beetlegrass

The Altered Dictionary (monk & monocle & moo & moon & mop)

Sometimes during evening vespers, Brother Brown wonders what makes the moon blue.
Little does he know it's the work of another creature living in solitary self-denial.
The cow not only jumped over the moon, but she turned right around and got to work on its color-enhancement.
Mops make large, economy-sized paintbrushes, and she's got a lotta ground to cover.

 

Brother Brown, while taking vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, still finds watching his nutritional consumption to be a sticking point. Which he knows falls under the "obedience" caveat, but still, it's a daily struggle.

See the word at the top right: "morganatic marriage"? I didn't know what that was, so maybe you don't either. Time for elucidation!

It means: " A form of marriage in which a man of royalty or nobility marries a woman of inferior social status with the provision that, although children of the marriage, if any, will be legitimate, neither they nor the wife may lay claim to his rank or property."

That's the good thing about doing a project like this. You get to learn a bunch of new words.

These images are © Megan E. Jeffery.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Altered Dictionary (kite & kitten & knit & knitting)

This time out, I challenged myself to use more words & color & to reveal a little story...

... Little Kitten uses his Mom's yarn to fly his kite @ nite, but his Mom doesn't get mad, she just uses another skein to knit him up some warm woolen mittens, cuz paws get chilly flying kites @ nite. Proven fact.

Click on the image to see it larger in a pop-up window.
Below, a close-up showing other words on the page -- kind-hearted and kindle -- good names for stars I think!

 This work is © Megan E. Jeffery. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Altered Dictionary (ruff & ruler)

Two more pages from the dictionary that I'm altering by highlighting a word per page.
I'm now challenging myself to make the opposing pages go together in some way.
So here on the left hand page is a Queen, wearing a ruff.

Here below on the right hand page is her King, emphasizing the word ruler, as in sovereign.
My grandfather's middle name was Sovern. I think that's an awesome name.

And here are the two pages as they appear side-by-side in the dictionary:

This work is © Megan E. Jeffery. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Altered Dictionary (fez)

I've started another altered book project, this time using my childhood dictionary.

How I play the game is this: I open the book randomly, then pick a word to emphasize. I've been drawing so far, but don't want to limit myself to that, so collage etc. may also be in this dictionary's future.

Don't think that I feel badly about using this keepsake from my youth. 
I have other dictionaries, and besides, many new words have come into being since I was a kid.

Words like "fire" and "wheel".

This work is © Megan E. Jeffery. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Spawn of the NorthEast-- Conversations With the Opposite Sex

Conversations with menfolk: good dialogue fodder.

Some of this dialogue reminded me of an Aesop fable-- small animal saving large animal's life-- which is why I decided to go with a Mouse and a Lion as characters.
The Lion was a guy I liked/dated in college. Needless to say, he was having a tough time dealing with his parents' recent divorce, and these feelings seeped out in this conversation which began innocuously.
After the above exchange, I was stung.
I asked, "Is that what you think I'd do?"
He said, "Maybe not at first. But later you would. All marriages turn out like that."
Eesh.
This guy was 6' 10" (and claimed to be of Viking descent); I am 5' 2". (And a quarter.)
The first time my mother met this guy, she exclaimed, "Oh, Honey, he's just too big for you!"
Classic line.

If you are single, there will always be someone in your life who wants everyone paired and marching up the ramp into Noah's Ark-- s/he will feel the need to play Matchmaker.

An acquaintance from church squealed to some guy she knew that I was single.
He phoned me, and after an initial "Hi" and a "This is So-and-so", the above was what he opened with.
Thought he was being funny, which is why I responded the way I did.
Errr, he wasn't being funny...

We ended up going out for lunch, where he watched the TV over my head for most of the meal. Wow, that doesn't bode well.

Part of the date conversation:
Him: Do you have any piercings or tattoos?
Me: ...
Him: I said, Do you have any piercings or tattoos?
Me: Oh, I heard you. I'm ignoring you.

Bad manners are not a good way to woo me.

Spawn of the NorthEast-- Conversational Punchlines

Two different friends. Two different conversations. Two different punchlines that caused laughter.
I've changed the title of this Altered Book project from Spawn of the North to Spawn of the NorthEast to differentiate it from the original book and the movie starring Henry Fonda.
One of the definitions of 'spawn' is: a swarming brood; numerous progeny.
As one of five kids, I think I qualify as a spawn. Plus, I live in the NorthEast. So there you have it.



A friend from the UK (hence the use of a Bulldog) visiting in NYC, dropped off by a cabbie blocks & blocks away from his hotel. Accosted by a guy who was hellbent on reciting his "poetry", and wanted a donation. This friend, in going into his money belt to see if he had a five dollar bill on him, had a twenty taken from him. In return, had bad poetry both read AND given to him, in the form of stapled-together pages.
(A pickpocketing poet: sounds like a character belonging to Oliver Twist or to Pinocchio.}



Pushing a fear of being a self-employed artist to the extreme and turning it into humor: really healthy & resilient.
This friend has a great collection of T-shirts, so here she is in her ice cream sandwich one.
She wanted to be portrayed as a pig, BUT: women portraying other women as PIGS seems to me to be a recipe for a CAT fight.
So, instead, she's a fawn.

Other Spawn pages here and here.
Click on images to see larger.

Spawn of the North, part 2

A continuation of conversational tidbits...

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Conversational Interactions With Other Life Forms

Have been wanting to record snippets of conversations I've had over the years. Last night it began to take shape in the format of drawing over pages of a book called Spawn of the North (published in 1932), that I got for altered book work and for its amusing title.
I used black ballpoint pen and gesso for the white areas.
I won't tell you which character I am in the exchanges, but here's a clue: glasses.
Click on images to see them larger.

In the past month, I have read the following Graphic Novels:

• Maus a Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
• Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka, illustrated by Peter Kuper
• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• David Boring by Daniel Clowes
• Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
• Capote in Kansas written by Ande Parks, illustrated by Chris Samnee
• Shutterbug Follies by Jason Little
• Monkey vs. Robot by James Kochalka
• Peanutbutter & Jeremy's Best Book Ever by James Kochalka

Some of these books have to be gone thru twice. Read them once for the great storytelling; a second pass to really study the art. Kuper, Burns, Clowes and Samnee are amazing: know how to orchestrate B&W to create drama, atmosphere, texture, pattern, and interesting shapes and lines.

Altered Calendar Pages

When I was in California recently, I was able to photograph the altered pages that I did in my sister's calendar, from when we were part of a round robin group ("The Corrupted Calendar Grrlz") in 2004.
This was a Sierra Club weekly engagement calendar, with the photographs on one side, and the day grid on the other.

Above: The photograph of the landscape with moon on the left was the established image. This caused me to go through all my files of images of moons & wolves. It got me to wondering, "What if a wolf is howling at the moon because he wants to be an astronaut?" Then I had to fit the wolf's head into the astronaut image that I had. The colors of blue & orange were kind of determined by the images that I had on hand, so I emphasized this by the blue ripped paper (left side) and the orange marker (right side background). Then I learned that wolves don't really howl at the moon! Who knew that doing altered art could be so educational?

Above: The butterfly on the left side was the established image. I really wanted to play up the idea of "monarch", so I added the crown. When I think "monarchy", I think: England, so the maps (scrapbook paper) seemed to be a perfect match-- plus: the colors were working with my scheme! The shapes the land masses were making also were echoing the shapes of butterfly wings and caterpillars, another bonus. The domino stickers spelling out "monarch" had that nice dottiness that harkened back to the dotty butterfly wings.

Above: The mushroomy scene on the left side was the established image. Since my sister likes owls, and I like mushrooms & little woodsy characters, I decided to do a combination of those things. The wooden owl on the upper left hand side is a pin (back removed) that was a tag sale find, and other images came from a Japanese children's magazine, a calendar, catalogs, and a stock photography book (another tag sale purchase).

Click on these images to see them larger in a pop-up window.

Three Heads Are Better Than One

More altered calendar (1990 Kaffe Fassett) pages, using Dover publication images (as discussed in yesterday's post) on the right-hand side.

The original art image was three heads of lettuce over three heads of lettuce, rockin' the botanical look.  Some black gesso to block out extraneous info.  I used the stickers on the left that I got at Mark Twain's house as inspiration to create the Lettuce People. Hand-tinted the b/w copies with colored pencil.

See what you can PRODUCE when you try? (Har, har...)

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