The Genie of the Lamp: Aladdin, Part IV

Tags

1001 Nights, Aladdin, Djinn, Folk tales, Genie, Novelty books, The Genie of the Lamp, Thousand and One Nights, Throwback Thursday, Walker Books

The Genie of the Lamp. Ink and gouache. Original artwork on the left, together with the panel as it appears in the book. The border motif was also originally painted by hand in one section and was then stitched together digitally by the designer. Illustration for Aladdin, Walker Books, 2011.

Less kindly-looking than the Ring Genie, the multiple horns and arms were my attempts at combining a wilder appearance with something more akin to a deity for the Genie of the Lamp, whose powers are of course far stronger also. The design of his ‘collar’ borrows rather freely from Southeast Asian ornamental art.

 

The Genie of the Ring: Aladdin, part III

Tags

1001 Nights, Aladdin, Djinn, Folk tales, Genie, Novelty books, Thousand and One Nights, Throwback Thursday, Walker Books

 

The Genie of the Ring. Ink and gouache. Original artwork on the left, together with the panel as it appears in the book. The border motif was also originally painted by hand in one section and was then stitched together digitally by the designer. Illustration for Aladdin, Walker Books, 2011.

Let us return to Aladdin for another late ‘Throwback Thursday’, shall we?

Jingle Bells is now published, though I’m realising to my embarrassment that I failed to mention that at all here, even though I did so on my Facebook page and have been sharing pictures of copies of the book in stores. There will be more on this as I embark on a Vanity Tour of the independent bookshops in London which have taken on the Jingle Bells window display. But with that flurry of promotion in mind, I wanted to return again to this favourite of mine. Not Christmas-related, though nevertheless somewhat appropriately festive in its own right.

I wanted the Genie of the Ring, who first appeared out of the ring which the magician had given Aladdin when he entered the cave, to look markedly different from the Lamp Genie: more benevolent and less intimidating. His costume is mostly Persian with some Ottoman elements. The illustration was flipped for the panel in the end as it worked best with he and the magician facing each other at opposite ends of the book spread.

 

The Butterfly that Stamped

Tags

Djinn, folio society, Just So Stories, rudyard kipling

Then the butterfly stamped. The Djinns jerked the Palace and the gardens a thousand miles into the air…

Illustration for The Butterfly that Stamped,
from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by The Folio Society, 2012. Watercolour on Fabriano Artistico cold pressed (the old kind no longer in production), 180 x 255mm.

I enjoyed myself with this one and included ‘portraits’ of myself and a few friends as Solomon, Balkis, and the Djinns. By ‘portraits’, I don’t mean actual likenesses but rather attributes and visual clues. I am the djinn on the far right.

How the Camel got his Hump

Tags

Camel, Djinn, folio society, Just So Stories, rudyard kipling

The Djinn rolled himself up in his dust-cloak, and took a bearing across the desert, and he found the Camel most ‘scruciatingly idle, looking at his own reflection in a pool of water.
‘My long and bubbling friend,’ said the Djinn, ‘what’s this I hear of your doing no work…?’

Illustration for How the Camel got his Hump, from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by The Folio Society, 2012.

Watercolour on (old) Fabriano Artistico cold pressed, 180 x 255mm.