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’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.
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}
I’ve recently added a new section to my Etsy shop, called Tinctures, where I offer digitally recolored versions of some of my most popular prints. I know not everyone shares my rabid enthusiasm for highly saturated colors, & to be honest, sometimes I’m in the mood for something a little more subtle myself! I do the recoloring in Photoshop, & I try to create a pleasantly muted effect without completely losing the color variations of the original– keeping just a breath of the original hues.
My word-loving friends may be curious why I call this series “Tinctures.” Though most commonly used today to describe a medicinal alcohol extract, “tincture” can also mean a tint or color. In fact it originated in Middle English, from Latin tinctura act of dyeing, from tinctus, past participle of tingere to tinge.
I like to think of these as coffee-flavored versions of my work! (Yes, I’m a java junkie.) What does that make the originals, I wonder? Fruit salad, perhaps?
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.
This may be a bit of a stretch for Illustration Friday’s topic, but who among us doesn’t walk through the valley of the shadow of death (& taxes), at least some of the time? After all, they’re ineluctable!
This is yet another painting in the series I’ve been working on, whose purpose will be revealed soon. (Although anyone who tries can figure it out with very little effort.) In addition to invoking the Grim Reaper and the IRS, it includes an ineluctable nod to James Joyce, though you may have to click on the image to be able to read it.
Confession: this painting was intended for my Halloween post, not Thanksgiving! But that week I was visited by a monster of a fever, & rather than getting in the holiday mood by painting Death, I got to feel like death warmed over. The good part is that, now that I’m finally healthy again, just being able to walk around doing everyday tasks without feeling like a zombie makes me feel grateful every minute of the day, so I’m going to be very ready to give thanks tomorrow!
I’m also enormously grateful to every one of you out there in Internet Land who visits this blog. I never thought it would be possible to feel so close to people I’ve never met, but internet magic makes it so. You encourage & inspire me, you make me smile & laugh, sometimes you even make me cry (in a good way). THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!
Original Painting & Prints available in my Etsy shop
Yet another detail from Dreaming. The entire painting is 30″ x 24″; this part is about 6″ x 3″. You can see more tidbits from the painting here. I’ll be putting prints of the whole thing up in my Etsy shop soon. :-)
In case you were wondering, SPX was fantastic. It was my first con & I had no idea what a tumult of sensory overload it would be! So many amazing people, such a high concentration of creativity! It was a little dizzy-making at times, but a great experience overall. I’d definitely recommend a visit if you ever have the chance.
I’ve been coming up with a bundle of new stuff to share at SPX. If you’re coming please be sure to stop by my table! (I’ll be at D8-9a with Isaac Cates & Sam Wolk.) Please drop by early so you can grab the Curiotype initial of your choice!
Oh p.s. you will be able to spot me by my hat. C|:-)
Also, I will be unveiling prints of the full painting these details came from!
This is another detail from the same painting as my previous post. Hybrids have always been an obsession of mine, especially zoophytes & even zoorobotanical specimens!
