When Anu gave me this word to illustrate for A.Word.A.Day, I came up with the idea right away, but I couldn’t find “yobbery” in any of my old dictionaries! What to do? Aha! In good yobbish fashion I would simply tag over another definition! It was fun to paint all the teeny tiny trash.
This is the time of year when I most crave the color green, so it was a pleasure to illustrate Viridity for A.Word.A.Day. And of course it was also a good excuse to paint a cat. :-)
Today’s A.Word.A.Day painting is Quacksalver, a variant of the more familiar quack. This particular duck doctor is administering a terrifyingly large leech to his very unhappy patient. His office wall bears a dubious diploma from the Institute of Hirudiculture, conferring a degree in leechery. Three troubling vocabulary words for the price of one!
It’s that magical time of year again– when I get to share my illustrations for that wizard of words, Anu Garg, & his fount of esoteric etymological lore, A.Word.A.Day! How appropriate that we begin this year with Gramarye. I first encountered the word as a child, reading T.H. White’s Arthurian series, The Once and Future King, & ever since it evokes warm memories of those books, so when Anu offered it as a possibility, I knew immediately that I wanted to illustrate it. I felt the image needed some magical letters in addition to the letter “G” formed by the art, so I researched magical alphabets & did my best to “spell” out a secret message using one of the most popular. Do you have the magical powers to interpret this gramarye?
It has been a long & winding road, but I finally finished the second custom Dunny– actually the fourth for this collector. This little fellow will be a traveling companion for Azulejo, soon to be crossing the ocean to Portugal!
It’s been a long time coming, but at last Invasive is finished! Please note the not-so-hidden message across the bottom. Prints are now available in my Etsy shop, & if you’d like to see a quick video tour, you can find it on my Instagram page.
It just so happens that the painting I’m working on is full of pointy elements, so once again I feel like Illustration Friday is reading my mind with their latest prompt! It won’t be long before I’ll be able to post the entire painting, but for now here are some process shots, gathered from Instagram.
I’ve got a new painting in the works & I’ve been playing with some ideas in pen & ink, posting wip sketches over at Instagram. I thought you all might be interested– I’m planning to share some painting process shots there too. Have a look if you like! (You don’t need an Instagram account to see my page.) These are done in a mini Moleskine sketchbook, with India ink & a Hunt 108 flexible crow-quill pen. The backgrounds are painted in with a Pentel brushpen, & white details added with a Uniball Signo gel pen.
It has been quite a while since I painted a custom toy! Here is my latest, Azulejo. His patterns are based on Portuguese tiles, & he holds a miniature “tile” made of painted wood. I’m embarking on another Dunny now– if you’d like to see progress shots, I’ll be posting some on Instagram at instagram.com/curiousartlab/
I was planning to post this image for Illustration Friday’s prompt “Ruckus” because the word immediately made me think of Festus & Mercury: Ruckus in the Garden by Sven Nordqvist, one of our family’s favorite children’s books. If you’ve never encountered this book, please get hold of a copy immediately! It’s a quirky, hilarious tale of an old farmer & his mischievous cat & their mad adventures in gardening.
This painting, of course, is a different sort of ruckus, inspired by my well-established love for tendrils.
I didn’t finish quite in time to post for “Ruckus,” but luckily it sort of works for “Outside” too!
The text comes from this delightful old book, a flea market find:
