I was recently approached by Sheperd.com to compile a list of books to recommend. What is Shepherd? Here’s what their website says on the subject: “Shepherd is like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world… along with little notes from authors pointing out their favorite books.”

The recommendations on the website are all over the map. Some recent ones are: “The best young adult shifter romance books” “The best science fiction books in aesthetic universes” “The best historical fiction books about the Tudors” and “The best Christian romance with spiritual and romantic passion”. Since the Shepherd people had chosen me because of the popularity of my perspective instructional books, I decided that my list would be “The best books to make you a better artist.”

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My family and friends love to play the game “Eat Poop You Cat”, especially at large gatherings. This game is the drawing equivalent of the game “Telephone.” The way it’s played is that one person writes a simple description of a scene, preferably something comical like “a badger eating pizza”, then passes it to the next person. That person attempts to draw a picture to match, then folds the paper so that the only their drawing can be seen, and the NEXT person writes a description of that drawing, and so on until there is no more room on the paper. What may start out as the caption “Karen reads a lot of books”can end up as “A man presenting a girl with a snowman for her birthday” once it has traveled down the line.

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The most recent issue of the American Bystander arrived the other day, just in time for me to read with my noon coffee. This issue sports a cover by the great Peter Kuper:

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