JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

My Dad’s limerick book opens with a quotation from the classical scholar PLINY THE ELDER, who was the first natural historian, being the author of the Naturalis Historia. He had nothing but good things to say about elephants, hence the quote. I looked for visual reference on Pliny, but no contemporary portraits of him survive; those that we have were done years after his death, and they range from depicting a heroic, burly Charlton Heston-ish dude to a wizened old Merlin type, as obviously, nobody really knows what he looked like.

So all I knew for sure was that Pliny was a bearded classical scholar who liked elephants. And I thought “HANG ON! I know where to find a perfect model!” So I based my depiction of Pliny on a certain classicist that I know…

The title page for a chapter that deals with stories and limericks about elephants at work.
In other News, for those of you who live in Australia, ALL my self published books are now available from IMPACT COMICS in Canberra. Also, BUD PLANT has discounted my Rocket Rabbit book at his site. You can buy them from him even cheaper than you can from me.

This one illustrates a limerick (based on the true story) of a Mexico City circus owner who hired some “coyotes” to sneak an elephant across the border into Mexico. The circus owner bought “Benny” from a zoo in the USA, became frustrated with the delays and paperwork involved in importing an elephant, and decided to take steps to expedite the process.

Here’s a finished illustration from my Dad’s elephant limerick book. Some of them are coloured digitally (as is the case here) and some analog.

Here’s the latest for Dad’s elephant-limerick book.. it illustrates the story of a science student in England who tries to communicate with zoo elephants by using the low frequency sounds from a didgeridoo… I will finish this particular illustration with pen and ink, when I get back in a drawing mood…

This week has been a mini-break from drawing. I have been writing for a change, mostly ideas for comics stories. Plus, I’ve recently been writing down a bunch of childhood memories. My Dad thinks that this is a manifestation of a mid-life-crisis but I’ve been enjoying the writing, so maybe it isn’t an MLC after all. It can’t really be a “crisis” if I’m enjoying myself…

Anyway, one or two of the memory-yarns might make make funny comics stories… we shall see…

This pic illustrates a limerick based on a news story about the elephants having to leave London Zoo after crushing one of their handlers….

I’ll copy this sketch onto Canson paper and go over it with colour pencil and some gouache.
I’m trying some different art styles and techniques for each of the illustrations, so that all these pics of elephants don’t get boring for me to draw, or repetitive for the reader to look at. The title of the book is going to be “Elephants in the news” as all the limericks are based on stories that my Dad (and his friends) cut from newspapers over the past few years.

This sketch illustrates a limerick about a beauty pageant for large ladies which is held each year in Thailand. The winner gets to be called Miss Jumbo Queen. No, really!
This contest was featured in a Thai comedy movie made in 2004. Here is the official site of the contest.
UPDATE: The finished COLOUR piece is HERE.

As you may know (if you’ve been to this NEWS page before) I am currently working on some illustrations for a book about elephants featuring LIMERICKS written by my Dad, all on the subject of pachyderms. These are a couple more sketches for the book.

Here’s another pachyderm scribble… a rough of an illustration for a book of elephant limericks that I am illustrating for my Dad.

I’ve also posted some OTHER pix from the same project before in this blog. You can see them here and here.