Some Trajectories

I was involved with an excellent culture site until very recently, when it was taken down for reasons of artistic objective. I just made that up, I don't exactly know why it's down. I suspect it may be for good, though, so I'm going to repost a few things that left with the site.

I actually had a link up to the last one before – clearly recognizable if you've already checked out my other beast prints. I wrote a sweet blurb about it for So:

I want to read little-known secrets penned by well-known scholars of some forgotten caliphate; elaborated from a Pharaohnic death manual, a bound vellum volume captured during Alexandrine campaigns into The East, or both. The text in question will show certain influences, peculiar in their combination – Vedism, Kabbalah, the Island of Mu, and traces here and there recognizable only to those versed in the ways of the Incan khipu kamayuq. Impartial records will indicate the grimoire's passing inexplicably from Turkish petty-khans to the well-to-do of the Low Country; optimally, it will have been procured from the Nazis before the fall of Berlin.

To fulfill this desire, I must know a minimum of eight dead languages – no less than two of which I am to have invented myself.

Editor went with something else. Oh well – I'm like, halfway on the dead languages thing.


I go nuts for manticores. They're rockin'.

Cyclopes, too. What's up, in-the-plura~l?

This language has already been displaced by a successive script.

Sandwiches

There's a better/best one drying this very minute to my right, but I don't have a large enough scanning bed to accommodate it. And it's not dry.

I'm either part seal, or I'm wearing a snuggy.

Damn, dog, you even talk to yourself while you draw.

Signed & Sealed

Working on inscriptions to keep the genies in for good. I misplaced a sheaf of seals, but fortunately that led to some good developments in my thinking.

Animal / Vegetable

These are for a companion project to the Bestiary; I posted the front-plate for this section a while ago. These are just proofs to get an idea of how the plates are lining up. (not always reliably, as you can tell from the third test; but we'll figure it out).

Genies

These prints represent the completion of what has been a long-term, multi-part project.

I noticed that something in my apartment causing bad luck, so I decided to take steps to remedy the misfortune. By chance I had several tins of six-month-old dried garlic on the window sill; because of garlic's special arcane properties, these pungent heads of allium had already gone a long way to absorbing the malefic essences – I just had to give them form.

So the garlics were sealed in plates (with glue, clearly), and plasticized (plastic also has strong anti-luck properties), and the genies then materialized on paper. That really just made them more dangerous, since before there'd only been an immaterial presence. Now the concentrated force manifested as a proper genie. This was, of course, necessary for the final stage of the process, where seals were applied to the papers. Without material form the unlucky genius would have continued to pervade my apartment, but once located it can easily be bound.

These sealed genies are still dangerous; like, if I burned the papers, they'd get out, and that'd suck. But it was the right thing to do. I shouldn't keep them all in one place, though – too powerful – so if you want a genie get in touch with me and we'll discuss your stewardship of evil. You could take them and burn them in your ex's apartment or something and release the evil there, but don't go blaming me for any consequences that might arise from that.

A seal.

An evil genie.

Another evil genie.

Another evil genie, again.

Pen & Ink

This is for a project I have no affiliation with whatsoever. That said, it inaugurates an exciting return to pen & ink for not-me, and the equally exciting advent of scanned images that look better and don't require massive level adjustments in Photoshop just to be visible.

Fruitful

It didn't exactly take me all month to finish these guys – just to get the right posted. If you astutely observed that I'm missing one from the preps I posted, give yourself a cookie.