Dinosaurs!

It's all block printed dinosaurs around here.

Dinosaurs

I've also been making dinosaurs.











Love that crazy-ass 80's style, neon, geometric fabric from the Sidney thrift store. It's too manic to use in large doses though.

Hard-headed Euoplocephalus to fight cancer

I'm really pleased to be donating this print to The D.A.D. Project (Drawing A Day). Two sisters, Serena and Emily, who are both illustrators, here in Toronto, and in Ottawa, decided to use their skills to make art to raise funds for the Canadian Cancer Society. They didn't want to feel helpless as their father fought cancer, and now, they run the project as a tribute to his memory. They sell their art, and donations from other artists, through theDADproject etsy shop. It's always great to be able to do something I enjoy and put it to good use. You should check out their shop - lots of fun, whimsical illustrations from this talented family. And if you're a local artist, please consider donating some work.

Euoplocephalus Pillow

Yes, more pillows. Today, we have Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs:


with a vintage quail or pheasant or something.



This pillow features my block printed Euoplocephalus dinosaur in mauve on gold silk. The front side is a patchwork with two other contemporary fabrics, one floral the other like marbled paper. The reverse is a patchwork of handwoven Nepalese fabric (screenprinted with leaves by etsy textile artist tanisalexis) and vintage 'gamebird' fabric in earth tones. The pillow is 14.5 inches (37 cm) wide and 11 inches (28 cm) high.

Girls like dinosaurs too you know.



Euoplocephalus, a tank of a plant-eating, Late Cretaceous Ankylosaur dinosaur, has a name which literally means well-armoured head. He had fused plated protecting back and neck and triangular horns protecting his face, shoulders and tail. His main weapon was a ball of fused bone which acted as a club at the end of his tail. He was 20 feet or 6 m long, had thick legs to carry his heavy weight and likely ambled through woodlands in what is now Alberta and Montana.

This pillow is one of a kind!

Euplocephalus pillow

Block printed dinosaur in indigo on fuschia with a stripe of herringbone. The reverse is woven silk in turquoise and gold with a up-cycled cuff from a grey men's shirt, complete with button, and tentacle and blossom label.





I thought I'd make some more masculine pillows... but somehow, even when the subject matter is a dinosaur, and I employ menswear, I seem to have used fuschia. Maybe I should aim for blue or something. Why do we have colour stereotypes anyway? Did you know that the ridiculous blue/pink thing used to be reversed? That's right! Pink was once the colour reserved for baby boys. Nothing inherently feminine there.

Oh! I sold three prints today. Yay!

giraffe & dinosaur

So I logged onto my laptop to upload some photos of my latest giraffe and a prototype Euoplocephalus pillow. I really like the fabric choices. I went out yesterday to get some more white kozo paper from the Paper Place (last trip I was lusting after coloured papers so I have this shortage of white paper). I stopped in Type, next door, and bought The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments even though I am probably familiar with a lot of them, certainly all the physics experiments, and despite the rave review by Roger Penrose (the only author I have ever encountered whose book I actually ceased reading due to pomposity). It is illustrated! Also, opening it at random, I was delighted to read a crazed fan letter from Lady Ada Lovelace to Michael Faraday. I walked home, stopping at the Workroom, where I bought some fat quarters, including this fab floral backing the Euoplocephalus pillow.*



The pattern though, needs simplification. Making sharp angles in a pillow is problematic. That's right, now I am doing R&D on pillows.

Anyway, I was delighted to see I had made two sales. So I need to pack up the custom giraffe as well as send a frog print to sparkle_debacle (Thank you!).

Also, I will see if I can meet K and D's friend (who is seeking housing in June so might babysit Minouette for me).

I have to think about what one wears to go to an international scientific meeting in the morning and then make giant dipoles in the lab in the evening, tomorrow. Steel-toes and a suit does not really work for me.

*This paragraph fails utterly to stick to a single topic, but that is the way it is.

Hard-headed Vegetarian - Euoplocephalus linocut 1st edition

Euoplocephalus, a tank of a plant-eating, Late Cretaceous Ankylosaur dinosaur, has a name which literally means well-armoured head. He had fused plated protecting back and neck and triangular horns protecting his face, shoulders and tail. His main weapon was a ball of fused bone which acted as a club at the end of his tail. He was 20 feet or 6 m long, had thick legs to carry his heavy weight and likely ambled through woodlands in what is now Alberta and Montana.

This is an original, first edition lino block print on Japanese kozo (mulberry paper) 8 inches tall by 14 inches wide (20.3 cm by 35.6 cm). The edition is limited to 14 hand-burnished prints. The colour is a somewhat variable mixture, reflecting the variability we see in nature.

For the month of April, the MSOE challenge is the Cretaceous, a geological era 135 to 65 million years ago, which saw the break-up of Pangaea, the development of flowering plants, some first hints of early mammal life, the arrival new dinosaurs but ended with the largest mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The end of the Cretaceous was an end of an era like no other.