Tag Archives: Curiotype

Mimetic Acrylic on Text on Canvas, 6″ x 6″

Acrylic painting by Leah Palmer Preiss depicting two circus monkeys forming the letter M for Mimetic

Step right up, folks! Don’t miss this year’s week of illustrated A.Word.A.Day words with Wordsmith Ringmaster Anu Garg!

The show opens with a pair of mischievous monkeys, illustrating our first word, “Mimetic: Copying the behavior, appearance, or characteristics of others.”

With the initial “M” in mind, my first thought was the classic Marx Brothers’ mirror scene, but once the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” came to mind I was off to the circus instead!

There, two marvelously mobile monkeys mirrored each other to make a mutual “M” (& more “M”s appeared in the background, for good measure.) It was a fun one to paint & a merry diversion from the maddening political circus going on this year. (Unlike the next illustration! Come back tomorrow if you dare to enter that sideshow!)

This painting & prints are available in my Etsy Shop, Curious Art Lab.

Heliophilous Acrylic on Text on Canvas, 6″ x 6″

Today’s word, Heliophilous, immediately made me think of cats. They always seek out the sunniest spots in the house. (One of our family cats was actually named Sunspot.)

Of course I also thought of sunflowers, whose Latin name, Helianthus, shares the same root as today’s word. Even better is the French word for sunflower, tournesol. It refers to the plant’s habit of turning toward the sun, but I’m especially fond of it because it reminds me of Tintin.

Getting these two sun-lovers to play together in a way that also formed an H was the real challenge! That’s where the garden wall came in, to elevate the kitty to blossom level & give a baseline (or should I say dance floor?) to the H.

(This painting & prints are available in my Etsy Shop, Curious Art Lab.)

Pelagic Acrylic on Text on Canvas, 6″ x 6″

Acrylic Painting by Leah Palmer Preiss of a giant squid battling plastic

Today’s word, Pelagic, like last year’s Lentic, is a scientific term describing a water ecosystem, in this case the open sea. Researching various inhabitants of the zone, I was drawn in by the giant squid– not as scary as that sounds! Aside from this squid’s many fascinating qualities, its tentacles can conveniently be arranged to read as a Curiotype P.

Dangerously near pelagic in the dictionary lurks plastic. That coincidence reminded me of a painting commission I did a few years ago, to illustrate the word Obfuscation: an octopus emitting ink, & surrounded by a gyre of floating plastic. Plastic pollution in the ocean is a serious problem, & I decided to make this painting a companion piece of sorts.

This painting, & prints of the others referenced, are available in my Etsy shop, CuriousArtLab.

Kludge Acrylic Painting on text on canvas, 6x6" by Leah Palmer Preiss

Wednesday’s word, “kludge,” was new to me when Anu offered it, but I took to it right away. It seems so onomatopoetic, somehow, & so useful to describe the mess that results when you just have to grab whatever is at hand & do the best you can.

Despite my fondness for the word I ran into trouble immediately– it’s quite a modern coinage, so none of my antique dictionaries included it. In true kludge fashion I’d be forced to wrangle it in somehow. I decided to do it inelegantly, à la ransom note, with letters sourced from old circus posters. The definition I snagged shamelessly from Anu’s email. Now, how to illustrate it? My mind went first to circuit boards, then to Rube Goldberg machines. (And both of those sidetracks remain faintly visible, like palimpsests, in the background.) But I wanted something alive in there.

That’s when being bird-brained came in handy! I was thinking about crows & how they are able to improvise tools, so I started researching “bird intelligence.” And there, like a gift from the Kludge gods, arose the magnificent kea.

Not only is it reputed to be the most intelligent bird on earth, it’s quite a handsome creature, & the only bird thought to exhibit contagious laughter. What’s not to love? It even has the consideration to begin with K! Moreover, its penchant for creative mischief has driven the humans who have invaded its territory to kludge a device to distract it from meddling with everything man-made in the vicinity, including traffic cones. Thus was born the kea gym, a variation of which forms the letter “K” in this curiotype.

I’m not sure where all the red paint splatters came from… it’s not like my studio floor looks like that or anything. Ahem. Anyway, as I was about to say, Kludge turned out to be the most troublesome, yet the most fun of all this week’s words. And of course you can find the painting & prints in my Etsy shop!

Quaggy Ecology Acrylic on text on canvas, 6" x 6"

My parents live by a pond (with very quaggy edges) & for a while they were regularly visited by a magnificent great blue heron. So when Anu gave me this word, I instantly thought of “Oscar” (as he was named by my grandmother, though I’m not sure why). I doubt Oscar ever landed a fish as large as this, nor could his neck bend in quite such a conveniently Q-like fashion, but he was an intrepid fisherman & a gorgeous creature, so this is my tribute to his majestic beauty. North Carolina (where most of my family lives) is the home of wonderful wetlands. As with many such areas across the country, they are very much in danger from over-development, so I thought of this dilemma often as I was painting this. Let’s hope generations to come will still be able to experience the wonder & awe I felt when Oscar came to visit.

Ostentatious Acrylic painting on text collage on canvas, 6"x6"

Appropriately enough for the grand finale of my week on A.Word.A.Day, here’s an ostentatious feline showing off her most opulent finery as she slinks down the red carpet to the opera. If her over-the-top style looks a bit familiar, maybe it’s because of a certain bird with a similar fondness for white furs & flamboyant feathers. Birds (& cats) of a feather flock together, & it tickles me that the two side by side spell out “NO!”

Thanks once again to Anu for another year of wonderful words. I’m already looking forward to 2017!

Original & prints in my Etsy shop.

Succulent words this week! Acrylic painting on text collage on canvas, 6"x6"

Nothing is more delicious than a good, juicy word, & A.Word.A.Day provides one every morning. I’m honored to be illustrating for Anu Garg’s succulent site again this week, & especially delighted to be given this word this year. In June we visited The Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, & saw the most astonishing collection of succulents there in the Desert Garden. My East-Coast eyes couldn’t get enough of their curious shapes & colors. There were a number of lizards enjoying the landscape as well, & I would not have been very surprised if an aloe-esque creature like this “S”-shaped fellow had appeared in one of the beds. Even an alien or a dinosaur would have seemed right at home!

(By the way, the Desert Garden is just one of many, & we were so entranced by all of them that we barely had time to pop into the Library at the end of the day before it closed– which was a pity, because their collection of rare books & manuscripts is as spectacular as the collection of plants.)

Original sold but prints still available in my Etsy shop, Curious Art Lab.

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

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.

Magic, Words! Acrylic painting on text collage on canvas, 6"x6"

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?

& Now… A New Curiotype Ampersand! Digital Illustration (Photoshop)

I have a real thing for ampersands. In fact I chose the font for this site in part because the italic ampersand gives me a tiny tendril-loving thrill every time I see it. :-) (& & & & &…. do you feel it too?) So when someone asked if I had an ampersand to go with my original Curiotype Alphabet, I was more than delighted to add one! I may yet give it a bit more tweaking but here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

The ampersand, by its very nature, brings things together– not only as a conjunction but as a letterform. Its original shape was derived from a calligraphic intertwining of the letters “e” & “t” (“et” is Latin for “and”)– although many modern versions take the basic shape & run with it to a nearly unrecognizable direction. That’s one of the things I love about the ampersand– it’s a chance for a calligrapher or type designer to throw caution to the wind & really play with form.

So I thought it was only right that there should be a pair of creatures involved in this Curiotype. And given my love of ampersands & the proximity of Valentine’s Day, I figured they should be rather taken with one another.

Stay tuned for more Curiotype developments AND more Valentine’s goodness! In the meantime I hope you are enjoying your new year & everything that comes with it!

edit: Now available as an ACEO-sized print in my Etsy shop!

Leah Palmer Preiss ~ Curious Art

Art, Lettering, Oddments & Curiosities