Tuesday, March 18, 2014

First of the Pages...


In the heyday of the great American circuses, the Billposters were absolutely the Pages of the operation, traveling ahead of the company and plastering the towns with Paper -- posters ranging from handbill size all the way up to posters the size of a barn. As such, the billposters were not always welcome messengers, and when you see old pictures of fences and buildings with signs on them reading "POST NO BILLS" -- this is what those signs aimed to prevent. A good billposter or crew of billers could plaster a town from top to bottom in the twinkling of an eye. 

The Pages are here to let us know that Something's Coming. In the case of the wands, that something usually has to do with the fire of creation and the blossoming of life power.

When the Circus of Wands is coming to town, you know that it's going to be spectacular: but beware, Creative Fire can often burn everything in its path to a cinder before new and wondrous life begins to Spring Forth. 

In this case -- I'm posting my Page of Wands as a sign that Spring is Coming. Yes, god damn it, it's coming at last. Maybe taking its own sweet time... but it will get here someday!

-- Freder
www.ducksoup.me

Sunday, March 16, 2014

A Recalcitrant Card


I've resisted posting this one on the site until now because I'm still not entirely happy with it and it's been a major pain in the ass. But I've reached the point where I have two choices: either to stop pushing it around and tweaking it and Just Call It Done, or scrap the whole thing and start over from scratch. Naturally, lazy man that I am, the latter option does not appeal to me. I want to drive forward! Onward! .... and get this pain-in-the-ass card behind me. What do you-all think?

I like the idea behind it just fine, which is dangerous, really, because it becomes that much harder to throw away if that's what needs to be done. IN earlier versions I dutifully had four buckets set out at the giant man's feet and one on the circus ring beside him. In one version, just because I want to get as many elephants into this suit as I can, I had a toy elephant drinking out of the highest one. Trust me, it didn't work. The whole card was way too busy and murder to the eyes until I finally pulled all of those buckets out of the picture. You'll just have to IMAGINE them there. 

I don't know what else to say about this one, except that I'm anxious to see the back of the damn thing. Sometimes a design just comes together and starts to sing all on its own, and sometimes you have to punch and kick it and yell at it and spank it and hope for the best. This is definitely one of the latter!

-- Freder.
www.ducksoup.me