It was a year ago that I last painted a doodle, so it was long overdue(dle). What better excuse than the first birthday of the sweetest dragon baby?
A small gift for little Flora Tanager:
And another for her wise sister Sigrid Sparrow:
But truth be told, both gifts were mostly for their mother, a true soul and good friend.
This is the rough sketch I made before putting paint to paper. I accidentally drew six fingers on that right hand. The best part is that I didn't notice until I'd finished painting the whole thing and then had to try to erase it and cover my six-fingered tracks. What talent!
"One of the weird books that he often returned to and which continually puzzled him was the Relationship of Extradigitalism to Genius, written by the man whose face he had never seen, in one of his manifestations.
ReplyDeleteIt promised more than it delivered, and it intimated more than it said. Its theory was tedious and tenuous, bolstered with undigested mountains of doubtful data. It left him unconvinced that persons of genius (even if it could be agreed who or what they were) had often the oddity of extra fingers and toes, or the vestiges of them. And it puzzled him what possible difference it could make.
YET there were hints here of a Corsican who commonly kept a hand hidden, or an earlier and more bizarre commander who wore always a mailed glove, of another man with a glove between the two; hints that the multiplex-adept, Leonardo himself, who sometimes drew the hands of men and often those of monsters with six fingers, may himself have had the touch. There was a comment of Caesar, not conclusive, to the same effect. It is known that Alexander had a minor peculiarity; it is not known what it was; this man made it seem that this was it. And it was averred of Gregory and Augustine, of Benedict and Albert and Acquinas. Yet a man with a deformity could not enter the priesthood; if they had it, it must have been in vestigial form.
There were cases for Charles Magnut and Mahmud, for Saladin the Horseman and for Akhnaton the King; for Homer (a Seleuciad-Greek statuette shows him with six fingers strumming an unidentified instrument while reciting); for Pythagoras, for Buonarroti, Santi, Theotokopolous, van Rijn, Robusti.
Zurbarin catalogued eight thousand names. He maintained that they were geniuses. And that they were extradigitals."
-R.A. Lafferty. "Six Fingers of Time"
Thank you for that. It lends both nobility and mystery to what others might mistake for mere clumsiness.
ReplyDeleteI am no amateur. I control time.
(A bit unrelated. I put it here so I don't forget to tell you later. Last night at 2:30 a.m. I was reading essays in On Running After One's Own Hat and quietly guffawing. Chesterton was surely an influence on Lafferty.)
*One's Hat*
ReplyDelete(Tho', presumably, one's own.)
Of course, Lafferty makes an appearance. Very pretty pictures, for very pretty girls and their pretty momma! I love your artwork.
ReplyDeleteThanks, ma'am. :)
ReplyDelete