New Nature Alphabet Book

At last, it's ready!

When I first thought of making a series of nature-themed images to illustrate the alphabet, I was also thinking it would be neat to make a simple, informative children's book out of it. I was trying to find a way to have it printed as a rigid board book (sturdier for young tots) but it seems like all printers of such books are large factories in Asia. They're cheap- by the book- but I would have had to order cases of 1000 or something, which wasn't an option.

So I went with Lulu, the self-publishing company. I was very impressed with the quality, considering how easy the process was. Fortunately, my book had enough pages to get a perfect-bound spine, which I think looks much better than saddle-stitch and closer to my original board book idea; nice, square and flat:

It's titled 'Acorn, Bur, Conch' and has a little, simple blurb on each natural element chosen for each letter, an array of fruits, plants, animal elements and minerals. I think it's pretty cute and it's dedicated to my daughter- who is, conveniently, currently obsessed with the alphabet- Penelope.

Available for sale through Lulu's site. There's a preview as well.

Individual letter illustrations are available in my Etsy store.

Kitsune - Fox Spirit

New illustration post, again. I haven't been very good at this whole blog thing. The point is probably to say a tiny bit more about my art and (gasp) thoughts than just "here's a drawing", which is pretty much what my latest posts have been. Will try to elaborate a bit more in the future... And by that I mean not today :P Anyway, here's one of my latest illustrations, out of the Shinto mythology theme I've got going... I've had this image of a Kitsune- or fox spirit- floating in my mind for a while...

More action coming soon...

More Shinto goddesses

I finally got around to finishing the triptych I decided to undertake when I finished Benzaiten. I'm not sure that I am entirely done with the whole ukiyo-e inspired style yet. I really enjoy the ethereal look, with the figures seemingly suspended in time and gently considering their surroundings. But for now, these are the deities I thought would complement each other nicely.

So there's Benzaiten/Benten, as previously introduced...

Then it's O-Ryu the willow goddess with Konohanasakuya-hime the cherry blossom goddess. I liked the contrast between the two trees/goddesses: An sturdy, tall green tree beside a dainty flowering tree...

Lastly, there is Amaterasu, the Sun goddess. I wanted her to look colossal, as the Sun shines on the entire world, but I wanted her to still look nurturing and poised...

Even though I didn't carefully plan how each picture would look when finished, I quite like the effect when putting them all together. There is a nice spectrum of elements going on with the goddesses and the colour schemes, Benzen being water, O-Ryu and Konohanasakuya earth and Amaterasu fire...

What I've been up to...

I did mention before that I'm not so great with personal blogs... but even I am willing to concede that a year between posts is pretty pathetic. Oh well. Where was I... I did end up drawing a fair bit, much of it being for a single children's magazine in Austria. They're fun little stories about a grey fox and a chipmunk. There is a small pile of them, as I do several illustrations per issue. So here's a quick little compilation, just as proof that I wasn't slacking offline quite as much as online ;)

Work in progress - God of Birds

I seem to have been dabbling heavily in mythological/god-like figures lately. It's mainly because I enjoy the allegorical quality of such characters: It's like putting a human face on wonders of nature and life.

With that in mind, I was pondering one night on the fact that, aside from some animist societies, we represent deities, nature spirits and allegorical figures as humans or, at least, partly human. Even Death, despite being universal and a reality for all creatures, is traditionally portrayed as a human skeletal figure (my own piece featuring Death coming soon ;) ).

Therefore, I was wondering whether our fellow animals would personify objects of worship as their own species, if they were so inclined.

To explore that concept, I began with the God of Birds. I figured that birds would probably come up with a sun-deity. Since birds tend to begin singing at dawn, many birds who flock do an impressive 'dance' at sundown and migratory birds rely heavily on celestial bodies to navigate (the sun being the brightest), I pictured birds celebrating a surreal, vaguely bird-like god in the shining orb.

This is a first sketch, entirely digital (as opposed to a pencil/ink drawing) and the style turned out quite different compared to my usual stuff: The God of Birds-

New piece - Sky Maidens

Another piece with mythological undertones. Since I've recently explored more Asian and Indian styles, I went with a Greek or Roman feel. At first, I had the goddess Selene in mind, but it turned into more generic allegories of the Moon and stars.



I guess I could post more images of the work progress. It looks nice and spiffy on a blog... But as I previously mentioned, I'm a bit lazy about it. It's good enough that I draw, no?? ;)

New piece - Mehndi

A new piece I did, inspired not by a specific goddess but by the art of mehndi or henna designs.



The figure is based on old, voluptuous Indian sculptures and I hope I successfully captured the 'rasa' as Vilayanur Ramachandran might say ;)

New Piece - Mechanical

Another piece finished this week. I'm updating my portfolio (again) and figured I'd stick with whimsical, line-based, fantasy style.

The ink drawing:


Coloured piece:


A detail: