On Friday my 8-year-old was doodling out of an Ed Emberley book and having a rollicking good time putting this together:

I ran across it a couple of times over the weekend, and by Sunday noon, looking for something fun and easy to relax with, I could take it no longer.  I had to do my own.

Cover of an Ed Emberley Book

Inside an Emberley

If you don’t know about Ed Emberley art books,

they are full of little doodles of things in an step-by-step instructional format.  Each little doodle takes only seconds to complete.

The real fun comes in the embellishments.

So I sat down and played around with some doodles for an hour or two:

did a little massaging on the ‘puter:

and then went to work on my real goal: an amped  up Emberley shadowbox vignette.  And here it is!

From left to right: Dancer, Gubbles, Uncle Howlard, Mumsley, and behind him Doctor, Pippy, Foxxy, and Hazel.

By the way, the picture on the wall is a reproduction of a watercolor of a beastly fellow by the name of Uncle Cato.  Uncle Cato’s portrait was painted by the versatile and multi-talented Jeanette Andromeda, the brilliance behind HorrorMade.com, among other many enterprises.

The little vignette is not finished.  I’ll probably keep it on a corner shelf and keep adding little things — some furniture, more wall-hangings, etc. — when I need a relaxing distraction.   But now you know the kind of things that fill a lazy Sunday afternoon around Graowf’s den.

Today, a poem:

The Fox and the Sea
===================
by Graowf

The Fox, he ran ’til the shore and the sand
he met on a gray twilight morn.
“‘Tis the edge of the world!  Why, isn’t it grand?
I have found where Sky is born!”
cried the Fox to the whispering Sea.

The Sea, hissing back, chided and laughed,
“What a fool is the Fox on the sand!”
then soaked with a spray and a cold fuming draught
the Fox who shook on the land.
“Why,” yelped the Fox, “would you do that to me?”

The Sea merely sneered, called him a name,
and dared him to dance on a wave.
“I trust you not, your come and go, nor your game,”
said Fox, “nor scent like a grave,
but what choice have I?” and in splashed he.

Fox paddled and swam and the Sea rushed out
and carried the Fox far away.
It dropped him near death with a thundering shout,
dripping beside a blue bay,
where the Fox sopped himself from the Sea.

The Fox merely sighed and looked far away
and his tail ’round himself he curled.
“I, once again, at the end of the day
am just a fox at the edge of the world,”
yawned the Fox to the whispering Sea.