“The princess was lying in bed, but she was wide awake and she was looking out the window at the moon shining in the sky. Shining in her hand was the moon the court jester had got for her…” — James Thurber

Last week, the Illustration Friday subject was “Moon”. That was ironic because I’m working on a book about the moon. I spent all last weekend drawing moons, but I couldn’t post any of those illustrations! I’ve been wanting to do some illustrations for James Thurber’s “Many Moons” for a while now so I figured I play with that. I’m continuing to experiment with illustrating in all Flash. I wanted to post this for last week’s Illustration Friday but the time got away with me, so I’m hoping that it still works for “Missing” and I’m not cheating too badly!

The moon is not missing from the sky because it is hanging around Lenore’s neck. The sky has simply grown another moon.

hall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee. -Shakespeare’s sonnet XVIII

This week, all I could think of for this topic was “too much coffee” and “marionettes”. And then I went to see the musical “Carnival” at the Kennedy Center and that did it, I was only going to get puppets this week! Here you see the puppet, Carrot Top’s, arms are wired so Michel, the puppeteer, can control them better (like Muppets).

This is the final scene of the book, “The Love of Seven Dolls,” by Paul Gallico. Mouche is about to leave the theatre for the last time and Carrot Top stops her after tossing GiGi out of the booth. Why? Well, you’ll have to read the book. The movie, “Lili,” and the musical “Carnival,” are somewhat based on this book, but unlike those highly sanitized versions, this wonderful book is very dark and the ending is complicated.

Yep, it’s one of my favorite books.

Edit: Whoops! Just realized I spelled the French wrong. Should be “Capitaine Coq et sa Famille”. Serves me right for doing it from memory…

Last week was one of those weeks where I just wanted to crawl under a rock. I guess I just couldn’t get that image out of my head.

Soooo this illustration is a little goofy. I think it’s also heavily influenced by a very strange combination of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and Larry Shue’s “The Nerd” (don’t ask). That said, I have absolutely NO idea what is going on here. If you know, please tell me?

Anyway, this is a bit of an experiment – I’m trying to do a little more fantastical stuff, loosen up a bit, and experiment with organics in the medium. It is entirely digi-painted using the Photoshop “sponge” brush.

“Ella always assumed rules were meant to be broken.”