Steampunk, Indiana Jones, my mother, a banana, a saltshaker, Mary Shelley and a ballpoint sketch meet the 1887 volume of Cassels Magazine:
It’s falling apart, but I love that book – there are articles on how to stop roosters crowing and which dental schools will admit women, on breakfast beverages, the season’s fashions (What to Wear: Chit Chat on Dress), meteoric resin, new hansom cabs, lead-lined tea chests, extending ladders (a peculiar fascination with these) and stories with titles such as ‘Vere Thornleigh’s Inheritance; or, “Life’s Fitful Fever” and “A Man of the Name of John” whose elegantly bustled heroines swoon in woodcuts captioned cryptically “I dearly love playing the lady bountiful”, “a well-arranged room” or “the stranger was soon elucidating the mysteries of a political caricature”.
Here is another based on a pencil sketch (the separate image of the hand and gun is my favourite):
And, for a touch of colour, my further adventures in Inkscape (imagine a large clockwork robot to the far right):
(Comments and criticism are as ever welcome).



May 14, 2008 at 2:17 am
Very original and interesting.
May 14, 2008 at 4:59 am
Great and interesting!!
May 14, 2008 at 8:32 am
Thanks, arseafartsea (heh) and Marilia!
May 14, 2008 at 6:35 pm
So was this consciously an illo of my Lady of the Golden Wood story idea?
Cause that’s her: pose, hat, dress, everything but the steampunk electicity coming out of the pistol.
Or was this another situation where great minds think alike?
:)
May 14, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Great minds… fools’ thoughts…
May 15, 2008 at 2:34 am
good stuff! i like the profile of the face in the red shadow of the last one.
May 16, 2008 at 5:06 am
What fun! I’m a sucker for those 19th c. manuals too.
May 16, 2008 at 8:48 am
Lots of fun. I could sit there and read till its falling apart. Which actually wouldn’t take long.