Here’s a tiny handful of photos from my gig last weekend—the community event in Utica, New York.
Thanks again to Michael Purcell at A-1 Entertainment for hiring me!
Here’s a tiny handful of photos from my gig last weekend—the community event in Utica, New York.
Thanks again to Michael Purcell at A-1 Entertainment for hiring me!
Posted in illustration process, self promotion
Tagged art, caricature, community, drawing, event, Sharpie, sketch, wedding
Last weekend I got to draw caricatures at a lovely community celebration in Utica, NY. Michael Purcell of A-1 Entertainment hired me and was kind enough to take this video—
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPQZdqkj1hwhsH9lWRYZtWFELJZhHt6lsUTuIdHZKmo30C1EAo6X04tol4ZhdfcvQ?key=Sk9FSjJmVkNFR1pHOHlnV2VMb010TzczU05JN3hR
Here’s the couple holding their finished caricature:
If you’re looking for party and event vendors in central New York, give Mike a shout—A-1Entertainment.com
Posted in illustration process, self promotion
Tagged sketch, art, caricature, drawing, community, Sharpie, marker, entertainment, celebration, deejay, party, wedding, chair dancing
The Reformation was a bloody, violent business because there was so much power at stake. The people in charge faced losing their jobs. If regular shmos understood that they had a direct line to G-d through prayer, maybe they wouldn’t need the priests so much.
The Bible was THE book everybody in western culture was familiar with. It seems natural to want to translate into your own language and publish it, as Martin Luther had done. More than the prospect of making a few samolians from a bestseller, if you take Saint Paul’s words to heart, you understand that faith in Christ is its own justification. That is: if you accept Christ as your Savior, your sins are forgiven. That’s it. No paying for indulgences. Jesus’ sacrifice was a gift freely given to get us into heaven. William Tyndale wanted everybody to know that.
William Tyndale was an English scholar-priest and really good at languages. He wanted to publish the New Testament in English. It isn’t a surprise that no Church bigshot would underwrite Tyndale’s project. In fact, it became dangerous for Tyndale to even occupy space in England—so he moved around different continental cities until he settled in Worms (vorms), Saxony. There he translated the New Testament from Erasmus’ Greek edition and published it in 1525. Copies were enthusiastically smuggled into England. This didn’t go over so well with the Church or King Henry VIII (Henry was busy starting up a new church with himself replacing the pope). The Church did not want people reading the Bible for themselves. Whenever they found Tyndale’s bibles, they burned ’em.
He moved to Antwerp and even though Tyndale was hiding out, he spent his free time helping poor people. Eventually someone he trusted betrayed him to Church authorities. Tyndale was tried for heresy and burned at the stake. They were that afraid of him.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/scholarsandscientists/william-tyndale.html
Look at this gorgeous woodcut from Tyndale’s Bible—
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/heritage/archives/picture-this/william-tyndale-the-newe-testament-of-oure-sauiour-iesus-christe-faythfully-translated-oute-of-the-greke-with-the-notes-and-expositions-of-the-darke-places-therein-london-rycharde-jugge-1553-c/
Almost all Tyndale’s bibles were destroyed; there are only a few in existence—
https://evangelicalfocus.com/culture/4029/tyndale-bible-from-persecuted-to-becoming-a-treasure
https://thepilgrimsnews.wordpress.com/tag/william-tyndale/
https://bishopmike.com/2012/11/03/tyndale-luther-and-hus/
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged Bible, caricature, church, deeds, education, English, faith, greek, heresy, homeschool, justification, language, Reformation, scripture, writing
Two apple festivals on two weekends! I had a blast drawing caricatures and am grateful to everyone who sat for one.
La Loren in costume for El Cid. ¡De nada!
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged caricature, goddess, Hollywood, Italian, sketch, Spain
The first piece of literature written in Spanish was Cantar de mio Cid (Song of my Lord), whose author may have been Per Abbat who wrote it in either 1207 or 1307 or maybe it was Abu I-Walid al Waqqashi in 1095 or maybe it was one of those pieces of folk literature that gets passed from generation to generation. El Cid, the Cid, al Sayyid means ‘the lord’ or ‘the master.’ Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was El Cid—an actual person—and he fought against Moorish control of Spain. His army reconquered Valencia so that Christianity could be reestablished there. Like Chanson de Roland, Cantar de mio Cid is a poem about knights who perform mighty deeds and strive to live virtuous lives by sticking to a code of honor.
https://www.actualidadliteratura.com/en/el-cantar-del-mio-cid/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid
You can take a biking vacation along the route of El Cid’s exploits: https://en.caminodelcid.org/cid-history-legend/cid-history/
When Charlton Heston wasn’t being Moses or Henry VIII, he was El Cid—with Sophia Loren, the most fabulous woman who ever trod the Earth—https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054847/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/996/996-h/996-h.htm
https://www.britannica.com/art/Spanish-literature
https://historyofspain.es/en/video/the-history-of-spanish-literature/
Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.
Don’t forget: I wrote another Western Civ User’s Guide! Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Time & Space.
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged artist, caricature, christianity, Crusades, culture, homeschool, illustration, Islam, knight, literacy, Moor, reading, sketch, Spain, Valencia
I’m going to pull a ‘Well, akshually’ and tell you the Phoenician alphabet isn’t quite an alphabet. It’s an abjad. An abjad has consonants but no vowels—no A, E, I, O, U or sometimes Y. You were expected to know how words are pronounced and supply the vowels yourself when you read something written in the Phoenician system.
The word ‘abjad’ comes from smooshing together the first four letters of the Arabic alphabet: alif, bā’, jīm, and dāl.
Pointless rambling for today: There’s a tv show from the 1970s set in the 1950s called Laverne & Shirley. They’re 2 working-class girls from Brooklyn, New York City and speak like Brooklyners. I saw a bit (I can’t find a clip, sorry) where one of the girls is talking about her friend ‘Sheldn’—she pronounces it just that way. It fits with her accent; that’s the way they tawk in Brookln. The punchline: his name really is Sheldn; the ‘o’ was accidentally left out on his birth certificate.
https://linguisticator.com/blog/19729/the-arabic-alphabet-what-is-an-abjad
https://www.lexico.com/definition/abjad
https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-two/origins-and-characteristics-of-the-arabic-alphabet
Wikipedia says the Arabic alphabet is the result of the Phoenician alphabet evolving in the Near East, where it took a few different turns from ours in the West. Scroll down to look at the chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabic_alphabet
Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged alphabet, Arabic, art, Brooklyn, caricature, consonant, history, homeschool, homeschooling, illustration, literacy, mesopotamia, Near East, pronunciation, sketch, sketches, technology, typo, vowels, Western Civilization, writing
A cryptogram is a puzzle where the letters of words are replaced with ciphers. A cipher is any symbol. To ‘decipher’ a code is to replace the ciphers with the correct letters. I told you the secret to solving cryptograms: you look for a short, common word, like ‘the.’ Young began the process by correctly identifying the word ‘Ptolemy.’
Jean-François Champollion (ZHEHN frahn-SWAH shahm-pōl-YŌN) was the tireless French scholar who broke the hieroglyph code. He started with Young’s discovery and used the Greek words to decipher the hieroglyphic and Demotic versions. He figured out that Ptolemy’s name was a rebus—meaning that those symbols must represent sounds. That was a beginning. He still had years of diligent work ahead of him. Eventually, in 1822 he was able to show that hieroglyphic symbols could stand for things, ideas, syllables or sounds. Demotic symbols stood for syllables or sounds. He’d sorted out how the reader can tell which of those a symbol stands for.
And so, after thirteen centuries of silence, the hieroglyphics could speak again. Nowadays if you put ‘Rosetta Stone’ in your search engine you’ll get ads for a company that teaches foreign languages. The Rosetta Stone was so crucial to solving the hieroglyphics mystery that it’s become a symbol for understanding all languages.
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-rosetta-stone/
https://discoveringegypt.com/egyptian-hieroglyphic-writing/egyptian-hieroglyphic-alphabet/
https://www.natgeokids.com/za/discover/history/egypt/hieroglyphics-uncovered/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion
http://www.loeser.us/examples/hiero_alpha.html
https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-rosetta-stone
Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged art, caricature, cryptogram, cryptology, Egypt, France, greek, hieroglyphics, history, homeschool, homeschooling, illustration, literacy, mesopotamia, Napoleon, puzzle, Roman Empire, sketch, sketches, Western Civilization, writing
I deserve every “Okay, Boomer” sneer I get for this lame gag. I pray Señor Wences’ ghost will forgive me.
The persecuted Christians of the Roman Empire adopted a strange symbol to represent themselves: the Cross. The cross was the torture device used to kill Jesus. Maybe it was a way of saying they knew they might be put to death for worshiping Christ, and accepted that possibility.
We’re zipping ahead to ad 304—the Roman Empire was enduring a civil war. Emperor Constantine and Emperor Licinius were at it. It looked like Licinius had all the military advantage. But Constantine had a dream the night before the big decisive battle: the dream told him to fight under the banner of Christ. Constantine must’ve dreamed in Latin, so the takeaway message was: ‘In hoc signo vinces’—‘In this sign you will conquer.’ He had his soldiers paint crosses on their shields and they won the battle and the war. After that, Constantine decreed that all religions would be permitted in the Roman Empire and no one would be punished for worshiping Christ.
Here’s a very good read:
https://turningpointsoftheancientworld.com/index.php/2017/03/31/licinius-constantine-civil-war/
https://johnmanders.wordpress.com/2019/08/21/constantine-dreams/
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-trp-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp&p=senor+wences+ventriloquist#id=1&vid=597745f8e30b0718ec6064ecc1fc886a&action=click
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0920777/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.
Posted in book promotion, Western Civilization
Tagged art, caricature, civil war, Egypt, greek, hieroglyphics, history, homeschool, homeschooling, illustration, In hoc signo vinces, Latin, literacy, Roman Empire, ventriloquist, writing