Alphabooksbeasts: P is for Pooh and Piglet

I know I still "owe" Alphabooks a canine that starts with O, for last week, but I wanted to get this week's P post done and posted last night, and since it was nearly done when I had to turn in, here it is, slightly out of order.

But you already know: P is for Pooh and Piglet.

I cannot tell you how much I love these guys. They feel as close to me as siblings. I know stretches of the Pooh books by heart, or nearly by heart. If you have not read them, get on it.

Your heart isn't finished until you've read these books to someone.

For the record, yet again: Ernest H. Shepard is one of my cartooning heroes. I do not believe in the Disney Pooh. It is, more and more from year to year, an abomination in my sight.

Next week: rare letters call for high fantasy.

Alphabeasts: H is for Heffalump

It's the end of the term, and I should really be grading papers instead of drawing. I was joking last night about taking a close-up picture of some melted cheese on top of a pizza and passing it off as a Horta, but in fact I'm saving my Star Trek Alphabeast for a monster even dearer to my stupid heart in its way.

Instead, this week's Alphabeasts entry comes from one of my favorite books in all of Modernist fiction, and certainly my favorite such book to read aloud. That's not Ulysses, believe it or not, but Pooh. This week, H is for Heffalump.



That's a bit of a quickie drawing (with quickie coloring), and I'm not too happy with it, but I tried to make the heffalump a little different from merely a more familiar pachyderm up on its hind legs.

I am dimly aware that Disney has once again defiled the Pooh stories by creating some sort of cutesy, plush, kawaii abomination in a so-called Heffalump Movie—you may click here to see images, but beware that they are horrible and cannot be unseen. In fact, if you are a parent, I think it is crucial that you do not allow your children to see those images until they are well familiar with Ernest Shepard's original decorations.

There are two actual images of the Heffalump, in nightmare visions by Piglet and by Pooh. It is a creature of the nervous imagination, possibly even Very Fierce with Bears and Pigs. Only Christopher Robin has (possibly) ever actually seen one. The images I'm linking to are, really, conjecture at best.

And yet there is a chapter in Winnie-the-Pooh in which "Piglet Meets a Heffalump."

If you have never read this story, or indeed if you have never read it aloud, I exhort you to find a copy and read it before you hit my spoiler image below. This isn't the only time I've recommended the books, but let me say that Milne's Pooh books are great to read aloud, because they have a lot of little quirks and jokes that only appear as the reader makes the words on the page into sounds. If you haven't read the originals, and think of Pooh only as that Disneyfied pabulum, then you owe it to yourself (and anyone you read to) to put the real books in your hands. They're wonderful.

Okay, are you ready for the spoiler? In the chapter in which Pooh and Piglet resolve to trap a heffalump (despite Piglet's anxiety), Pooh himself winds up in the bottom of their Very Deep Pit, with his head stuck in an empty honey-jar. The very moment when he makes a "loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair" is the moment when Piglet peeks into the Pit to find out what they've caught.

This is the Heffalump that Piglet meets.



Next week: an irreverent creature from an alphabestiary I loved when I was a tot.

Doodle Penance: "step by step how to draw funny easy tigers"

This week's "Doodle Penance" is a pretty specific request. Someone came to our site looking for "step by step how to draw funny easy tigers." Apparently a lot of people consult our site while they're playing Pictionary.

Seriously, people. We're good doodlers and everything, but the person you really want to consult about this kind of thing is Ed Emberley.

Nevertheless, I am always willing to provide a service to our reader(s). Let's see... What do tigers look like?



Okay. First step, as usual, is to make an S.



Then, make another, more different S.



Still with me? Add a consummate V and a couple of tipped-over Cs. (I said consummate!)



Perfect! Now all you have to do is draw the rest of the tiger!



After that, it would be a good idea to color your tiger. (Warning: images at that link are dangerously cute.)



No, no, no. Tigers don't come in grape flavor.



That's better. But it doesn't look like a very funny tiger, does it? Let me rethink this a little bit. I need a more funny tiger.



Okay, that's a better start. He sure looks funny. But remember: as I said a couple of weeks ago, spot blacks sell your drawing. (Mike implied the same thing quite a while back, too, now that I think of it.)



Now that's a funny tiger. If you don't recognize this fellow, you need to wean yourself off of that Disney pabulum and read yourself a book.

(Seriously, I could go on and on about differences between the Disney Pooh material and the Milne-Shepard books, but Tigger is one of the major differences. In the movies, he's a goofy, bouncy, older-brother figure, full of self-assurance and manic energy. In the books, he's the youngest creature in the Hundred-Acre Woods: so innocent of his own identity that he spends an entire story discovering what it is that tiggers prefer to eat. (The answer? Extract of malt, naturally.) When Tigger bounces someone in the books, it's with the sort of "I don't know why I acted out" energy that two-year-olds have, not with any sort of intentionality. But that's got nothing to do with how to draw him.)

Where was I? Oh, yes:




Mike? What have you got this week?

—Nothing as adorable as Tigger, I assure you! And I fear that what I came up with is more on the order of "step by step how to draw cute tabby cats" than "...funny easy tigers," so we'll have to let our would-be artists add the essentials to make the creature properly tigerish (more whiskers on the side of the face would help). However, I did at least avoid the temptation to pull a Bob Weber, Jr., as you did with step 4 up there (seriously: check out step 1 of Weber's "How to draw a cow" by clicking here. Step ONE, I tell you!!!). No, I offer genuine, nigh foolproof instructions on how to draw a recognizable striped feline out of eleven extremely basic shapes. You may want to click to enlarge the text, but I'm pretty sure the instructions are legible without the words:



PS: I'd never heard of Ed Emberley, but I seem to have adopted his method, more or less. Because I'm here to serve the people! Step by step! How to draw! Easy! I take the people at their word. (Unless the word is "funny." Or "tigers.")

Swipe File #7: In the Air with Brancusi & E. H. Shepard

Has it really been six months since the last Swipe File post? Indeed it has. Our Elfworld story is the monster that ate the blog! Alternatively, it's the hero that rescued us from nostalgic navel-gazing, but here I go again with the magnifying glass on the details of comics past...

In issue 4 of Satisfactory Comics, two of our swipes featured birds. One was our swipe of museum art, Brancusi's beautiful Bird in Space, which can be seen at the Guggenheim in Manhattan or right here in an image from the Gugg's website.

We owed this museum swipe to our friend and contributor Steve Newman, who submitted "Brancusi's Bird in Space" in response to our appeal for "a noun or noun phrase" that would be "featured prominently in a fable or adventure story." That's how we ended up making a character out of the sculpture--the Golden Bird of Mystery:


I think this remains our only swipe from a sculpture thus far.

The other bird featured in issue 4 is the beloved Owl (aka Wol) from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the Pooh, as illustrated by E. H. Shepard. He's only one of six owls included in this scene featuring the Parliament of Owls, but apparently the Parliament meets at his own house:


That's Owl at the top right, of course.

When I'm busy in my office but not so busy that I can't receive visitors, I put a sign on my door that says "Please knock if an answer is required," in homage to Owl. And here's an inadvertent homage to Shepard: the person who sold me the scanner I used to prepare this post owns an original Shepard pencil drawing of Pooh-related art. Too bad he wasn't selling that for cheap!