Tomas Serrano

Above is one of the brilliant cartoon sequences of the very talented Tomas Serrano. He has a new website here, visit for more brilliance (his Woody Allen is a favorite of mine):http://www.tomasserrano.com/

Before the Storm

This is an illustration from a few years back for an article about how animals often sense a storm on its way for a magazine in Florida. We're in for some rain here in the coming week.

The Rose and the Ring

At top is a detail of the cover illustration for an edition of William Thackeray's the Rose and the Ring, a fractured fairytale he made up for Christmas - the illustrator is J.H. Tinker. At bottom is a my recasting of the original illustration from a few years back.

Bird Boat returns

Here is a version of the bird boat from an earlier post, worked into a t-shirt design for redbubble.  I'm hoping to do some linking to interesting projects tomorrow, I ran out of time today, there is definitely a learning curve with shooting the little Hamlet scenes.

What would you take?

Here is one couple on their way to the birdboat station, trying not to leave the beauty behind.

Celebrate

I do hereby solemnly swear to post something delightful tomorrow, something pretty for Valentine's Day. But I had this available for the IF prompt celebrate...it's one of my t-shirt designs, available here. 

Jane Austen casts a Satirical Eye on the Social Fabric of her Day

Sprigged muslin, anyone?  There's a bit of influence in how she's represented...does anyone recognize it (Hint: Edward Eager books)?

Oh - I forgot to mention. I'm going to be doing an intermittent series of literary takes on authors and their characters, probably will end up being disproportionately nineteenth century English Literature.

Time/Cat looking at Night Sky

This is another design for redbubble, I am using it for my illustration friday entry for time. I think there is some J.T. Steiny (see previous post) in this and also Jude Hill influence, specifically a post that included her cat friend looking intent and a photo of a quilt with round segments, which look like moons to me. Of course, I wish you all could meet each other in reality, not just in my art.

Edit: Removed button to my rabbit entry on redbubble cause it turns out you have to sign up to vote. Sorry to anyone who went there & found complications.

Climbing/Excelsior

This entry for illustration friday was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's ode to untethered (possibly unhinged) heroism, Excelsior, the first stanza of which reads:

The  shades of night were falling fast

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device -

                                           Excelsior!

Oh dear, I see I have left the exclamation point off...in any case, I was introduced to this poem in The Thurber Carnival, James Thurber being a domestic diety in my childhood home. You can see Thurber's own interpretation here. I think I made the climber a fair-haired Englishman because I had in the back of my mind the Scott expedition member Captain Oates who famously said "I am just going out and I may be some time". If you would like to see some actual icy expanses, Transient Lives has posted a virtual tour of a glacier in Patagonia.

Edit: Avid reader has commented that I left the L out of the banner. It was not intended to make the piece more editorial and is in fact an error...I will have to see if my conscience forces me to fix it in the course of the day, or I leave it as a happy accident. [Fixed]

Most likely to

Stephen Colbert is probably going to be most familiar to American readers. I've had questions lately, with the deterioration of, oh, just lots of stuff, whether satire has place anymore as a corrective to social ills. But I think this guy keeps it fresh. There's also something quite nice he does, which is to break character, simply in his facial expression, a few times in the course of his show. It recalls what I like about a few performers who you can imagine at the back of the room in high school, with the teacher saying:

.............Colbert,
"Yes,Mr.Wayans,is there something you'd like to share with the class?"
............Campbell,

They have.

Who's on your list - or were you that person?

This Island Earth

I had been thinking about how, with our best efforts, it's hard to live green - for the most part we can make steps in that direction, but most of us own cars. In California, we are running out of water, and I think about this when I take a shower. I read this post today on flutterbean, so I know I'm not alone in thinking about this. I did check , and there is a central place for recycling electronics called where you live for those in The United States. One thing I take pride by association in is that Oakland is the home of Green for All, an organization founded by Van Jones providing training for green jobs as a part of revitalizing the economy. Finally, in the practical matter of conserving resources - refrigerators, as heat-producing devices, use up quite a bit of electricity. Here are tips on how to get them to use less at A Concord Carpenter Comments .

Edit: submitted by jenn's mama:  planetgreen.discovery.com

Contained Vision/losing the spectrum

This is a reworking of an illustration I did for Education Week some years back for an opinion piece by Mike Rose, a U.C.L.A. professor who has had a long commitment to a philosophy of education with more depth and complexity than one that relies test scores or experts' theories that leave out real world experience. In particular, he feels that teachers themselves have been left out of the debate. Mike said in that essay:

We mistake narrowness for rigor, but actually we are not rigorous enough. To acknowledge our collective capacity is to take the concept of variability seriously. Not as a neat binary distinction or as slots along a simplified cognitive continuum, but as a bountiful and layered field, where many processes and domains of knowledge interact.

Mike's current post concerns the labeling involved in the preliminaries of selecting of Obama's Secretary of Education, and a plea for involving teachers in the formation of public policy for our schools. If you are interested in education, I hope you'll check it out.

Passing

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice meets a fawn in the woods. Neither human nor deer can recall identity or name, and they walk together peacefully to the end of the wood ...

Here the fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And, dear me! You're a human child!" a sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.

In looking for visual reference for stags on the internet I found, besides some humans who might more properly be described as jackasses, this sculpture. 

Presenting the Blogosphere

...as many flavors as there are bloggers.  No resemblance to any bloggers living or dead is intended by the above, unless you like the idea...

St. George and the Dragon

Here's a very old illustration I did as a card many years ago. I suppose what appeals to me about the time of year is an English/European world that exists in literature in which pagan motifs were incorporated into the newly dominant paradigm. One example is the chorus of the Holly and the Ivy, the original being:

O the rising of the sun,

The running of the deer,

The playing of the merrier gods,

Sweet singing all in the choir.

Merrier gods being changed to "merry organ" to fit it in to the new religion. 

But I love the borderlands.

Martha Joined the Circus

Taste the Sky

This is based on a recollection I have of staying with friends in Upstate New York - Kate was sticking her tongue out to catch snowflakes and Julia was commenting on it. At least, that's my recollection. Simple pleasures. 

Illustration Friday Edit: Well, snowflakes are floating things....like balloons. I had posted this for today and thought it could squeak by. I did post a more conventional balloon a few weeks back.

Chapter One/Purple Prose

My arrival at the shabby seaside town of B_ _ _ _ _ was quite accidental (or so I thought). I had merely departed the train several stops early, as I was unwilling to face what waited for me at home. It had taken me little time to settle my late aunt's estate, as she had ever been a model of prudence and forethought. Now I stood in the misty grey street as evening began to close in - an early dark, as it was the off-season. A spot of color appeared when a neon light went on in a shop window. Its electrical connection was evidently imperfect, as the light flickered intermittently. I approached the window, idly curious as to what sort of optimistic soul expected to do business at that hour and in that place.

This is part one of the exquisite corpse web experiment. Lucy has already volunteered to write the second part or paragraph. When she's posted it, I will link both here and in a new links box at right (titled PURPLE PROSE). To follow the story, you'll have to follow the link.  I expect that any individual chapter wold need have a link* to what precedes it in place, and then link forward to the next post, so anyone coming in mid-story can track it back. We'll see where it goes - I'll be following it, and if at some point it lacks a volunteer for say a week, I'll jump in and bring it back here. Anyone can provide a conclusion at any time, and can start a new story. If you don't like writing in the first person, a third person could kill off the first person narrator - it's all up to the author. Can't wait to follow this!

*links for these should be to the individual post. Click on the time of the post or the title and you will go to a page with a specific address. Copy that address and link in the post with a href etc.

P.S. Thanks Lettie , whose pics of Eastbourne pier inspired this story beginning.

Purple Prose: The second chapter is here at a thousand words

Wise and All-seeing

Well, I am thrilled to be able to present my all-seeing potato swami. this is a piece I did for my own entertainment some years ago which has never seen the light of day until now. It just didn't seem to fit into an editorial work portfolio. I think there is probably quite a story here...the other vegetables lacking eyes, they would need to consult someone with more perspective (although perhaps it's unwise of me to talk about perspective, living as I do in an art world with 2 1/2 dimensions).

Nother Dragon

Bet you didn't see that coming! Available as a print and as a t-shirt on redbubble.