Laughing Unicorns from Gravity Falls and Star vs the Forces of Evil

Celestabellebethabelle and Pony Head share a laugh at how seriously uncool those non unicorn persons are.

“Star vs the Forces of Evil” has filled some of the “Gravity Falls” shaped hole in our younger son’s tv viewing heart.  

Both shows have a large and inventive cast of non human creatures (the Bearicorn and the Multi-Bear, to name only two examples)

And Unicorns.

Unicorns that might be described as the cool alpha girls of their respective environments.

When I was a preteen, (and definitely not an alpha girl) I loved drawing unicorns and rainbows, using every marker in the box. Now an aging crone, I just want an opportunity to draw startling yet anatomically correct horse teeth. 

Onward Aoshima and PuppyMonkeyBaby

Awesome things combined with rather disturbing results.

"Onward Aoshima" was of course a favorite moment for my sons in the Gravity Falls canon.
Our younger son is still beginning several sentences a day with the words, "I can't believe Gravity Falls is really over...."

The boys did not watch the Super Bowl and thus missed the PuppyMonkeyBaby ad.  But somehow I could not restrain myself from showing them the commercial. It reminded me so much of the annoying qualities of Pokemon characters where all they can say is their own name, over and over and over again.

We are thinking of some other tripartite cute and supposedly "awesome" characters... RobotTigerChick comes to mind.  I like the dysfunctionally horrible possibilities.

PuppyMonkeyBaby is pretty creepy, but when you imagine BabyPuppyMonkey, you can see that it could be even worse. But my younger son was sorry that I had not drawn Aoshima in his more extreme four armed, rainbow spewing form, so perhaps awfulness is in the eye of the beholder

Deadpool with Waddles from Gravity Falls

Two characters that our kids would like to see more of this month.

The final episode of the much beloved Disney series, Gravity Falls, "Weirdmageddon Part 3" is coming up on February 15th,  and of course, the Deadpool movie is going to be released later this week on February 12th. Fortunately, Gravity Falls is not rated R, so we should be able to watch that at least.

As previously mentioned here, we won't be seeing Deadpool for quite a while. We do own several Deadpool comic books that probably should not be in the hands of minors, but my threshold for potentially offensive materials in print form is much higher.

The kids felt quite strongly that Waddles the pig should have been dressed in a Deadpool suit on this napkin. (Pigpool... or Waddlespool?) They are big fans of the Deadpool animals like Pandapool that appear in "Deadpool Kills Deadpool"....and speaking of inappropriate materials: that book is emblazoned with "Parental Advisory: Not for Kids" right on the cover.

I just did not think I was up to stuffing Waddles into a Deadpool suit last night. And selfishly, I wanted to draw the pink and red combination of the two characters.

Perhaps more Deadpool Corps tomorrow.... I noticed while googling that there is plenty of imagery for "Dogpool" and "Pandapool," but nothing comes up for "Pigpool":

An unfulfilled online constituency.

Maleficent with Dog Hands and Darth Vader with Kitten Fists from Disney Infinity, Blue Whale Eye

 

Last night I was still ruminating on the Disney Infinity game and the possibility of putting random, or not so random, characters together.  For whatever reason, Star Wars, and thus Darth Vader, is not available on the program.  Maleficent is available, but she is in her Angelina Jolie-ish form, wearing a black catsuit without purple trim and she has disappointingly non greenish skin. 

"Gravity Falls" derived Kitten Fists can in fact be added to  the game.  Puppy Fists, "101 Dalmations"-style or not, are not a real thing... But perhaps they should be.  If you doubt the reality of Kitten Fists and have not yet experienced enough annoyance today, visit this link. Be warned that the insane meowing continues inconceivably for the full 14 minutes and 22 seconds run time of the video. And yes, I agree that it is pathetic that I know that.

Since I seem to be unable to stop myself from adding miscellaneous things to this post, here is a previous instance of the dog/kitten hand from the summer of 2013: 

I suspect that like the above, the Maleficient/Vader napkin will be deemed too weird and will not go to school any time soon. The Second Grade is on a field trip to the New York Natural History Museum today, so I made a truly disposable napkin for the day's bag lunch. While taking my 3 minute morning shower, I had the idea that I was going to draw a Blue Whale's eye actual size, which would be educational and maybe a little cool.  As it turns out, at least based on some very superficial research, Blue Whales' eyes are only about the size of Cows' eyes, so my attempt at realism was not particularly impressive.  (But Giant Squids have much larger eyes. I will give that information further consideration) 

Since I spent all of 90 seconds on this napkin- in addition to the haphazard 2 minutes of Whale eye research- the results were about what you might expect. Sadly, I discovered that all of my blue markers are in need of refill.

 

The Blue Whale at the AMNH.  Click on the photo to visit the museum site.
That eye looks larger than I drew it, doesn't it?

Waddles From Gravity Falls "Little Shop of Horrors" Episode

"Good Thing I Installed a Dumb Dumb Button"

Since Ansel is scheduled to have his tonsils extracted tomorrow, I indulgently (and foolishly) allowed him and his brother to stay up to watch the latest episode of "Gravity Falls" last night.  

One of my more explicit fond childhood memories is of my parents allowing me to watch a Muppet television special despite the fact that it was on after bedtime and I had behaved horribly earlier in the evening.  Now, of course, I wonder just why this generosity stands out so much in my memory.  It seems that my parents gave me a second (or third, or tenth?) chance and let me have something that was important to me at the time, despite my not having remotely deserved it. I am hoping that I remember it clearly because I felt that my parents were really being nice to me, not because I thought I had gotten away with something. 

I have more than once considered this childhood memory in relation to my own sons, who let no parental indulgence go unpunished. They are much the classic case of "give them an inch and"... they will steal your shoes, pee on the floor,  leave the toilet seat up and the water running in the bathroom. Both boys are compulsive envelope pushers by nature.  (Hi Archer sweetheart! I am aware that you will be reading this at some point) 

Envelope pushing is not necessarily a bad tendency in and of itself, but it has made me more careful about being too nice/generous/indulgent of my sons...Particularly as they are boys, and my more youthful angry feminist self is lurking just beneath my premenopausal dry skin, wanting to burst out at any moment and stomp on any lazy, entitled, disrespectful owner of a Y chromosome who lives in my house.  I often find myself complaining to my sons that I want to be nicer to them, but they are not letting me.

All of that said, the Gravity Falls viewing went off without too many repercussions (although I will no doubt pay on next Monday, when the indulgence will be viewed as a new entitlement.)  Archer and Ansel love the weirdness of the show, and are particularly fond of the pig character Waddles. 

In the middle segment of the episode, Waddles became suddenly super smart and built himself a voice synthesizer which spoke in the mellifluous tones of Neil deGrasse Tyson. At the conclusion, however, Waddles chose to give up the intelligence and the voice, pushing the "dumb dumb button" because he valued his affectionate relationship with Mabel more than his new intelligence.

And here's the pithy wrap-up that ties all this drivel together:  Even though I should be too smart to ever indulge my sons, I feel that I still have to occasionally push the dumb button because I am their mother and I love them despite how they behave. I just have to be careful so their future female friends, teachers, coworkers etc. don't end up cursing me.

Waddles and Mabel Wish Scarlett Happy Birthday

A birthday napkin for the 11th birthday of a child of a friend from high school:

Unlike my sons, the child in question reportedly was pleased by her representation on the napkin.  Her mom caught me at a slightly less psychotically busy moment a while back when we were heading into a long holiday weekend and I thought I might actually have time to do an extra napkin.

Now, I have the nagging feeling that I should be doing napkins for all of my friends' children... and for all the other people who asked nicely after our strange TV appearances earlier this year.

I have not really been able to get my mind around the commission question yet.  These things are napkins, after all.  They are... to put it charitably, not archival... not really a sell-able artwork.  But they can be time consuming, and certainly could be in a commission context. My kids are often dissatisfied with the results, but they are not paying me...And  I almost enjoy their criticism.  In short, I have trouble imagining a price that would be both reasonable for the commissioner and for me, the person who is already getting less than 5 hours of sleep a night... and who has to pay New York City babysitting rates to get anything beside the bare minimum accomplished.... and then there is also that teaching job and my erstwhile career as a sculptor to consider...

But it was nice to get a chance to draw something with a bit of girl aesthetic for a change...or at least without any weapons.

Teen Titans' Dog Hand with Gravity Falls' Kitten Fists

Archer failed to give me a request last night as he had locked himself in the bathroom to read a book past bedtime...so I rolled along on a Gravity Falls theme.

Last night, he thought Mabel's "Kitten Fists" were extremely funny.  As he was demonstrating them to me again this morning, I offered that I had drawn them on his napkin.  He literally recoiled in horror at the awful girlyness of the idea. (And he didn't even know that the background was magenta)

I told him he would have to hide the napkin in his lunchbox today, and that he should be sure to ask for an appropriately masculine image for tomorrow.

Gravity Fall's Muscular Dipper with Grunkle Stan

Yesterday we caught up on a couple of Gravity Falls episodes that we had missed.

Afterwards, Ansel requested a hugely muscular version of Dipper with a disgruntled Grunkle Stan looking at him from off to the side.  Well, he did not use the word "disgruntled" but that was definitely the sense.

I don't think this concept had anything specifically to do with the episodes that we watched, although I have to admit that I slept through most of the second one, so I can't be positive.

We did a similar napkin starring Teen Titans Robin back in May, and that might be the source.

Connor The Assassin Gives Mabel and Dipper From Gravity Falls A Ride

We had watched a lot of "Gravity Falls" over the weekend while Ansel was quarantined with his viral and bacterial infections, so he asked for Mabel and Dipper to pose with his favorite homicidal video game character on Monday's napkin.

Since we had already done Batman holding the Gravity Falls siblings on his shoulders, (see image here) I felt the irrational urge to come up with some other arrangement for the three of them.  Having Connor give the two kids and the pet pig a horsey ride seemed about as implausible as having the three of them in the same image in the first place.  Mabel is game for anything, while Dipper's expression indicates that he knows this drawing is a bad idea. Perhaps Connor is just placidly waiting for his opportunity to slaughter another dozen Redcoats.  

Unsurprisingly, Ansel was not too impressed with this image, although he did remark, "You really looked carefully at Waddles the pig! You got the pink circle around his eye." This sounded very much like something his Kindergarten teachers might say to one of their students, and was about as close as we get to a compliment about my drawing.  

Mabel and Dipper from Gravity Falls with Batman for Archer

Mabel and Dipper from the kids' favorite show of the moment , Gravity Falls, pose with their favorite superhero.

Chief Justice Num-Nums from Gravity Falls for Archer

In "Irrational Treasure" an episode of Gravity Falls, the 8 1/2 th president of the United States appoints 6 infants to the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Num-Nums.  Archer finds this hysterically funny and requested said Chief Justice drooling on his napkin.  This one is pretty much exactly "as seen on tv" although I added some extra drool, and as Ansel immediately pointed out this morning, while the other baby is pushing on his face on the show, the Chief Justice's eyes are completely closed.