Our local antiques store had a huge treasure trove of vintage Native American themed toys and gifts this weekend. I realized that 1) I'd owned a lot of them and 2) none of my friends had. It never occurred to me that my collection was particularly large or unique. Doesn't every kid have a fixation on this country's indigenous population? Apparently not. I love the visual language of the Navajo and Hopi especially. My Kachina doll collection was the bomb.
I always loved the wide-eyed screaming horror of Elsa’s original Bride, but for mine I thought it would be fun if she was instead just very, very, displeased. As soon as her motor-functions kick in, it’s gonna kick off, and Doctors Frank’ and Pretorius are gonna take a very short walk off that very high tower.
On the set of the original movie, attached to one of the columns, you can see a big wheel that’s used to crank open the skylight. I thought it might be interesting to incorporate this, symbolically, as a sort of halo, like the kind of thing you see in stained glass windows and old religious art, and to give the scene an additional sixth day creation kinda vibe.
Also, whilst working on this, every time I thought of the name “Pretorius”, I would involuntarily sing it in my head to the tune of, “No, No, Notorious”
I saw on the Samantha Bee show that there's an association between vintage cartoons and minstrelsy, and I can't stop thinking about it now. So I drew some mean looking white person mice in retaliation. These are your suburb mice that are complaining that the Whole Foods line is taking too long.
(2B pencil on an A7 page) This is one of eight images I used in a small booklet I made about "The Little Black Book" and the contacts and comments people would write in such address books. This one is of a pirate. Others include a superhero, an alien, a witch, an angel, and a cat. The full set can be seen here on my art blog: https://www.skavart.co.uk/2020/06/the-little-black-book-vidi-vici-veni.html
(HB pencil - 38mm x 20mm) A very small (and yes, those sizes are in millimetres!) example of a dreamscape piece taken from an A6 sketch-booklet I made. I chose this one from it to display here because it turned out so insane.
George the mouse found himself in a pickle. He had discovered the most perfect mushroom house at the end of an alligators nose. The trouble was the door was too small and he could not get inside...
My adventures in Florida continue. While my husband recovers from Lyme Disease, we head on over to Universal Studios for Harry Potter time. Then we go to a skeleton museum and Ripley's Believe it or Not.