Cruel humor

How do you like this, for birthday greetings?! The only way I can explain it (yes, I drew it) is that my brother and I have a longstanding the-more-insulting-the-better way of communicating sometimes, common among siblings, for those not in the know. I drew this a longggg time ago, as perhaps you can tell not only by its yellow-y-ness, and its water damage. I think the water damage should be coming from the other side of the page, to accentuate the "as you age" quality.

Henry and Hazy draw themselves as dinosaurs

Need I say more? Enjoy!

Crush on a painting

I'm a little obsessed with Philip Guston's Gladiators lately. I just love it. I love love love it. No, I'm not going to bore you with a long, analytical explanation why, especially as I would fail miserably at articulating one. I think it's just because it strikes me as so mysterious and has such a beautiful composition. It's nice that it has lofty goals, too (Guston was a politically motivated WPA muralist in the 30s, influenced by Diego Rivera; Gladiators was reworked from a mural he painted in Long Island City.)

Why is it possible to stand in front of some works of art drooling for hours, others not so much? The eternal question!

Custom-made bunny

Here's another weird glove doll, made by request for a little lady in L.A. named Ruby whose favorite color is...you'll never be able to guess this, so I'll just tell you: pink.

Ruby OK'd these lovely moisturizing gloves from this picture on Ebay:



And this was the result:



Let's take a closer look. She had a button nose at first but that made her look too much like a pig with strangely long ears, so I swapped it out for a couple stitches. I'm not sure it worked, but it does seem like a step in the more rabbit-y direction, at least.



Here she is rehearsing for the rapt conversations she's sure to have with Ruby's other dolls:



I hope they all get along! I wonder if, amongst all the other dolls, it'll be a thing of pride to have been made from a pair of gloves, or an embarrassing secret that should be kept from the others at all costs.

For the glove of it

Why do I keep feeling compelled to make weird animal dolls for children? When my sister told me my niece and nephew were going through a stuffed-animal-loving phase, I grabbed this book, a couple pairs of gloves, and before I'd even really given it much thought, these two weirdos were having a chat on my couch.



I kept thinking of the Bolivian women who hand-knit these alpaca gloves for a living wage as I snipped off the fingers and turned them into legs, arms, and ears.



I think the buttons for eyes are the clincher here. It's interesting how important eyes are, on dolls, illustrations, humans, etc. A thing really comes to life with the right kind of eyeball.



It was kind of hard to pack them up and ship them off. But I knew if they stuck around Beatrix would eventually find and eat them one night while I was sleeping.


Spared!

The story doesn't end here. P is going on a trip this week to see this little devil:



Whom you may remember from one of several posts like this. Once again, the book came out, the gloves came off.



And turned into him. I like his stretchy pants.



So, in other words, if you have a pair of gloves, especially ones you like very much, you might not want to wave them around when you see me. Or, conversely, if you want one of these, hand 'em over.