Art

Paintings, illustrations, curiollages &c.
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Animal Collective AlphaBands

Animal Collective Art, AlphaBands, Digital Photoshop painting by Leah Palmer Preiss

It’s the beginning of a new alphabet challenge! This time around it’s AlphaBands, the brainchild of Sam Wolk. We’re doing images inspired by bands for every letter of the alphabet, & we’d love for you to join us! If you’d like to enter your work, please check out the rules & enter here.

I’ve decided that rather than depicting the band members themselves I’ll mostly do illustrations inspired by their name, their sound, or their songs. My first entry is for the experimental band, Animal Collective– check out their music here. One of the members goes by the name Panda Bear, but the other animals are just what came out of my pencil as I sketched. The illusion of three heads, six bodies was inspired by a traditional Japanese visual trick.

Photoshop with text from the good old Practical Standard Dictionary. What I’d really love to do is animate this piece so that the animals spin– maybe I’ll have time to update later this week. :-)

 

Goodly Creature Acrylic on collaged text & diagrams on six canvases, 6"x6" each

acrylic painting of head of creature or monster, curious art

Finally I have prints of this piece available on Etsy! Individual parts or all six elements in a bundle, in case you’d like to genetically engineer your own example of Zoorobotany!

GoodlyCreature-LeahPalmerPreiss

p.s. If you’re interested in how this piece came to be, there’s a slide show on my process page.

Dreaming Acrylic painting on map and music collage on canvas, 30" x 24"

Dreaming: acrylic painting of imaginary landscape, curious characters

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.

 

Disprize Acrylic painting on map and music collage on canvas, 30" x 24"

Painting of Cat, Illustration for A Word A Day

Sometimes one must refrain from eating, if only to make a statement. ;-)

This image was created for Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day, where it’s featured today. If you love words, you should definitely sign up for Anu’s daily emails— they are always a delight.

The original painting as well as prints are available in my Etsy shop.

Ineluctable Curiotype Alphabet

Painting of Grim Reaper; Death and Taxes

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

 

 

Felicitous Acrylic on collaged text on canvas, 6"x6"

Felicitous-LeahPalmerPreissAnother in the probably-not-so-mysterious series that began with Malinger.

It is felicitous indeed that Illustration Friday’s word this week is “tail”– this fellow not only sports his own fine fox tail, but also holds a bunch of foxtail grass. Also featured (though tail-less) are foxgloves, some glowing foxfire mushrooms, & some faux-foxing around the edges of the paper.

Original Painting ~SOLD~

Prints Available in my Etsy shop

 

Malinger Acrylic on collaged text on canvas, 6"x6"

Malinger-LeahPalmerPreiss

I am still wobbling from two very unpleasant bugs that have thoroughly sapped my energy, so it seems a cruel joke that the piece I’ve been working on illustrates the word “malinger”! I swear I have NOT been malingering, quite the contrary actually: working harder than I probably should have. No sooner did I begin to get over last week’s mysterious fevers than I got hit by a miserable chest cold, & I suspect that was partly because I didn’t allow myself enough rest for full recovery. So maybe I should learn something from this slothful slacker– he certainly looks a lot more comfortable than I feel right now!

Those of you who have followed my blog(s) for the past couple of Novembers can probably guess the series this piece is for. Otherwise you’ll just have to wonder for a week or two! ;-)

Original Painting & Prints available in my Etsy Shop

Fever Dreams Acrylic on coated paper, ~10" x 7.5" including frame

FeverDreams-LeahPalmerPreiss

This is quite an old piece, but I just had to post it now, because I’m getting over a mysterious fever that went on for a week. I had a bunch of intense dreams, as well as a very strange waking episode when my hand was attempting to draw vector lettering on the pillow. I kept trying to stop it, but it wouldn’t give up. Mostly “R”s, forward & backward, for hours. It was one of the creepiest feelings I can remember in a long time. I was afraid I might truly be going mad.

Happily I am much better and the major weirdness seems to be over. Unfortunately I’m quite far behind in my work though, so my Halloween image will still have to wait. Maybe by Thanksgiving. ;-)

Apologies for the less-than-stellar scan– it’s framed with glass, so there’s a bit of blur & distortion. I tried to Photoshop it back to health, but just like me, it’s not quite 100%!