Peculiar things that my mind does when I’m in my office, #2

Some while ago I amused myself by seeing how many strange and fantastical—but recognisable—varieties of stickman I could think up. I drew cat-stick-people, stickmen with wings, antennae and space helmets, stickmen juggling, dancing and standing on their heads, stick witches, angels and devils, stick conjurers with top hats and magic wands (Figure 1). Harmless fun for all the slightly more eccentric members of the family.

Then no more stickmen until the other day, when I suddenly thought about pregnant stickmen and how you would draw one. And had no choice but to experiment. The results are shown in figure 2; I still haven’t decided on the ideal method. (The second one is sitting down with her back to us, by the way, rather than being tortured.)

Pregnancy is a very strange physical phenomenon, when you consider it in stickmen terms.

Then I thought about stickmen with other physical oddities, such as broken limbs (Figure 3). Also very odd, if you are only a stick.

Which all drew me with the inevitability of my own peculiar logic to consider Siamese stickmen (Figure 4). I was excited by the almost endless possibilities for these, but my enthusiasm was curbed after two by the incipient stirrings of some regard for taste. Only stirrings, mind.

My final stickman is a many-armed god (Figure 5). I think it may in fact look like a horrible accident in the genetic engineering lab, involving some spider DNA. Back to the drawing board….