Anything to use up some of those scraps piled around my work bench…
Lisa came up with the idea of making little wood houses for holiday gifts. I could paint the sides with blackboard paint to write a special message for each recipient. And I could draw a cartoon on one end. Add decorative ribbon on top and voila’, a holiday gift!
I cut the house shapes out of 4×4 redwood scraps, then primed them. As I like to do, I took a picture of one (second image) and drew on it in my cell phone, working out the colors and look (third image).
Happy with the sketch, we went into production, making 11 houses (fourth and fifth images). When they were all done, I couldn’t help assembling them into cat cartoon streets (bottom images). You have to admit, they look pretty neat!
This year the first day of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving fall on the same day – a very rare occurrence that led to my first combination Hanukkah/Thanksgiving cartoon.
It is little known, but this coincidence of dates also happened on the first Thanksgiving, in 1621. And even less known is that not all those people in solemn clothes were Puritans. Scenes from the real first Thanksgiving/Hanukkah are illustrated here.
Happy Thanksgiving to my United States readers, Happy Hanukkah to all!
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE
DECODER Schmaltz – Yiddish for rendered chicken fat, a common ingredient in many Eastern European Jewish dishes
Gimmel is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Dredels, the Hanukkah spinning top, have a Hebrew letter on each of the four sides. The four letters form the acronym, in Hebrew, for “a great miracle happened here”. You spin the dredel and the letter that is facing up when it stops determines whether you win or lose.
I love cartoons and comics. I love to read them, I love to draw them. After I started my small moments series of cartoons, I thought it would be fun to assemble some of them into a comic book.
I wanted to make a comic book, but didn’t want to go to the trouble of printing, cutting, stapling, and mailing them. And I didn’t want boxes of unsold comics gathering dust. Enter print on demand (POD). POD companies allow you to upload comics and books as files. They print and mail comics as they are ordered from their online site.
My first comic, small moments no. 1, focuses mostly on Our Cat. It makes a perfect gift for that special someone, or for you! You can order your own 32 page copy by clicking on this button
Let me know what you think
san diego design, cartoons, architecture, furniture
Anything to use up some of those scraps piled around my work bench…
