Bernie the Flying Buddhist Dachshund Makes His Cameo Appearance

Bernie the Flying Buddhist Dachshund is the final figure for my children’s picture book cover image, not counting the foliage and clouds that I still have to paint behind these characters. It may strike you as odd that Bernie is flying. It’s not odd at all. In fact, it’s common knowledge around here — in Southern Oregon, which is just crawling with Buddhists — that all Buddhists can fly, including Buddhist Dachshunds, weasels, cougars, and humans. With that indisputable fact in mind, only an unreasonable person would be surprised that Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund can levitate so well without having wings.

Perhaps it’s the constant meditation that gives Buddhists those wings. Or, just maybe it’s their deep compassion for all living beings that lifts them above the world. Whatever it is, all I know is that flying suits Bernie well, especially with those aerodynamic ears.

Composing a Cover Image Using Many Small Images

I’ve redrawn and repainted the main characters and tonight I’ve composed them into a flowing stream of critters flying through the air. But, now that I pronounce this composition complete, I’m thinking of adding two more characters: Bernie the Buddhist dachshund and Uncle Johnny the Buddhist Steller’s Jay. It would be delightful (for me) to have all of the book’s characters on the book’s cover. Brilliant idea! I tell myself. I’ll do it!

Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund is one of my Deadbeat Club characters. I love that gentle Buddhist dachshund.

Chore Day, Aug 31, 2019: Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund hears noise in the chimney

As I wrote the title for this post, I thought, Damn, I’m good — I broke every SEO “best practice” possible: vague title, nothing about the children’s book, no informative keyword that a search engine can make any sense of. It’s highly unlikely that any search engine will index this page in a way that would lead anyone looking for a diary of creating a children’s picture book. The thing is, I really don’t want to spend my time thinking about SEO. I have more interesting things to do. So it goes.

Today was my chore day, with the same chores as last Saturday: cooking for my furry friends and cooking enough food for myself so that I don’t have to cook everyday nest week. I made a pot of spaghetti sauce and a pot of curried cauliflower. As usual, I listened to my favorite Hair Metal bands while I was cooking. There’s only one chore that I didn’t enjoy: cleaning the food processor. The plastic top and complicated locking mechanism are nearly impossible to clean.

On the art front, I updated my “Bernie hears a noise” image. I extended the chimney and gave it a few twists to make it more fun. As a bonus, I added a pink cat to Bernie’s coffee cup.

Picture #32 (the long lost uncle) Re-inking Completed

Today I looked at the rough sketch I drew yesterday of Johnny Jay, the long lost uncle of Jimmy Jay, and thought the picture look stiff. I redrew Bernie the Buddhist Dachshund to give him a little more of a line of action, bending towards Uncle Johnny. I used Procreate on my old 9.5-inch ipad for this.

I still haven’t found a way to export PSD files without using wi-fi. Apple has made it impossible. When I realize that my content is trapped inside of Apple’s lovely prison, I recall a quote of Richard Stallman, “Apple has the tightest digital handcuffs in history.” Amen to that, Richard. Amen.