In my lovely garden

The thing that just keeps coming to my mind with this one is cats.

The art of fine dining

Back in the day when this was created, the restaurants on University Avenue weren't the same caliber they are now. There were several fast food places, and the only ethnic dining (outside of KFC) was India Palace. Times have changed.

Monday sketchbook: Far, far away

Got some folks doing some traveling today -- by plane!

Don't be foolish!

You know the story: the wise man built his house upon a rock and when the storms came, the house stood still. The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and when the storms came, it washed away. (Matthew 27).

Fringe benefits

Actually the area that was excavated would have made a lousy pool. But it was just a short time later that they opened a new pool in Provo. I like to think that I inspired them!

Wedding bells and whistles

Today is the wedding day for my brother-in-law! I seriously doubt he's getting any sporting equipment, either.

All it takes

Not for want of trying, though...

Because of the wonderful things we does

This is the cover for the girls' camp manual. Don't they look happy?

Flying monkeys at girls' camp!

It time for girls' camp once again. Our girls' theme this year? The Wizard of Oz! And guess who they asked to do the illustrations for the camp manual? A scout leader and father of five boys, of course!

These are some drawings for the interior. Personally, I like the Wicked Witch.

BTW: As I wrote the title for this entry, I had the thought that it might make a good cartoon. Maybe we'll see where that goes!

Monday sketchbook: G-o-o-a-a-- no, not really

Can anyone offer a reasonable explanation as to why the U.S. team's goal was called back? And what's up with France? This sketch seems less crazy after seeing what's happening in real life!

What are you going to do next?

They should pre-print these in the General Handbook of Instructions.

A page from history

Here's one of the older cartoons in my collection. Not just that it's a Neanderthal or that the joke is probably old as well, the cartoon was drawn a long, long time ago.

I get by with a little help

I used to tell my kids, "tell your electronic friends goodbye" when it was time to turn off the game system or computer. Nowadays with Facebook and the like, I guess there are a lot of people with electronic friends!

Feeling down?

Don't you hate it when you toss your billows?

Long time passing

Here's a cartoon that's almost based on real life. I remember walking down the streets of Yeosu one night as a missionary and wondering where all the people had gone. The streets were nearly deserted; many stores were closed. My companion and I went into one shop that was open. The proprietor welcomed us in, told us to come over by the TV and then told us what the score was. Apparently there was a major futbol/soccer game going on -- not the World Cub, but some prestigious Asian tournament. Who knew? Certainly not us a missionaries!

We weren't called to watch soccer games, alas, so we went on our way. But it certainly answered the question of where all the people had gone.

To every creature...

Sometimes you don't know how a cartoon is going to turn out until it's done. This one didn't turn out quite like I expected it to, but I think it still works -- I thought of doing it in color, but I thought chibi missionaries with blue hair might be a little over the top.

Monday sketchbook: A dropped fly, or a golden glove

The funniest thing about this is that it's true. It happened to a kid on our team this year. He was in the port-a-potty for a long time, then we heard a cry, "Daaaaaaaaad!" Luckily the coach had a spare glove and all was well. Sort of.

By their fruits ye shall know them

For those of you who may have been brought here through the link on the "Renew America" website, I invite you to read for yourself the Church's official statement on political neutrality, or watch the video. That and other, factual information is available through the Church's online newsroom.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled (and copyrighted) cartoon, which isn't political at all!

Look, Buzz!

This is a special cartoon for Elder Zach, who is serving in the area between Area 51 and Roswell, NM. Happy birthday, Elder!

Excuses

This excuse never worked more than once.

Just a little side note: My wife teaches high school, and she says she hears excuses that are way less believable than this on a daily basis!

By any other name

We had a running joke that anyone whose name we didn't know was automatically dubbed "Bertha Snodgrass."

Happy Fairy Day!

There's a lot of background to today's entry.

To a very small, select group of people, June 9 is known as Fairy Day (it's a long story). Add to that the fact that I recently reconnected with a few of my mission buddies, and I felt the need to post these.

It was my job in the mission home to forward packages to missionaries in the field. There were usually charges related to the packages, and those needed to be paid before we could release the packages to the elders. Rather than just send out postcards that said "you have to pay XX amount for your package," I wanted to make the notices a little more fun to take a bit of the sting out of the sticker shock. So here are a couple of those postcards, one which features a regular on the notifications, the Package Fairy. See how it all ties together so neatly?

Revisiting the yearbook

The sad thing about this yearbook cartoon is that it's based on a real incident. When we laid out the budget (outline) for the yearbook, we set aside one page to be a memoriam page for any of our classmates who passed away. As our deadline for that section approached, there wasn't anyone to memorialize. That was good as far as keeping our student body intact went, but it was problematic to our print production. We came up with a Plan B just in case. Sadly, we didn't have to go to the backup plan.

Monday sketchbook: Deja vu, sort of.

I'm going to let you in on one of my little secrets. I keep a little cartoon calendar on my desk, and each day I tear off the page and sketch a cartoon idea on the back. This one was on the back of June 8 of the Peanuts calendar, which was 2009. I thought the idea was a little too silly to go any further, so I stuck it in the sketchbook pile. Fast forward to June 2010, and I open up my New Era and there's a Bagley cartoon with practically the same idea! He chose a different hymn (Let Us All Press On). That's probably what made the difference. Shows what a good judge I am!

Provident living

I thought of making these guys all Shelob-like with fangs dripping venom. However, in the interest of being family friendly, I went for the cutesy look.

Always on task

I understand the current vernacular has moved more toward the less imaginative "cutting class," but it all works out the same.

Deadline? What deadline?

I'll probably get in trouble if I say that this sort of progress report still works today, so I won't say anything at all. Shhh!

Improbable history

We're getting close to the end of the school year here in Oregon. Because they passed out yearbooks at the high school earlier this week (and my son has his smiling face on the cover!), I thought we should hop into Mr. Peabody's WABAC machine and look at some cartoons from my high school days.

I was the art editor for our yearbook. One of the honors that came with that was the opportunity to paint a section of the wall in Ms. Baskin's back room. Being who I am, I did a bunch of yearbook-related cartoons that were based more or less on real life as yearbook staff. I couldn't scan the wall, but I took photos, and these are re-created from those pictures.



This, of course, does not apply to any editors that I know personally or who may be reading this. It's those other guys.

Just like the Marines

We haven't visited with the girls of 121 for a while...

Welcome to June

Ahh, June! I like this cartoon because it's based on reality. The store owners who saw the construction as an opportunity did really well. Once Subway fed the crews once, guess where the crews went to lunch? I didn't see any samples being handed out at the bridal shop, however. It was probably just as well.