I am the Skeleton in my Closet

That post title doesn't really mean anything, I just thought it sounded amusing. I haven't got a proper post today, except to say I'm not actually dead and I am planning to start posting regularly again. For one thing, I've been doing some reading towards eventually getting back into working on revising and adding illustrations to my (now rather venerable) undergrad honours thesis on North American canid bones in archaeology. I even have access to most of a coyote skeleton to help me fill in some of the carpals and tarsals that were missing from the specimens I used to make the original illustrations. And I have a few more books to refer to so I can add species I wasn't able to cover before.

A second little update tidbit: I've started working (well, so far just in my head) on a bestiary that will be illustrated with skeletons. It'll be a fine-press, hand-printed and hand-bound thing and I hope to get started on a test illustration this weekend. You can read more about that on my art/writing/living in the woods blog Anagram for Ink.

Other than that, I am full of ideas and projects and things-to-do. I have a few more great resources to blog about and link, some books to review, and I really want to do some drawings of raven bones. In other words, I'm too busy for my own good.

"Bones With Bling" in Fortean Times

Via Morbid Anatomy (which you should be reading if you like the morbid, odd, and peculiar), there's an article in the Fortean Times on "the amazing jewelled skeletons of Europe," titled Bones with Bling.

I'm not likely to link to Fortean Times very often, but this is an interesting piece about a forgotten part of Catholic Christian history, when supposedly psychic priests would "discover" the bones of saints and martyrs which would then be lavishly decorated as relics. Of course, many of the skeletons had probably belonged to ordinary people--even pagans--but more saintly relics meant greater prestige for the Church and could mean increasing attendance (and therefore wealth) at smaller churches.

Whether these bones belonged to holy people or ordinary people, they certainly make beautiful displays.

Bone Art: The Evolution of Flight

A few years ago, when I was still in art school, I made a lithograph titled "The Evolution of Flight." It ties in to some stories and comics and books and artefacts I've been working on which will all come together in something bigger once I figure out what shape I want it to take.

But anyway, what's relevant for this blog is that I used bones in it. The print -- as you can see from the image -- is multiple layers of stuff. For those interested, I started with three runs from a litho stone, altering it each time with etching and sanding (that's the wing shape that dominates the image from far away). Then I added two separate runs from aluminum photoplates, made from my own drawings (or handwriting, in the case of the brown layer). One of those plates is a sort of comparative anatomy diagram, which came to mind when I was writing up the book review in my last post.

The image shows four skeletal limbs. The first is a bird:

The next is bat:

Then, of course, human, because this is the evolution of human flight:

And the final one is not from an animal but a flying machine (of my own silly invention) called a pterothopter.

In retrospect, I should also have included a pterosaur wing, though the pterpthopter is acutally named for Pteropus, the genus of bats called "flying foxes" and not for the pterosaurs. Still, it would have been a good thing to have.

The handwriting, incidentally, is bits of a story about a made scientist character who decided to create flying humans. She intended to do so through a combination of selective breeding and prosthetic surgery, but eventually gave up to work on flying machines with human pilots instead (and her neighbours breathed a sigh of relief).

And Now for Something Completely Different

OK, it's not a flying circus, but it is a sideshow.

Lately, I've been working on improving my illustration skills by making ATCs or Artist Trading Cards. It's fun to make little art and trade it with other folks, and themed swaps make me stretch myself to see what I can come up with to fit. But what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with bones? Well, I haven't posted here recently (though I'm going to aim for at least one post a week from here on), as I've been busy with art and writing and various other things. But this past week I had a chance to draw some bones for an ATC swap.

So, without further ado, may I present A Scientific Study of Sideshow Freaks through their Skeletal Anatomy (which is, of course, not scientific at all--though it would be fun to re-do them as Victorian-esque scientific drawings, come to think of it).

Exhibit 1: The Rat-Tailed Boy

Exhibit 2: The Two-Headed Man

Exhibit 3: The Three-Legged Woman

Exhibit 4: The "Mermaid"

Next post, I promise to get back to the more serious business of bone study.