Phantom of the Past
A continuation of @ff6celebration. Shadow and his dog Interceptor with the esper Phantom in the upper right corner. Within Phantom’s ghostly form are figures from Shadow’s past (both stated and unstated in the game): Baram, Relm’s mother, and Relm Arrowny herself.
Iranian photographer Hossein Fatemi, offers a glimpse of an entirely different side to Iran than the image usually broadcasted by domestic and foreign media. In his photo series An Iranian Journey, many of the photographs reveal an Iran that most people never see, presenting an eye-opening look at the amazing diversity and contrasts that exist in the country.
I see a lot of people reblogging, well-meaningly and with anti-war sentiment at heart, Iranian photographs and art and so on. But so much of it focuses on very exoticized imagery that, while a true part of the country - yes, there’s women in black chador and old men with donkeys in dust-bowls - also helps sustain the image of Iran as remote, alien, and already desolate (therefore, how much can life really change with a bit of carpet-bombing? Right?)
This is also Iran. Lounges and parties and rock bands and youth culture and skateboards and graffiti art and a lively hip hop scene and acrylic nails and a thriving, multi-faceted culture that the wide-scale destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, roads, industrial sites, etc, will devastate for decades to come.
Barry Moser
In 1985, heralded illustrator, wood engraver, book designer, and fine-press publisher Barry Moser (b. 1940) printed his edition of L. Frank Baum’s (1856-1919) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (first published in 1900) at his Pennyroyal Press in West Hatfield, Massachusetts in a limited edition of 350 copies with 65 original wood engravings. In the early to mid 1980s, Moser had an arrangement with the University of California Press at Berkeley to publish several of his private press publications as trade editions. The images shown here are reproductions of Moser’s original wood-engraved prints in the 1986 University of California Press edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the only UC Press Moser publication for which we do not have a corresponding Pennyroyal copy (we accept donations, however).
In his 1986 Checklist of Pennyroyal publications, Jeffery Dwyer, one of the co-founders with Barry Moser of The Hampshire Typothetae (1976-1977), quotes Moser on the making of these images:
Few texts lend themselves to contemporary parody as well as does the Wizard of Oz. The first time I tried my hand at political parody was in Through the Looking-Glass where I cast Richard M. Nixon as Humpty Dumpty. The Wizard of Oz gave me the stage for throwing humorous, but none-the-less serious darts at the Reagan Administration [including depicting the Wicked Witch as Nancy Reagan], corporate figureheads, and the so-called Moral Majority, who now, it seems, want to be called Freedom Federation.
Our copy is another donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).
View more posts on works by Barry Moser.
View more posts with wood engravings!
Now in one complete post, all of the art I made for the @ff6celebration during October.
I haven’t undertaken a drawing challenge like this in a while, but it was hard to resist with this subject. The game, the story, the characters, the Amano artwork…all of it was very critical to the start of my creative journey long ago, and is still inspirational to me to this day. Not only was it enjoyable to revisit this world, but I feel like I discovered something stylistically in the process.
Is it a good journey if you want to keep exploring after it’s over? I think so.
That said, I did start a few drawings that I wasn’t able to completely undertake. Setzer with Siren, Locke with Phoenix, Shadow with Phantom….hopefully I can find some time to complete these down the road…
Mog calling upon…Ragnarok!!!
(I tend to imagine this particular Esper as something akin to the demon sword Stormbringer, wielded by Elric in Michael Moorcock’s various fantasy stories. So in this instance, who better to call upon it than everyone’s favorite Moogle.)
For day 10 of @ff6celebration
Celes and Cid on the Solitary Island, with Palidor flying in the distance.
For day 9 of @ff6celebration
Shredding Terra and Gau, as inspired by this amazing post that I stumbled upon a few months ago which ranks the FF6 cast in terms of how well they would do as guest stars in Tony Hawk: Pro Skater!! If you’ve not read it, please go look- it’s the only analysis of the cast that you need, ever
My post for the @ff6celebration for today’s prompt, Stray Cat: Mischief!
The idea of Terra letting loose with Gau makes my heart warm… she’s so pent up throughout most of the game and just needs to let her hair down and go full, scrunched-up, goblin mode belly laugh. And who better to go goblin mode with than Gau?
Super excited to collab with @tayasigerson on this one, who will be posting her own take on this concept today! :D
Tribute illustration by Katsuhiro Otomo (“Akira”) for Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell” exhibition.
The Merry Bastards of Gore
A few OC’s, pen and ink drawing on Strathmore mixed media paper.
Princess of Time, Sword of Gloom
Linocut relief print embellished with Posca paint markers.
