Sweet Drolatic Dreams

A very peculiar book has recently caught hold of my magpie mind. I discovered it thought the Public Domain Review's Instagram account. It’s a book from Renaissance France, right around the time Montaigne was kinda-sorta inventing blogging (well, okay, inventing the rambling personal essay). The book is called The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel and it’s so wonderfully weird and I love it.

Published in 1565, Drolatic Dreams is just a big parade of goofy-ass monsters that look like they crawled out of Hieronymus Bosch’s ears after a hard night’s drinking with H. P. Lovecraft and Alexander Dumas (there's a swashbuckling, cavalier look to many of them). There’s no text beyond the introduction, just creatures galore. 

It all just goes to show that weird books and zine culture were right there with everything else in the wild early days of publishing. 

You can read more about the book here, and you can flip through the whole thing here.* 

I’ve already copied out a couple of the creatures in my notebooks (sort of a #drawthisinyourstyle). Here's one:

One of the best things about finding this book is that it felt like a missing piece for one of the weird side projects I’ve been slowly (slooowly) fiddling with over the last year. Everything suddenly snapped into focus and the story felt more alive. That’s a good feeling.

But more on that later…

*For some reason I think leafing through the Drolatic Dreams pairs well with this playlist based on the travels of Ibn Battuta.

Finger Box

 The girls found this little box in amongst some of my old things up in the attic. I remember making it, but I don’t remember how old I was when I did. The writing on the lid suggests …eight? I was always a little behind the curve, though, so it could well have been later. 

I’m so glad it still exists. 

Painting Gravagna

This past weekend I celebrated the fact that 11 years ago I managed to talk an implausibly beautiful and intelligent girl into marrying me. I was a boy who had little to offer beyond vague aspirations toward being an “artist,” or maybe an “adventurer.” She was nineteen and a sophomore in college. On paper it looked a little rash.

But our friends came from far and wide for the wedding, some even arriving unannounced and camping on my parents lawn. They celebrated our rash vows. And you know...

...everything turned out okay.

For this 11th anniversary I gave Anna this painting of Gravagna, our beloved little village. (It’s the biggest landscape I’ve ever painted). For the rest of you I offer Chesterton’s essay “In Defense of Rash Vows."

Creating this painting was an interesting and sometimes challenging experience. Most of the work was done in late afternoon sessions, over the course of about 3 weeks, on a hillside about a mile or so from the village. Each day I wrapped the painting in an old sheet and walked to the hilltop to contend with the sun, snakes, and curious passers by. And the wind. Oh, the wind. A large canvas is really not much different than a sail...

But there really is no substitute to painting a subject from life. You learn more. Spend time really looking at a subject and, if you’re lucky and attentive, you might start to really see it. And that always feels like a miracle to me.

As one of my favorite teacher’s told me, “You can teach your hands to do anything. Art is in the eyes.”

Robot Comic #14

(newspaper format here.)

This has not been my best Monday.

But the good news is this: I inked a whopping two robot comics this weekend while I was waiting to have my car's breaks replaced (poor car really needed it). Of the two, I decided to color, scan and post this one because ...well, maybe in the hope that explosions sometimes lead to rainbows?

Yeah, that's the ticket.