Little Uncle Runs Home to Make Coffee

Let Pippi and her friends go trudging through rain storms and sleep in shacks and under pines, Little Uncle thought to himself. 

 

He was going to run back home where there was sugar cubs and pancakes. He was going to spend the next few days grazing in their front lawn and awaiting Pippi Longstocking's return on the front porch. And maybe, if he could manage it, he would have the coffee ready for them when they returned from their exertion. 

 

After all, running away from home was for the young. He wanted nothing more than to stay home where all was good and the food was tasty.

 

 I knew from the start that this was a field in which an Astrid Lindgren character needed to graze. And who could be a better individual for such a field than Little Uncle: trusted horse of Pippi Longstocking. 

 

In the episode in which Pippi and her friends run away from their respective homes, Little Uncle also runs off when a rainstorm sends him into a fright. 

 

I always loved the casualness with which Pippi responds to Anika and Tommy's worry, claiming that he was simply running home to make coffee so that they would have something warm to drink upon their return. 

 

Little Uncle is nothing if not a thoughtful horse.

 

I am glad he has joined my collection of animals going for a walk. 

Papa Bear Goes for a Stroll

Papa Bear went for a stroll that night, thinking bearish thoughts about literature and life, and the poem he had read the night before by the fire after baby bear was snoring softly. 

 

It was such a nice night for a walk, he thought. 

 

He walked for quite some time, till his thoughts were less thoughtly, and more musings, till he barely noticed he was walking at all. He walked till long after dark, till the edge of the wood, the edge of the page even. 

 

And so it was that Papa Bear walked right out of the book of fairy tales where he lived with Mama Bear and Baby Bear and into the forest I happened to be painting.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I see a work of art on the internet and I just want to paint someone into it. So it was with this one when I saw a painting of a cluster of trees and couldn't help but feel that they looked lonely and unappreciated. 

 

I once again started by staining my paper with tea. I find that staining it first (even if you cannot see it once I've added the foreground) makes it seem as if I am painting an illustration in an old storybook. 

 

 

So bit by bit the stained back ground was covered, as a forest appeared on the edge of my brush. As I worked on this one on and off for the following weeks, I thought a great deal about who would come walking through this painting. Eventually, Papa Bear appeared.