Kristin Bjornerud

I wish I had larger images of these enchanting watercolor and gouache pieces by Kristin Bjornerud. More things on white backgrounds, plus books, whales, dresses, mythological imagery, and weird situations. So much to love!

Jules Buck Jones

The beautiful watercolors of Jules Buck Jones, a Texas artist. I love the touch and mark-marking in these pieces, there's something I really relate to in her brushstrokes. Love the subject matter too.

Demi's The Firebird

There are so many things I love, love, love about Demi (Demi Hitz, apparently she doesn't have a wikipedia page? Who knew such things were possible!). There's the outfits, the patterning (look at those flowers and animals below!), the architecture (part of the same world as the wooden churches I mentioned loving in a previous post), and perhaps most of all, the balance between flatness and space, between a landscape with a background and foreground and an image with figures and objects floating in a plane. 

Images again via kidpix.

Johanna Westerman's Mother Holly illustrations

Amazing scenes, actions, excess, and character in these illustrations of Mother Holly by Johanna Westerman. I found the pictures on kidpix. 

favorite bibliodyssey posts at the moment, and a general link round-up for myself

I'm still in the planning / designing / pseudo-research stages on a new book project. I expect there will be sketches posted on naomese soon. For now, these are the images and sites that are inspiring me right now. 

The images above are from the bibliodyssey post botanical beasties.

The image below is from tribes of Burma.

Other bibliodyssey links I'm looking at right now: imagining midwifery; the pseudo-apuleius herbarium; Kyushu medical books two; early herb and gardening books. 

Onto other, non-visual links and quotations. From the history of birth control:

In German folk medicine marjoram, thyme, parsely and lavender in tea form were used. The root of worm fern was used by German and French women and was also prescribed by a Greek physician in the time of Nero; in French it was called the “prostitute root”. Other ancient recipes called for a paste of mashed ants, foam from camels’ mouths, tail hairs of blacktail deer dissolved in bear fat. In modern times, women have been reported to use turpentine, castor oil, tansy tea, quinine water in which a rusty nail has been soaked, horseradish, ginger, epsom salts, ammonia, mustard, gin with iron filings, rosemary, lavender, and opium.

From Ailments and Cures of Medieval Women:

To abort a fetus at three months, the following receipe was used: 1 drachma each of cardamom seeds, wallflower (or stock,) myrrh, and wormwood. Let a woman insert it before taking a bath and drink pennyroyal wine. (Riddle, 1992, p.62) ... In addition to abortions, there were some natural anti-fertility medicines to avoid pregnancy. Some of these included fenugreek, mallow, pennyroyal, rue, birthwort, cyperus, arum root, cassia, reed, valerian, calamint root, and myrrh. 

From Birth Control in Antiquity: 

The Greeks used Silphium, known commonly as giant fennel. Its pungent sap was good in cough syrups and gave food a rich, distinctive taste. These plants were also known to have contraceptive and abortifacient properties. ... The demand for the plant was so great that by the third or fourth centuries, Silphium was extinct. Related plants survived, but were less effective.

The seeds of Queen Anne's Lace (a wild carrot) may have also been effective. Studies in rats show that the seeds inhibit both fetal and ovarian growth. 

Other links: Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance; abortion in the ancient and premodern world; natural herbs for contraception and abortion; silphium on wikipedia.

And one more pair of images, these are from a post titled aggregate.

 

Anu Tuominen

Anu Tuominen is an artist I return to again and again. I had trouble narrowing down to even all these images, because what leaves me spellbound is the effect all of these pieces together have on me. I wish I could see some in person. Her pieces are so creative and elegant, not to mention gorgeously photographed. 

I've posted Anu Tuominen frequently on my tumblr. When I was making this post, I went through and gave those a cursory tag with her name, though I may have missed some; I'm in the process of tagging all my old tumblr posts, but there are a huge number of posts between June 2009 and about February or March 2010 that are untagged (and the Anu Tuominen posts fall in this range). 

I definitely discovered Anu Tuominen via dear ada, though I can't find the exact post right now. 

dream anatomy

As I've mentioned a few times on my art blog, I've been taking a small break from producing art over the last few weeks after my senior project opening. In the meantime I've been trying to get inspired. Dream Anatomy is a gorgeous gallery I keep returning to as I plan and design my next book project. I love how they balance between eerie and funny; the one on the right with the hands bound is decidedly creepy, while the one on the left makes me think that the man has just discovered he's a pop-up book. (A pop-up book of anatomy is something else I've been ruminating on.) 

Discovered via ullabenulla.