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.
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?
What could be better at the end of a long hard week in the lab than a nice refreshing craft beer? And hey, if you’re a zymologist, you can call it research!
Why a goat (aside from those elegant horns that conveniently help form the “Z”, that is)? Goats have a long association with beer– specifically bock beer– thanks to a regional German accent.
Quoth Wikipedia: The style known now as bock was a dark, malty, lightly hopped ale first brewed in the 14th century by German brewers in the Hanseatic town of Einbeck. The style from Einbeck was later adopted by Munich brewers in the 17th century and adapted to the new lager style of brewing. Due to their Bavarian accent, citizens of Munich pronounced “Einbeck” as “ein Bock” (“a billy goat”), and thus the beer became known as “bock”. To this day, as a visual pun, a goat often appears on bock labels.
That’s all the excuse I need. :-)
Meanwhile, back at the lab– Curious Art Lab, that is– I’ve brewed up some prints of this image for you!
Gardening is one of my favorite activities, but inevitably there comes a time each year when I start to feel like this. It seems one minute I’m blithely puttering along, & the next, absolutely gobsmacked by the rampant growth of our North Carolina Summers. No matter how I try, I can’t keep up, so I just do what I can & hope for the best. Even a ramshackle, overgrown garden is better than no garden!
I read quite a lot of gardening books, but I don’t recall coming across this word before. The moment I saw it on Anu’s list I knew just what to paint! And “S” is such a wonderful letter– it’s graceful & decorative even in its simplest form, & very amenable to play & elaboration, whether calligraphic or illustrative.
If you’d like to see this painting & its print offshoots growing in their Etsy habitat, I welcome you to a garden tour! {Original SOLD}
Illustrating words for Anu Garg’s brilliant site A.Word.A.Day is a dream gig for me. I’d been a devoted fan for many years before I began this project, & he always chooses such wonderfully evocative words for me to tackle!
If you’ve been around for the last few years of AWAD art, you probably know that I wouldn’t dream of doing a week’s worth of illustrations without including at least one cat. The word “oneiric” instantly made me think of a sleepy white kitty floating blissfully in the clouds, accompanied by some favorite… friends, shall we say? It’s a peaceable kingdom in the sky! Round & round & round they go, conveniently assuming the shape of a letter “O.”
And of course they have drifted into my Etsy shop… come say hello! {Original SOLD}
My name is Leah & I’m a coffee addict. Maybe it’s too many tight deadlines, maybe it’s just weakness of character, but I sure do love the stuff. It’s probably bad for my anxiety & sleep issues… okay, definitely bad… but still, so delicious & uniquely fortifying! Around this time of year I follow the traditional coffee advent calendar: one cup on the first of the month, two on the second…
To add to its charms, coffee is conducive to conviviality. And it may be more than the caffeine that does the trick. Check out this intriguing study.
I was introduced to the “kaffee klatsch” in college, where there were regular gatherings in various departments for conversation & coffee (the coffee was abysmal but the conversations great). The word always made me think of “kitsch,” which no doubt influenced this image.
It was quite a challenge getting the “K” shape in there. I finally made it happen, more or less, with the four arms (or should I say wings?) connecting in the center.
For extra kitschy goodness, there’s a little snippet of lyrics from The Music Man hidden in there. Can you find it?
You are invited to join the party at my Etsy shop!
Oh, you thought I was talking about the relentless march of the holiday retail machine? Nope, that’s last week’s news. Now it’s time to brace yourself for this year’s mighty, unstoppable A.Word.A.Day illustration series!
Today’s word is “juggernaut,” “a massive relentless force, person, institution, etc. that crushes everything in its path.”
Though the word’s origins lie in Hindu tradition, my thoughts went immediately to Godzilla, then back to earlier rampaging Asian monsters. A gigantic golden dragon could certainly destroy a city, while forming a fairly convincing curiotype letter “J”!
This painting & prints thereof are now available while they last* in my Etsy shop. So I guess now we’re back to the holiday retail theme. ;-) *Original art SOLD… wow, that was fast!
More A.Word.A.Day art to come! Tomorrow some kitschy cluckers clutching coffee. Can you guess the word?
You may have seen bits & pieces of this image before, but here’s the whole thing!
At last I am able to make prints of this available on Etsy. They’re not full-size (about half that), but much bigger than my usual small prints. (When I tried to reduce them to standard printer-paper size, you could hardly see the details at all!)
Unrelated note: today’s A.Word.A.Day painting is Ineluctable. A warm welcome to all of you who are arriving here from that site. (For the rest of you, if you haven’t yet wandered through this wonderland of words, head on over now!) And if you’d like to know more about the painting itself, see my previous post.
It’s always thrilling to be a part of this amazing site. Thank you so much to Anu Garg for letting me play with his ever-inspiring word collection again!
My website crashed earlier, probably a fainting spell from sheer excitement. ;-) Not very felicitous timing, though– my apologies to anyone who received that doomly message. I hope all is well in server-land now, but if not, you can always reach me via Twitter, Facebook, or my Etsy shop, CuriousArtLab.
