire fence and attacked my right flank, achieving complete tactical dominance and routing my heart!

Paul Galdone, illustrator.  1952. A Constellation airliner, with heavy bombers and some sort of trans-sonic military jet, all next to this integral rocket.  And Space Cat! (Charles Lindbergh had a pet kitten that was the mascot for the Orteig Prize attempt.  When he was asked why he brought a statuette of Felix the Cat instead of Patsy he replied that he could never bring a kitten on a trip so dangerous.  It appears that the astronaut above is pretty confident of the mission). Col. Lindbergh and Patsy on the Spirit of St. Louis. https://www.thegreatcat.org/cats-20th-century-history-part-2-kiddo-fifi-whoopsy-patsy/ Weird even for the early 'fifties.  This is Flyball from Space Cat, a series of books about a cat, not an anthro cat, in space.  This delighted looking cat would be a sanitation nightmare and and an extreme detriment to navigation.  He reminds me of this guy - I don't know who owns this but if I knew I would fawn

This is the best composed picture I think I have ever drawn.  I am afraid that if I work on it any more then I will ruin it.  So it is finished.

I am going to do more with this, like putting an authority figure in this, a lion perhaps.  Or maybe I won't do anything else, I like the drawing.  As for Billy here, he won't listen to a thing I tell him!

  I have had this in my art box as a reproach to me all last month.

Photo finish.

 @_livingdog - Instagram

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark or even eagle flew -- And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. John Gillespie Magee  @_livingdog - Instagram