Tag: Shakespeare

#181 Small Cheer & Great Welcome

Chaz DeSimone 2 Comments
181 Small Cheer & Great Welcome
#181 Small Cheer & Great Welcome
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Shakespeare said it best

Small cheer & great welcome make a merry feast.

This quote from William Shake­speare seems to be a per­fect Amper­Art phrase for Thanks­giv­ing. I’m not so sure it has such a rel­e­vant mean­ing in its orig­i­nal con­text (“The Com­e­dy of Errors”, Act 3 scene 1) but it sure does fit nice­ly as a piece of typo­graph­ic art with the amper­sand turkey as part of the quote.

Colorful words inspire colorful illustration

Wild turkey

As for “great wel­come,” that term inspired the col­or­ful feath­ers on the “amper­turkey.” The orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion (of which I used only the feath­ers) had a sub­dued palette of browns and grays. I start­ed adding col­ors to the feath­ers, then real­ized “great wel­come” should be just that: great! Inclu­sive of every­one — all col­ors, all sex­es, all shapes & sizes. All reli­gions as well, as Thanks­giv­ing is non-​denominational; that’s one rea­son I like this hol­i­day (besides the food). So I did a lit­tle research & start­ed over with the col­ors, includ­ing as many of the world’s skin tones as I could find & hope­ful­ly all the var­i­ous sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion flag col­ors. Feath­ers are all dif­fer­ent sizes to begin with, so that part was easy. 

“Small cheer” in the play’s dia­logue refers to the food & bev­er­age being served at the gath­er­ing, only to be upstaged by the cama­raderie of the peo­ple present. But let’s be hon­est: there’s no small spread & lack of liba­tion at Thanksgiving! 

Thankfulness cards for your table & other uses

Table setting with AmperArt Thankfulness Cards

My friend Jo has told me sev­er­al times that she enjoys print­ing & mak­ing Amper­Art place set­ting cards for the din­ner table. That inspired me to cre­ate a new design this year (pre­vi­ous cards were issued in 2011 & 2015), & it’s one where you can write your own Amper­Art phrase (see ideas below). 

These can be placed as tra­di­tion­al din­ner table set­tings & made into oth­er things such as greet­ing cards (with some cre­ative cut­ting & glu­ing) & gift tags.

There are two styles you can down­load: one bright & col­or­ful, sym­bol­iz­ing the inclu­sion of all col­ors & ori­en­ta­tions of the world’s peo­ples; & a sub­tle col­or scheme clos­er to a wild turkey. (I pre­fer the bright & col­or­ful ver­sion.) There’s an instruc­tion sheet you can down­load as well, detail­ing how to cut & fold the cards. 

Choose your style & download

There are four cards to a sheet. Print on stan­dard letter-​size or A4 sheets of card­stock (or reg­u­lar heavy paper).

Down­load FULL SPECTRUM style cards
Down­load SUBTLE style cards

Instructions

  1. Down­load the pdf file in your choice of design: full spec­trum col­or or sub­tle color.
  2. You can also down­load the cut­ting & fold­ing guide or just refer to image below.
  3. Cut along the red dashed lines. The ver­ti­cal & hor­i­zon­tal lines sep­a­rate the sheet into 4 cards. The curved cut lines allow the turkey feath­ers to pop out above the fold. You can cut along the arc as shown below, or for more detail, cut along the feath­er shapes, as shown in the pho­to above. An X‑acto knife works best.
  4. Score to make fold­ing easy & clean. Score along the blue dot­ted lines as shown in the guide. This is where the sol­id pur­ple meets the sol­id white on the print­ed cards. Do not score through the turkey feath­ers — you don’t want to fold these. A blunt instru­ment works best for scor­ing, such as a wood­en stir stick or paper clip. You can use any­thing that is not sharp enough to cut through the card.
  5. Fold the card over only along the blue dot­ted lines. Do not fold the feath­ers; leave them flat to extend above the fold. 
  6. Pinch the fold to keep it in place. Addi­tion­al­ly, you can use tape or string under­neath to keep the card from unfolding.
  7. Write your text to the left & right of the amper­sand. See some ideas below.

You can use these cards for oth­er things too, besides seat­ing place hold­ers. Place them around your liv­ing & work spaces to remind your­self and oth­ers of what we can be thank­ful for. Place one on your boss’s or co-​worker’s desk. Or on your teacher’s desk. Use them as note cards (write some­thing inside), or use just the front to paste onto a larg­er fold­ed card as a greet­ing card. Use them as gift tags. Car­ry some with you to fill in & hand out.

Cut & fold guide
You can also down­load this cut­ting & fold­ing guide to print out.

Thankful for ampersands & more ampersands 

Here are some ideas for your amper­sand “Thank­ful for…” phrases:

  • Peo­ple’s names & their out­stand­ing virtues: Uncle Gil & always will­ing to help out
  • Cou­ple’s names: Mike & Vio­la
  • Things that make you hap­py: my dog & cats, books & danc­ing, flow­ers & but­ter­flies
  • The neces­si­ties: food & shel­ter, friends & fam­i­ly, love & light
  • I per­son­al­ly am thank­ful for: artis­tic tal­ent & loy­al subscribers
Thank­ful for your com­ment…

Have a very happy Thanksgiving
full of small magnificent cheer
& great welcome. 


(Sorry for the edit, Bill.)

Production notes for #181 Small Cheer & Great Welcome:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Illustrator
Font: Garamond
Ampersand: Garamond
Credits:
Illustration: deposit​pho​tos​.com (modified by Chaz DeSimone)
Background: deposit​pho​tos​.com
Quote: Shakespeare
Other credits as noted
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design, so long as each project requires the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing results. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com to dis­cuss your project, pick his brain, or just talk shop.

Chaz sez...

Who banned the ampersand?

Whoever thought up the syntax for Universal Resource Locators (URLs) was 100% coder & 0% copywriter. No foresight whatsoever. We can’t even use common punctuation in a URL except for the hyphen & underscore. It sure makes all the AmperArt URLs ugly & hard to understand—no ampersands allowed!
This is just one of the rants on my blog, chaz sez.
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design

#86 Eye of Newt & Toe of Frog

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment
Witch's cauldren brewing an ampersand
 #86 Eye of Newt & Toe of Frog
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

So, what’s for dinner?

Eye of newt, & toe of frog,
Wool of bat, & tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, & blind-​worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, & owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of pow­er­ful trou­ble,
Like a hell-​broth boil & bub­ble.
Dou­ble, dou­ble toil & trou­ble;
Fire burn, & cal­dron bubble.

This line, uttered by the three ugly witch­es in Shake­speare’s Mac­beth as they stir their boil­ing caul­dron*, is one of the most famil­iar phras­es asso­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al witchcraft.

RIP BLACKWOLF, AMOS & ANDY, BRIQUETTE, JEEPERS CREEPERS, & ALL MY FRIENDS’ & NEIGHBORS’ BLACK CATS WHO WILL BE CELEBRATING NATIONAL BLACK CAT DAY IN HALLOWEEN HEAVEN

witch and shutterbomb smoking pumpkin

Brew up eerie smoke & fog for your Halloween photos

Spook up your Hal­loween pho­tos with awe­some smoke effects. I don’t mean pho­to­shop­ping it in, but using real smoke. It’s excit­ing & fun & far more real­is­tic, plus any mod­els in the shoot have a blast. 

Grab your caul­dron & brew this witch’s recipe into an eerie fog. Or if you don’t hap­pen to have any eyes of newt or frog toes in your pantry, there’s a much sim­pler way to achieve a bewitch­ing Hal­loween smoke effect & it looks even spookier.

Shutter Bombs — no cauldron required

Recent­ly I came across Shut­ter Bombs, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in mak­ing sen­sa­tion­al smoke bombs specif­i­cal­ly for pho­tog­ra­phers. Their range of smoke effects & col­ors is amaz­ing & so is their cus­tomer ser­vice. Cre­ate ghast­ly Hal­loween effects with Shut­ter Bombs, like this:

Vis­it shut​ter​bombs​.com

Witch’s Brew Recipe & Shopping list

Here’s the modern-​day gro­cery list of what’s real­ly in Shake­speare’s caul­dron. You might have to seek out a spe­cial­ty shop for some of these items, but they do exist. I’ve added a spe­cial ingre­di­ent too, but that one’s real­ly hard to find:

  • Eye of newt — mus­tard seed
  • Toe of frog — buttercup
  • Wool of bat — hol­ly leaves
  • Tongue of dog — houndstongue
  • Adders fork — adders tongue
  • Blind-​worm — an actu­al tiny snake thought to be venomous
  • Tail of amper­sand — a curly lit­tle friend of ours (You don’t mind, do you, Bill?)

Throw every­thing into your caul­dron, fill with liq­uid, & boil. Dis­tilled spir­its works best, of course.

Casting the spell

When prac­tic­ing black mag­ic, mus­tard seeds (par­tic­u­lar­ly the black seeds) cast a spell of strife, con­fu­sion, dis­cord & dis­rup­tion. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, though, oth­er types of mus­tard seeds are thought to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against witch­es. Leg­end goes that witch­es are pre­dis­posed to count­ing & pick­ing up things, so if you scat­ter mus­tard seeds around your front door, bed & prop­er­ty, the witch will nev­er have time to get to you as she will be busy count­ing mus­tard seeds.

Newt?

About that newt — is there such a thing? Were there poor lit­tle crit­ters hop­ping about with­out eyes?

Actu­al­ly, all of the ingre­di­ents in the witch­es brew are ancient terms for herbs, flow­ers & plants. Some say witch­es gave these items gross & dis­turb­ing names to deter oth­er peo­ple from prac­tic­ing witchcraft.

It turns out “eye of newt” is sim­ply the seeds for a pop­u­lar hot dog mus­tard. How­ev­er, the clas­sic scene from Mac­beth just would­n’t be the same if his char­ac­ters spoke of boil­ing mus­tard seeds, but­ter­cups & hol­ly leaves.  Adapt­ed from http://​peo​ple​.how​stuff​works​.com/​i​s​-​e​y​e​-​o​f​-​n​e​w​t​-​r​e​a​l​-​t​h​i​n​g​.​htm

*Spell-​ing

Speak­ing of spell, note the spelling of “cal­dron” in the work of Shake­speare, in con­trast to the Amer­i­can Eng­lish “caul­dron.” Sans-“u” is also com­mon among British. Ear­li­er, how­ev­er, there was no “l” either: in Mid­dle Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture c. 1250 – 1300 you’ll read “caud­eron.” Basi­cal­ly, it means “warm” from the Late Latin “caldāria.”

Con­jure up your scary com­ments here.

AWAKEN PAST HALLOWEEN AMPERART
Ghosts & Gob­lins (2011)
Bats Rats & Black Cats (2012)
Deep Dark & Mys­te­ri­ous (2013)
Creak & Quake (2014)
Creepy & Crawly (2015)

Production notes for #86 Eye of Newt & Toe of Frog:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Fonts: Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Park Avenue, Arnold Böcklin
Ampersand: Arnold Böcklin
Images: dream​stime​.com (manipulated)
You may repost the image. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.
Desimone Design
Chaz sez...
Want more?
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez

#74 Creak & Quake

Chaz DeSimone 3 Comments

AmperArt 74 Creak & Quake

Click to view full size  without watermark & download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Greet­ings, mortals.

This mor­bid install­ment of my Amper­Art series could have been enti­tled “Crypt Doors & Tomb­stones” but I chose the just-​as-​eerie verbs over the nouns “Creak & Quake.” These words are all from the first stan­za of Grim Grin­ning Ghosts, the theme song per­me­at­ing Walt Dis­ney’s Haunt­ed Mansion. 

Truth be told, I’m still only 99% sure that the song starts with 

“When the crypt doors creak & the tomb­stones quake…” or
“When the crypt goes creak & the tomb­stones quake…”

Why? Because after vis­it­ing sev­er­al web­sites to make sure I got the lyrics right (even though I’ve heard the song hun­dreds of times, it’s not embed­ded into the skull like “It’s a Small World”) there were dis­crep­an­cies. The first site which sound­ed like an offi­cial lyrics site is what threw me off: It read “…goes creak” which was sur­pris­ing, as I’ve always heard, so I thought, “When the crypt doors creak…” The orig­i­nal song­writ­ers — Bud­dy Bak­er, melody, and lyrics by Xavier “X” Aten­cio, the Dis­ney leg­end — were list­ed, along with dates and oth­er infor­ma­tion.  So I fig­ured that was what they wrote, and every­one just adapt­ed what they thought they heard. 

Until I vis­it­ed a few more sites. Every­where else the song goes “…doors creak…” which sounds so much bet­ter; is part of the Dis­ney fans’ venac­u­lar; and what I chose to use in my piece of art­work. (It’s prob­a­bly the cor­rect choice.)

William Shake­speare & his poem, Venus & Ado­nis, influ­enced the title of the Haunt­ed Man­sion’s theme song:

Look, how the world’s poor peo­ple are amaz’d
At appari­tions, signs, and prodigies,
Where­on with fear­ful eyes they long have gaz’d,
Infus­ing them with dread­ful prophecies;
So she at these sad sighs draws up her breath,
And, sigh­ing it again, exclaims on Death.
‘Hard-​favour’d tyrant, ugly, mea­gre, lean,
Hate­ful divorce of love,’ — thus chides she Death,—
‘Grim-​grinning ghost, earth­’s worm, what dost thou mean
To sti­fle beau­ty and to steal his breath,
Who when he liv’d, his breath and beau­ty set
Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?

The tomb­stone and grave­yard in this piece real­ly do exist: The Gra­nary Ceme­tery, Boston, Mass. Well, almost. The top and bor­ders of the tomb­stone are authen­tic (except for the icon­ic “D” under the skull); I elon­gat­ed the entire mon­u­ment and replaced the somber inscrip­tion with sil­ly lyrics. So much for rev­er­ence. I wish to give cred­it to an incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­ph­er, whose image I came across on the Inter­net and used as ref­er­ence for this piece. Her name is Del­la Huff. Her pho­tog­ra­phy is spec­tac­u­lar. See it at http://​del​lahuff​pho​to​.zen​fo​lio​.com/ I had no idea such mor­bid tomb­stones actu­al­ly exist­ed. The grave­yard, though heav­i­ly dis­tort­ed by my twist­ed mind, is among many won­der­ful pho­tographs I found at https://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​m​b​d​e​z​i​n​e​s​/​s​e​t​s​/​7​2​1​5​7​6​0​7​8​5​7​0​0​8​0​82/

listen up!

As much as I detest innacu­ra­cy (why can’t oth­ers do a lit­tle research like I did, even though it took longer than the art­work?) it led me to sev­er­al inter­est­ing haunts:

I dis­cov­ered alter­nate, high­ly enter­tain­ing ver­sions of Grim Grin­ning Ghosts; a great video for the kids (and the grown-​up kids); and of course it was haunt­ing­ly won­der­ful to hear the orig­i­nal sound­track again (where I could swear they enun­ci­ate “doors”). Here are those sites:

Turn off the lights and turn up the sound:

Enter­tain­ing a capel­la from VoicePlay:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​j​p​w​0​y​Q​p​v​b_c

Here’s the orig­i­nal sound­track fol­lowed by a cool alter­nate ver­sion (which seems to have been pro­duced by James Pres­ley) and some of the begin­ning and end­ing narrative:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​S​a​q​SVi – Ms

The kids will enjoy this sin­ga­long video: https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​a​v​o​0​8​I​X​duQ (I like it very much myself.)

And some­thing real­ly enter­tain­ing — spooky at first with organ and choir, then wild­ly zany with unique voic­es, and all sorts of oth­er sounds…produced by James Presley:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​R​I​_​4​v​z​q​e​vLg

Production notes:
Original size: 10x15 inches
Program: Photoshop, Illustrator (for the dingbats)
Fonts: Willow, Eccentric, Harrington
Ampersand: Harrington (line shadow added)
Images:
Tombstone & graveyard  reference: Granary Cemetery, Boston, Massachussetts, USA
Della Huff is the photographer whose tombstone photo was used for reference and sampling by the artist. See her spectacular fine art photography at http://​del​lahuff​pho​to​.zen​fo​lio​.com/  Della’s original photo that made this AmperArt piece possible:
http://​www​.pbase​.com/​d​e​l​l​y​b​e​a​n​/​i​m​a​g​e​/​4​0​9​4​6​116
Graveyard background: mbdezines Image modified so extensively it does not resemble the original photograph…but the background would  not be “authentic” without this photographer’s contribution.
Artist discovered that crypts do have doors at:
http://​idiot​pho​tog​ra​ph​er​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​0​5​/​2​8​/​t​h​e​-​c​r​y​p​t​-​d​o​o​r​s​-​o​f​-​r​i​c​o​l​e​ta/
Music and lyrics sites visited for reference:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​j​p​w​0​y​Q​p​v​b_c
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​S​a​q​SVi – Ms
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​a​v​o​0​8​I​X​duQ
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​R​I​_​4​v​z​q​e​vLg

H u r r y  b a c k …