Here’s an example of some of my custom illustration work…
Meet Olivia.
Incipit Vita Nova: Here Begins a New Life, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). (Christie’s London, 2008)
That is one mean-looking fetus. Via.
So strange….Does that lady have a 5 o’clock shadow?
Just because I need to share this with the world…my favourite illustration from a December 1889 copy of the Illustrated Police News (US version, published in Boston). Yes, that is indeed a woman with an axe fighting off a bear. Apparently, it just showed up one day while she was hanging up her laundry. She heard her four year old son screaming about a bear and promptly grabbed an axe and went after it (as you do). She wounded it sixteen times before her husband finally came home and shot it. Okay, so SHE didn’t actually kill it, but still, bad. ass. Would pretty much anyone even *think* of this today? Probably not.
Not pictured: the other really fantastic illustration from the cover of a woman fighting off two burglars who had invaded her home and killed her husband. She managed to fight them off, despite sustaining a broken arm, and crawl next door for help.
Also not pictured: the hilarious condom, STD cure, and porn ads from the back of the issue.
John Tenniel (1820–1914)
Sir John Tenniel’s hand-colored proof of Shower of Cards for The Nursery “Alice”, ca. 1889,
by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)The Morgan Library
