black birds

a series of animal collectors.

crows love shiny things. there are seven here, for a secret.

a magpie collects things for its nest.

bowerbirds love the color blue.

fruit corset giclee prints

new to my etsy shop, lovely giclees of my Fruit Corsets in History painting.

historical fruit corsets

^^click for biggerer!

new painting!! this was so much fun to research. the antique corset gallery and bridges on the body were especially helpful. while i was working on it, i liked imagining who would be wearing these undergarments. elizabeth bennett reading impassioned letters from mr. darcy in her blueberry underpinnings… laura ingalls walking on the prairie in her apple corset… mary poppins in that sassy s-curve banana… ladies on the titanic sinking in that skinny boob-to-hip constriction… me own nan in a postwar pear girdle.

i painted this for jessica ayre, who made me the strawberry corset which was the original inspiration!

ants fer me dinner

we have been gobbling up david attenborough documentaries like giant anteaters gobble up ants. the life of mammals series is totally mesmerizing! it’s a wonder that deer and owl people keep drawing deer and owls over and over again (ha! guilty!) because the world is full of crazy, adorable, and just plain weird creatures. for example, the aforementioned giant anteater:

anteaters gallumphing on the pampas. i think they are actually fairly solitary, but i couldn’t resist.

here is david attenborough running one down at about 4:26 in this life on air segment. of course, you can’t have fun like this anymore!

and the pangolin, a walking artichoke! i always pictured them scrambling around like armadilloes, but they trundle along on their hind legs, i had no idea.

really!

magpie bits & bobbin

getting sketchy for a panel i am thinking on to go with the bowerbird one. why do magpies collect shiny things, anyway? maybe what they really want is the moon and stars.

the actual panel will probably look something like this, unless i have an epiphany.

sunday morning bowerbird

good morning! i finished painting a bowerbird on a panel last night. i’d like to make it the first in a series of animal collectors. next: a magpie with a nest full of string and shiny silver things. then: a long, sinuous ferret with a bunch of toys and knickknacks. i’d like to do four, but the only other creature i could think of was a pack rat. i’m not even sure if it’s a real animal.

this panel is so pretty and shiny in person! i used some gold acrylic paint for accents and felt naughty about it. do real illustrators give in to the lure of gold acrylic paint?? it doesn’t reproduce very well. i should have just used ochre and made it look like gold instead, but oh! so sparkly. i will probably be selling this, i’ll post again when i come up with a listing.

march was hard! either the young man or i have been sick since the last week of february, except for a brief respite over a dear friend’s wonderful wedding. april has been sunnier and i’ve been listening to happier kate bush this week to lift my wheezy spirits. cloudbusting: “i know that something good is gonna happen / i don’t know when / but just saying it could even make it happen!” also, morning fog, because it sounds so wake up and enjoy.

i have been remembering a conversation i overheard while i was sitting outside the academy of sciences in the sunshine. it took place between a 7 year old goth-in-training and his little sister:
brother: Somebody DIES every day! there is a funeral EVERY DAY.
sister: Somebody buys an ice cream every day!

they were both irish and so actually it sounded more like “soombody buys an ice-crrreem every deyy!”

mutantly delicious!

(click through to the etsy listing for biggerer)

i like the colors in this print a lot. there is something very satisfying to me about the combination of navy blue, green, yellow and red (the red is a bit more stable and dark than in the picture). i wonder if anybody will want this one, though? it is a bit on the creepy side of my usual creepy-cute.

julia pastrana: singer, dancer, & bearded lady

for my beards series… let’s not forget the ladies, eh?

Julia Pastrana
Charles Darwin described her thusly: “a remarkably fine woman – she had a thick and masculine beard.” a charming person and graceful dancer with a beautiful voice, julia toured the world as a bearded lady in the mid-1800s.

mutants!

i ate a strawberry that had a nose the other day, and it made me have a think on a new print.

looking at hordes of these on flickr gives one a strange squicky feeling.

another beard: emperor norton

hmmmm, this may be a mite difficult to turn into a gocco print. simplify, simplify!

Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, with canine companions Bummer and Lazarus.

norton was this awesome san franciscan who, during the 1800s, went a little crazy and declared himself emperor of the united states and protector of mexico. people back then were totally into it! he wore a blue suit with gold epaulets and they would salute him in the streets. he printed his own currency, which tourists would buy and use in local restaurants. he declared that calling san francisco “frisco” (”which has no linguistic or other warrant”) was a high misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $25. he also made some prescient decrees which eventually came to be: that there should be a suspension bridge built from oakland to goat island to san francisco, and that there should be a tunnel built under the bay.