189. The Game of Tiny People
writing tiny stories for tiny people
Dear reader,
It is time to play the game of tiny people. For the benefit of new players, here again are the rules:
Pick a tiny person from the options below.
Write their tiny story in the comments.
Read the stories of others, and add to them. Continue the story or take it in a new direction in the comments thread.
Like your favourite stories.
The SneakyArt Post is a publication about secretly drawn art of the world. Every week, I share my latest drawings and best ideas from this journey of self-education as an artist and writer.
If you like having SneakyArt in your mail — or know someone with tiny stories to tell — share this post!
Who are Tiny People?
Tiny People are real people who passed through my world. You could say our paths crossed. Our worlds collided. For a short time, within the infinite dimensions of space, we intersected.
These are strangers who passed through my world just as they pass through yours - barely noticed, at the periphery of our vision, remembered only as a bright jacket, or a big hat, or a pair of conspicuous boots. We may not remember them but they are essential.
Tiny People make up our world, just as we do theirs. Read further:
At the Pier in San Francisco
The homeless man crossed his legs on the bench and grimaced, squinting, hunched, resigned to his role as “acceptable collateral damage” in the richest city in the world.
In the Art Institute of Chicago
(Top left) He followed the lines. They made him follow. He watched the shapes create themselves. They showed him more shapes within. His eyes widened. His brow furrowed. He grappled with a most foreign sensation, and visions unlike anything he had seen in his young life.
A Wedding Reception in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
(Bottom row, right) At every story’s end, she would turn around and explain the whole thing to her poor husband. He did not know anyone at the table. He had no stories with them. But he had her.
Thank you, dear reader, for your time and attention. I cannot wait to read what you come up with! The best stories will win signed prints in their mail.
Art Institute of Chicago: bottom right.
It was HER turn to view this baffling example of surrealist art, positioning herself slap-bang ON PURPOSE square in front of it in an effort to 'get' it. She shot the man shuffling up to HER pitch a sideways go-away stare: heck, it was HER turn. And if she was ever going to make sense of this painting, she was going to be a while...
(Top left, the pier):
He looks at a blank space, like the aging grey wood slats below his feet or the brilliant white bow of the yacht tethered across from him, and see only a full palette.
He has a lifetime’s worth of love, a full heart of poetry, ready to spill onto any canvas with vibrant splashes of cerulean ocean, or a tempest of crimson and cadmium yellow. A canvas that would be lauded for the technical palette knife cuts layers onto softened brush strokes.
He curls into himself more. They don’t realize that he still dreams in technicolor.