We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Here’s a fun drawing of a cunning fox talking Latin.

And yes…  still more postcards for sale…

MOTIF: BIRD of Honor

• Folded A6 Postcard (4 pages)
• Mixed-Media Collage-Style Series:
  A magnificient peacock showing off his plumage on stage.
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (300 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a glossy varnish.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.
• Comes with a heavy envelope.

♥

MOTIF: PURRsuit of Happiness

• Regular Coated A6 Postcard (2 Pages)
• Mixed-Media Collage-Style Series:
  A happy collage-style cat on a set of cushions sitting before a window outlooking on a cityscape.
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (280 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a glossy varnish which brings out the golden color beautifully.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.

These are two more motifs from my brand-new greeting card series which have just gotten published:

MOTIF: PIGmalion

• Folded A6 Postcard (4 pages)
• Plain Fun Series:
  Dozens of happy little piggies in a variety of bright colors are assembled on the cover.
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (300 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a glossy foil.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.

♥

MOTIF: Ceci n’est pas un mouton noir

• Regular Coated A6 Postcard (2 Pages)
• Plain Fun Series:
  This card shows a little black sheep casting a shadow in a dark room. The black color comes out as really well in this card. Note the Magritte-style title and handwriting on the back ;-)
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (280 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a stylish matte varnish.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.
• NOTE: An altered version of this motif is available for sale as a limited-edition linoprint.

A bunch of new postcards of mine has just gotten out, which I am going to feature here bit by bit. These are the first two:

MOTIF: HIPPO Campus

• Regular Coated A6 Postcard (2 Pages)
• Plain Fun Series:
  Dozens of happy little animals assembled against a dark backdrop.
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (280 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a stylish matte varnish.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.
  

♥

MOTIF: NoTHINK’s Impossible

• Regular Coated A6 Postcard (2 Pages)
• Mixed-Media Collage-Style Series:
  A young man engaged in some heavy thinking,
  with streams of thought emitting from his brain.
• Card size is 105 x 148mm (4.1 x 5.8 in.)
• Heavy paper (280 g/m2)
• Front side is coated with a stylish matte varnish.
• Back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.

>MORE ANIMALS

Here’s an image  showing some creepy crawlers in my bed. Yikes!

I got selected illustrations from a book on quirky animal behavior printed in a little promo booklet. At A7-size, which is half of a postcard, it is really, really tiny – and über-cute :-)

The book is called Das tierische Kuriositätenkabinett (Little Bestiary of Wonders), and was written by Dirk Steffens who specializes in animal documentaries for television. It was published by Rowohlt last fall. You can download the digital PDF file of the promo booklet here.

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For the German second edition of Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, Goldmann Verlag/Random House was looking for a wholly new design.

Can you learn to be happy? Yes, according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular course grounded in “positive psychology.” In his book, Tal Ben-Shahar combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment.

I have come up with a completely revised jacket design featuring an illustration of mine—a crawling ladybug, a symbol traditionally associated with luck and happiness. The typographically challenging design incorporates a giant rendition of the capital letter G (for “Glücklicher”, Happier).

Meet my six brand-new artist brush boxes that I hand painted with animal motifs, using acrylic colors. Used to store pencils and brushes (or gummy bears, for that matter), the boxes are 28 cm long, 14 cm wide, and 4.5 cm high, and come in unique designs. Check out the images below for close-up views.

Here’s how they were made:

1. I treated myself with six bamboo artist brush boxes (that was the easy part).
2. Unfortunately, the flexible lid had the engraved silhouette image of a bamboo tree on it, which sucked. It required a great amount of beveling to get rid of it. In aiming to get the paint to adhere to the surfaces, I used sand paper on all sides.
3. I subsequently applied molding paste to cover up some of the crevices on the lid, and coated all sides using white acrylic primer – I needed to do this three times (ugh).
4. THEN came the color, at last. I used a variety of acrylic colors for the various undercoats before painting the animals on all sides.
5. After drying up, I used sandpaper to abrade, however loosely, some of the spots where I felt too much paint was applied. This process also introduced slightly grungy streaks to the surface, which helped attain that vintage look, turning the designs lively and animated.
6. The last step was to apply matte varnish on all sides for permanent protection.

Baseline is, I had a great deal of fun working on this, as I’m sure you can see ;-)

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And these are the top lids for all six boxes:

Box 1 - Crocodile, giraffes, bear, fish, white tiger
Box 2 - Frog, llama, dog, cat, giraffes

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Box 3 - White elephant, birds, giraffes
Box 4 - Elephants, cat, giraffe, snake

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Box 5 - Cat, elephant, frog, duck, squid
Box 6 - Whale, bear, monkey, birds, crocodile

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Hooray – I just got seven more animal postcard motifs printed! The are for sale off my website from 12 bucks for eight cards. Click here for my store. Yippee-i-yay!

Have a SpeCATular Day!

We FISH You Good Luck

We Do it the HEART Way

What’s Up, DOGs?

SERPENTipity

MOUSE au chocolat

HAREy Affair (ok, this one’s more for Easter ;-)

>MORE ANIMALS

The Little Bestiary of Wonders, a book on quirky behavior in the animal kingdom by Dirk Steffens that I illustrated, was featured on a popular German TV late night show on November 12th. TV total, hosted by Stefan Raab, invited the author, also a TV host and a producer of documentaries about wildlife for Arte and ZDF television, to discuss his book, which unravels some of the weirdest and most outlandish mysteries nature has to offer.

Published by Rowohlt, one of Germany’s largest book publishers, my cover illustration shows a great many wild animals against a pitch dark background, while my one hundred black and white interior visuals in whimsical cartoon style, many in full-size, illustrate the individual chapters. The jacket cover was shown a number of times during the interview, and Raab himself recommended the book, yay :-)

(All screenshots (c) by ProSieben/TV Total)

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on bonobos. I have worked with bonobos in the past BTW – this was in another life, of course (thank you for the happy memories, Gottfried Hohmann and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt!) – , and so it’s been great fun getting to draw them after all these years.

Bonobo. Populärname: Zwergschimpanse, Bonobo. Wissenschaftlicher Name: Pan paniscus. Lebensraum: Kongo. Größe: Gut 80 Zentimeter. Kuriosum: Sexmonster.

Die Bonobos gleichen uns aufs Haar. 99 Prozent unserer Gene sind identisch, biologisch betrachtet gehören wir also wirklich zur selben Familie. Es scheint jedoch – leider! – ausgerechnet dieses kleine eine Prozent zu sein, welches völlig unterschiedliche Strategien der Konfliktlösung determiniert. Die Zwergschimpansen sind deutlich friedlicher als andere Primaten, und wenn sie doch mal aneinandergeraten, dann endet das meistens mit Sex. Unabhängig von Alter, Geschlecht und sozialer Stellung lösen die schlauen Tiere ihre Konflikte mit Zärtlichkeit.

Read an excerpt from the book in the original layout as a PDF file.

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OK, here’s a real treat – I just bought this 16th century hand-colored print! It shows a crocodile,  two chameleons, and what I believe is an armadillo. The exact labels on this 352 year old page (!) are as follows: “Chamæleon Cinereus Verus; Chamæleon; Crocodilus, Crocodÿll; Laudiuerba.”

This is a hand-colored copper engraved page on delicate wove paper from Historiae naturalis de quadrupetibus libri, an animal encyclopedia published in Amsterdam in 1657. Based on art by Polish natural scientist, Joannes Jonstonus (John Jonston, 1603-1675), the engraving was done by notable Swiss engraver, Matthäus Merian (1593-1650). I have no data on who did the watercoloring, and when. The size of the sheet is 36.6 x 22.3 cm (14.3 by 8.7 inches). If my research is accurate, this is actually from the first edition of what became a standard 17th-century encyclopedia of natural history.

And here’s my favorite – the “crocodÿll.” Isn’t it simply *outrageously* magnificent? Click on the images for larger versions.

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Different illustration motifs on high-gloss printed cards – 8 cards for 12$! This is a reminder to anyone on the lookout for whimsical Christmas cards ;-)
http://www.oweiss.com/shop/postcards.htm

All postcards are A6 size (105 x 148 mm or 4.1 x 5.8 in.) – this is the regular postcard size in Europe. They come as high-quality cards printed on heavy coated paper (300 g). The back side is uncoated and can be used for personal notes.

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Here’s another one from that same animal book – li’l spider kids sucking mommy dry while watching Pokémon. Totally gruesome!!!!

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This is one of my favorite images from a book on animals which has just gotten published by Rowohlt Verlag in Germany. With black coucals, apparently, it’s the female who’s got the saying at home ;-)

Here’re two more snapshots from the book:

(Interestingly enough, I used to work with bonobos waaaay back in the old days when I was thinking about doing a thesis on those creatures – but this is the first time I have actually gotten around to bringing them to paper!)

>MORE ANIMALS