I did my favorite paintings on the third week of class. At point I’d gotten used to the paints and tools enough that I could begin to predict what sort of image I’d be able to end up with.

I’m not that big a fan of stories of anthropomorphic animals. I enjoy Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and company but I have a harder time wrapping my mind around them when they appear in serious works like Omaha the Cat Dancer, Hepcats and Grandeville. In those works the animal nature of the characters is usually intended metaphorically. The characters are cats, monkeys, badgers and whatnot only up to a point. The question of how a civilization of multiple sentient animal species (many of which are prey to each other in our world) arose is pretty much ignored. I have a tendency to world build down to tiny details in my own work and to deconstruct the worlds built in stories of other writers and artists. The closer the story is drawn to “reality” the harder a time I have in just accepting it.

One of the few anthropomorphic adventure comics that I’m able to read without getting bogged down in questions of why a horse and canary are the same size (and having sex) is Usagi Yojimbo. That one probably works for me because Stan Sakai’s art is blatantly cartoony. I can take it seriously because the art isn’t realistic. Go figure.

Anyway, here’s a dog in a suit.