Three kings stopped a walking man to ask advice about their dreams.
But the man said, "Oh no please, I don't want to hear these things."
"I have dreams of my own although they'll never come to pass...
I just work my life away while all you rich guys sit and laugh."
In wanting to get active with my fellow doodler community, I wanted to stop in and introduce myself. My name is Dalton Stark, I live in Texas, and i'm a doodle addict, and an advocate for the possibility of anything. For me, doodling is my purest state of being human. My sketchbooks are a very sacred place for me to practice this expressive and arcane form of imagination meditation, which I'm always trying to find more excuses to spend more time in. It is to me, all about intuition, making discoveries, surprising yourself, having fun and maybe even making yourself and others smile or laugh sometimes. I look forward to being a part of this beautiful inky ecosystem with y'all, here are some very secret sketchbook spreads.
Yesterday, I was drawing during the Metropolitan Opera's daily streaming. My husband, Mike came by and looked dumbfounded. "Samson and Delilah inspired THIS subject matter?" Walked off shaking his head. We have a good laugh!
Posted the sketch of this earlier, but I thought the ink looked nicer, so here you are! I love dragonflies. Deadly hunters, slaughtering their prey without mercy, yet beguiling enough to somehow convince humans they are harmless as butterflies. They have their own sort of deadly, sleek beauty.
It’s always good to find some drawing time on vacation. We went to some weird random small towns in Washington and a ghost town called Burke with some particularly interesting history. I had Cheers playing on my phone while I drew this but no similarity is intended. It’s a classic show but it would have been better without the distracting laugh tracks.
christmas ‘24 destination spent with my people - thankful for the few days of quality family time, endless memories made, the many many laughs, and the beautiful view we were blessed with from our airbnb! enjoy a little watercolor I did while there, a breathtaking view from the Ozarks!
Rest in Power, Paul Reubens. I watched a lot of Pee-wee Herman as a young kid. As an adult, Paul Reuben's collection of erotic gay art made him interesting to me but misunderstood by many people. Any way you take him, he was funny and made many people laugh. I painted a scene from Pee-wee's Big Adventure, a classic Pee-wee movie from 1985. I love the California scenery and am happy with how the landscape turned out.
I am an art teacher with a master’s degree—trained by brilliant professors who believed that art could do more than decorate walls. I offer safe spaces for teenagers to grow—nourishing soil where their imaginations can take root.
And yet… I am assigned to hallway duty.
This is compulsory education, after all.
So I sit—posted like a sentinel—watching young lives stream past.
“Get to class,” I say with a smile and a nudge.
The system wants attendance; I’m hungry for presence.
Armed not with a whistle or clipboard, but with a pen—
my scribble’s soft insurgency.
The hallway stretches out like a geometric hymn.
Columns and corners chant structure.
Teenagers swirl past—half-formed galaxies of limbs and laughter—
their orbits chaotic, their gravity pulling time forward.
I begin to draw.
Not their tardiness, but their motion.
A shoulder. A blur of sneakers.
A tilted head chasing freedom.
Feet flickering like seconds.
Each mark a pulse.
Each smudge a breath.
My paper becomes a seismograph of seeing—
trembling gently through the mundane.
This isn’t about making art for a frame or a feed.
It’s about refusing to leak away in the fluorescent hum of obligation.
It’s a quiet mutiny against the clock.
I do this on long car rides, too (passenger side, mind you).
Letting the lines grow wild, jagged, and unapologetic.
Not for polish—
but for presence.
This is how I remember I’m still alive.
Still growing.
Still watching.
Still choosing to see.
Because sometimes mental health looks like
a piece of scrap paper,
a moving pen,
and the simple, sacred act of
marking time with wonder.
Ms. Nathan was a play production teacher with flair and a big personality. She wore colorful clothing and loud socks that never matched. Her joyful, chortling laugh filled the room—or the hallway—wherever she happened to be.
Staff meetings and PD days have always been strong invitations for observational drawings. Over the years, I’ve found that there are many boxes to check in a wide variety of systems. I often created my own boxes—and checked them with sketches of my colleagues.
This one goes out to the colorful Ms. Nathan.
GLOOSCAP AND THE BABY
From Favorite Folktales from Around the World byJane Yolen.
Glooscap, having conquered the Kewawkqu’, a race of giants and magicians, and the Medecolin, who were cunning sorcerers, and Pamola, a wicked spirit of the night, besides hosts of fiends, goblins, cannibals, and witches, felt himself great indeed, and boasted to a woman that there was nothing left for him to subdue.
But the woman laughed and said, “Are you quite sure, master? There is still one who remains unconquered, and nothing can overcome him.” In some surprise Glooscap inquired the name of this mighty one. “He is called Wasis,” replied the woman, “but I strongly advise you to have no dealings with him.” Wasis was only a baby, who sat on the floor sucking a piece of maple sugar and crooning a little song to himself. Now Glooscap had never married and wasignorant of how children are managed, but with perfect confidence he smiled at the baby and asked it to come to him. The baby smiled back but never moved...
#dailydrawing #folktales #kidlitart #babies #algonquian
Lords of War - otep
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us, God
More wars on foreign shores
More names for us to mourn
To misguide the misinformed
To ignore the sick and poor
Thus, we praise the lords of war
On our knees and beg for more
A fresh poison for the weak
Filthy little beasts
Bred to conform
It's the dwarfed souls of greedy men
Feculent, arrogant
That shackles our young to the cold concrete
And empty their guns into bodies
They scream "I'm not guilty"
They scream "I'm not guilty"
But cowards here are only what they fear
Shoot until the threat stops
I'd rather be in battle than at peace
I'd rather be a wolf than a sheep
I'd rather be in battle than slaughtered like cattle
The weak can sleep while
You were born to be led
That's what religion says
With a bifurcated tongue
America eats its young
Bullet-toothed, empty gods
Paralyze the minds and contest the thoughts
With devils everywhere
Bombs bursting in the air
Drones flown over thrones
Of bone and brimstone
Sabers rattle in the homes
Of the cowards and the crones
As they shackle our young
Blood stains the streets
Pigs empty their guns in their bodies
Bow down to the lords of war
On your knees for the lords of war
Bow down to the lords of war
On your knees for the lords of war
We rise in defiance
We won't remain silent
To triumph over tyrants
And police violence
Shoot until the threat stop
We're not guilty
Help us God
The lords of war
On your knees for the lords of war
Bow down to the lords of war
What is so terrible about a child screaming?
Why should it disturb us?
Just because we happen to be there to hear it?
What about the child who comes from an inadequate home, where he gets no encouragement from his parents
Where he doesn't have enough to wear, he doesn't have enough to eat, he comes to school hungry...
This beautiful, breathtaking #embracingnightmares
I genuinely can't believe it's already March (I also can't believe it'll be a year since the pandemic really started). Yesterday also marked one year since I started journaling, which isn't an actual major thing, but still. How quickly time flies and how big of a difference a year can make. "And when it rains, the rain falls down Washing out the cattle town But she's quite safe up far away in her eiderdown And she dreams of crystal streams Of days gone by when we would lean Laughing, fit to burst, on each other."
the Jack of the Lantern. He stalks through the night on his broom of flame. Laughing all the way to unholy Hell. He takes what he pleases, he takes many souls. And he vanishes into the darkest of the shadows.
Based off the urban legend of Edward Mordrake who was a man from the 1800's that had a twin on the back of his head. The twin supposedly would laugh, cry and tell whispers. This then led to Mordrake secluding himself in a room before deciding to take his own life at the age of 23.
Acrylic on wood 36x19 Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep, and you weep alone;
The good old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own. (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
(HB pencil on a 138mm x 88mm postcard) It's more than just a strange laughing cat wearing a monocle. The full description of it is here, on my main art blog: https://www.skavart.co.uk/2020/08/the-laughing-monocled-cat.html ...Although you might regret reading it!
