Weekend inspiration quote – Advertising Legends #1

Here’s some words of wisdom from the world of advertising. I got this quote and tomorrow’s from this article; 15 quotes from advertising legends.

 

Friday colour palette – Autumn neutrals

The perfect Autumn day is crisp and clear, accompanied by a great pair of boots and an invigorating coffee. I feel I am the most productive in Autumn. Must be the boots.

Pearl blush, French blue, off-teal, pale bronze, spotlight, shiver of emerald, mossy grey, hello mustard.

Want more Autumn tones? Here’s a Thanksgiving-inspired palette.

From Neanderthal to Aztec – echoes of languages within our own

English is made up of a hodgepodge of influences; all of us, regardless of our language prowess speak a little bit of French, Italian, Greek and Latin (among others) every day.

But did you know you also speak a little Aztec? And Neanderthal? There are hundreds of words we’ve adopted from long-dead tribes that live on in our language.

And speaking of the long-dead; this month’s New Scientist had an article about the possible influence the Neanderthals had on our language. Neanderthals – did they even have a language? The evidence seems to be stacking in their favour, evidence that shows they may not have been as uncivilised as we thought, but in fact may have shown our ancestors a thing or two. Certainly, ancient humans had contact with them (and even bred with them) and now researchers are looking into the possibility that they had an impact on our language.

How do they determine if an unknown primitive language influenced ours? If you want to be bamboozled and impressed all at the same time, take a look at the article. It’s like a huge code-breaking exercise on clues that have been Chinese-whispered down thousands of generations.

But back to some known influences. Did you know that our words tomato, chilli, avocado and chocolate all come from the Aztec (Nahuatl) words tomatl, chilatl, ahuacatl and xocolatl? They were imported along with the new foods to Europe when the Spanish plundered the Aztec empire in the 1500s.

The Etruscans may have given us Autumn, market, belt and ceremony (via Latin). The ancient Greek gods live on in our words atlas, echo, erotic, tantalising and nemesis.

Lastly, far from being a dead tribe, but one whose language has existed for thousands of years – it won’t surprise you that most of our flora and fauna in Australia was named by indigenous Australians. Those names then adopted by European invaders; kangaroo, budgerigar, dingo, koala, barramundi – these words have now permeated the rest of the world.

Sources: New Scientist magazine, the fabulous book, Dictionary of English Down the Ages by Linda and Robert Flavell, this article 10 Words Originating From Greek Mythology and a bit from Wikipedia on the Etruscan language.

If you want more poetry, the complete poems are here and here (and another one here)

The Wonderful Egg – book review (and a worship of print techniques)

I am fortunate to have young children, in order to justify my picture book addiction. I found The Wonderful Egg by Dahlov Ipcar in the National Gallery bookshop and from first touch I had to have it. The paper! The pink! The green! The dinosaurs!

It is utter delight in hard cover – and a feat in reproduction. Originally printed in 1958 using ‘a hand-picked colour palette and traditional printing techniques’, Flying Eye Books have produced a faithful copy of Dahlov Ipcar’s original work. For those of you interested in printing processes; that includes picking out each layer of spot colour and re-mastering each brush stroke. (The original lithographic plates have been long since lost, so this was all done from scratch).

I have a little experience in this area, having done a similar thing in wallpaper reproduction, so I can say with some authority that this is impressive. ‘Why not just scan the original in and reprint it that way?’ I hear you ask. Well, then you wouldn’t have a book that is as charming and wonderfully coloured as this one is. It evokes an age where illustration and print were carefully crafted, and picture books were designed to be appreciated by more than just the little ones among us.

These pictures in no way do justice to Dahlov Ipcar’s work, but you get a feel for it.

My favourite lines sum up the dinosaurs perfectly: ‘They were very strange beasts and most of them were big. Stupendously, tremendously, enormously BIG.’

And did the small ones appreciate this volume as much as I did? Well, it had dinosaurs in it so it was an easy sell. What we all spent a lot of time on was the chart in the back, showing the different dinosaurs and their relative size to each other. And the list of pronunciation of their names was very handy. It’s a lovely story, full of real dinosaur facts, which added to its appeal.

And because I fell deeply in love with the colours in this book, here is a bonus colour palette, inspired by The Wonderful Egg:

More about The Wonderful Egg here:

Here’s Dahlov Ipcar’s website, she still lives and works in Maine – and there are many wonderful picture books to her name.

And here’s the Flying Eye Books website, they are based in the UK and are committed to the quality of their books as you can see from their mission statement here.

Weekend inspiration quote – Sci-Fi writers #2

I couldn’t agree with you more, Ray Bradbury.

 

Weekend inspiration quote – Sci-Fi writers #1

I’m on a Sci-Fi bent this weekend. And this one pretty much sums up my feelings on deadlines.

 

Friday colour palette – collaged gemstone

This is an example of my random collage (otherwise known as the reason I give for hoarding pamphlets and destroying secondhand books). I’ve done a few of these now, for no other reason than for the simple pleasure of using scissors and glue. I do like how the colours have come together in this one.

Emerald, sapphire, blue topaz, green chalcedony, pale amethyst, copper, slate.

Looking for more collage? Here’s Gatsby girl and Cinderella.