In Florida’s Everglade swamps (and other parts of the Southern US states) we have our own version of Big Foot known as Skunk Ape. He gets his name from his rotten odor. We mustn’t be too hard on him though, Florida gets pretty damn hot and you would start stinking pretty fast if you lived in the woods. I’ve seen some illustrations of him (based on eye witness reports, of course!) as being big and burly like Big Foot and others where he looks sort of like a furry 12 year old boy with white ringed eyes (another explanation for the ’skunk’ in his name, I guess.) I was watching a show on mysterious beasties the other night and though I really should pay homage to the Skunk Ape in my own way.

The idea for a greeting card came up and so this week’s comic was born. Do I go ahead and make it into a greeting card? Too mean? Funny enough, not to matter if it’s a little mean? Not mean enough? Idk. It makes me laugh so I’ll probably do a small run.

Today my friend sent me a link to an article on body art in the literal sense..art made with human blood, flesh, bones, hair, nail clippings, etc. You’ll recognize Gunther Von Hagens’ Bodyworlds work, but there is a lot that you might have never seen before. I think my favorites are the self portrait made of frozen blood by Marc Quinn:

and the sculptural pieces made of carefully arranged bones by Francois Robert:

More Whining –

I’m finding that this carpel and weird nerve stuff in my wrists really gets aggravated when I work on the computer (or draw a lot) but is pretty much fine when I work in clay. Thank goodness for that. I’m at a point where if I have a lot of computer work in a week and am in a lot of pain, I might just have to pass on doing a GingerDead that week. I used to just grin and bear it and overdo it anyway, but lately when I do that I end up being out of commission from using my wrists for anything for days at a time. That’s just too high a price to pay, so if I’m having a bad week, you might not get a GingerDead. Thanks for understanding if the updates are little less reliable. That said, I am working on odd dolls and creepy finger puppets and developing some new tiny clay pendant dolls. So if I miss a week here and you can’t bear it, you can always stalk me on facebook or twitter (calanree) or check CalanRee.com and see if I’m posting new work there.

That’s all for now. See you next week (probably!)

<3 calan