Pumpkin Heads, Yetis, and Reprehensible Birds

I just finished updating the site, where I've posted some of my new drawings. They're influenced by Grandville, which is pretty obvious in this one, That Bird. (This is a detail.) Grandville is less in evidence in this one (below), which I must admit I like very much. I've been drawing and painting pumpkin heads for some time now, but I haven't put them in a large piece yet: they add an instant Halloween aspect to my work, and that's not exactly what I mean. It's something about being a hollow man. I do love Jack-0-lanterns. I like the whole symbolic aspect of Halloween: killing the fruit of the plant to make something that comes alive as it slowly dies. The pumpkin man is a transitional figure to me: somewhere in between the skellington and the person: it's half way alive. The same thing is true for yetis, which I use a lot. Yetis are more depressing characters than pumpkin heads, though. They're more like people in stasis, going feral in a really isolated way. This drawing, Cliff, has a background of opposing characters: there are skeletons and yetis (death and stasis) and roses and badgers (fertility and agression) alternating in the pattern behind the little slacker on the cliff. I need to get a sharper image of this drawing, but here's a detail. I've been doing a lot of mortality pieces lately, but somehow I see them all as rather optimistic. Even this one,Threat doesn't seem gloomy to me. At least, it's not nearly as gloomy as this, the Reprehensible Bird, who is both telling people what is reprehensible and is, itself, reprehensible for being so damned bossy and melodramatic. Unlike the bluejays that I mentioned a couple posts ago. I talked a great deal about their vigorous baths and punk rock hairdos, and I'm grateful that they have generously consented to appear for a photo shoot.