I want to share some of my #PeeWeeHerman - inspired art.
Pee-Wee was a huge influence on my aesthetics, my sense of humor, even my sense of self, who I was, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to move through this world.
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Thank you, #PaulRubens , always & forever.
This was my holiday card a few years ago, based on the scene from Pee-Wee's Christmas Special when #AnnetteFunicello asks The King of Cartoons if she can introduce the cartoon!
I drew this after her show at RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL. By this time, i'd learned (the hard way) to backup my orignal files in multiple places and multiple formats!
This is my favorite of my takes on #DollyParton .
I love all eras of Dolly, but late 70s speaks to me most. I feel I've come closest to communicating her spirit here!
One problem with leaving the birdsite is that I had built up a reasonable list of illustrators to follow there, and I really haven't here. But I bet they're around. If you're a #fantasy or #sciencefiction or #comedy#illustrator, especially if you're interested in commissions from an author, give this post a like so I can check out your work. Or recommend me someone in the comments. Or boost this so more people see it. Or just tell me what good hashtags I should be following. #illustration#sff
Pt 1• I was exploring an abandoned schoolhouse. I found a shredded book with a photo portrait of an old woman with an interesting face. I tried to focus my camera to take a picture of the picture, but the more I tried to focus, the more the expression on her face changed. I decided to research the woman, and found she was an artist. Her paintings had been installations, painted on many layers of glass and layered together to give a three-dimensional effect. Most of her paintings had not survived intact. But one had, and a hotel had been built around it.
Pt 2• I booked a room at the hotel. The painting took up a whole room, and there were rooms around the painting, so you could see it from different angles. [I sketched what I remembered as soon as I woke up] The painting was of a nude cis white woman standing barefoot in a field, with the edges of a forest on either side. Lush vegetation and mushrooms grew at her feet. All the plants, trees, and mushrooms, had a fiery quality to them; they seemed to flicker like flames. The mushrooms spelled out words. Some I recognized as the names of mythological figures. I had a feeling that ALL the plants spelled out something, but in a form that I didn't recognize as language. There was definitely something being communicated through shape and pattern. Everything was painted on layers of glass, stacked upon each other, giving a vast sense of depth. The lighting seemed to change throughout the day, from flaming reds in the morning to pale blues in the night. There were also ambient sounds coming from the painting, that built to a deafening roar at dawn.
The woman in the painting had a loose, wispy, Gibson Girl hairdo. Her eyes were downcast, as her hands protected her modesty. She was central in the painting, facing towards the viewer. She seemed to float just a little bit above the ground.
The hotel was all built around the themes of the painting, with elements of the painting used as icons throughout the design, particularly the mushrooms from the foreground. There were small blue trolleys that ran on tracks built into the floors within the hotel, disappearing into tunnels in the walls. Many guests and visitors were there. People wanted to stay for a few days, because the painting changed throughout the day, and they wanted to see as many of those changes as they could. The changes were so subtle, that one had to spend quite a bit of time with the painting to notice the changes or come back during different hours of the day or night. I was very pleased and impressed that so many people took the painting seriously; they weren't just gawking tourists. They had made a special trip SPECIFICALLY to see/experience THIS painting! They all had some level of education about the painting before they'd arrived, and everyone was so respectful and reverent. I was proud to be among them and hoped to make some friends. In the rooms around the painting were beautiful pale blue sofas, that mimicked the shape of the woman's hairdo. One could just sit and watch the painting as long as one liked. It was such a welcoming place, that seemed to reward viewers for paying attention to art.
I wish I could remember the artist's name, or the name of the painting. And this was her only work that had survived the ages intact. Only fragments remained of her other works.