Swamp Alien

You can also find this on the oldest pages of my gallery, but a new photo was long overdue.

I designed this monster on paper when I must have been between two and five years old. I don't think I was in kindergarten yet. When my grandmother (passed away in 2003) saw it she liked it so much that she re-created my drawing as a big painting (nearly five feet across) working on it long after I went to bed. In the bottom right corner is the part I painted entirely on my own, which is supposed to be a little green monster with eyes on stalks, a spiky white tail, and multi-colored arms. He's sitting on a mushroom.

My original drawing did have more bat-like wings and flames around the head, but she decided to make it more angelic. I like it a LOT better this way, of course.

I was actually afraid of the painting when it was first finished (I was a wussy child) and it wound up in storage until I rediscovered it in my teens. Since then, it's been hung in every bedroom I've ever had of my own, usually on the wall facing the door. I turn and look at it as an almost unconscious reflex throughout the day.