(thanks to friend Celes Davar—original source unknown)

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Peaks Island, Maine

Born in New York City, Douglas Smith began drawing early. To Douglas, the most appealing aspect of making art was storytelling, and with this in mind, he chose to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, earning his BFA in Illustration in 1974, also studying sculpture, painting, and printmaking. What followed was a truly remarkable career in illustration, art, and teaching (that you can read about here)… today he lives a short walk from the ocean, in a house full of art, odd stuff, and three cats.

Above: a small sampling of Smith’s engaging b/w illustrations… (source).

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A sampling of unlikely vehicles envisioned many decades ago…

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Dublin, Ireland

This is a great illustration project by The Project Twins—bold graphics and visual wit are used to interpret and represent a collection of strange, unusual, and lost words (see the words represented in the graphics above and all 26 prints here). The full collection was exhibited at the MadArt Gallery Dublin during DesignWeek 2011, and consisted of 26 individual 50cm x 70cm Giclee Prints on Hahnemühle 100% Cotton Rag, each in a limited edition of 10.

(thanks to GDC Listserv colleague Lesley Casson)

—William Wallace

—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)

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Pen & Ink was created by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton as a place for those with body art to share the stories behind it. It features each person’s name and occupation, a fun sketch of each tattoo diagramming where it is on the body, and, of course, the reasoning for it. Leo, one of the tattooists quoted in Margo DeMello’s Bodies of Inscription asserts:

[A] genuine tattoo…. tells a story. I like stories and tattoos, no matter how well done, and if they don’t tell a story that involves you emotionally, then they’re just there for decoration, then they’re not a valid tattoo. There has to be some emotional appeal or they’re not, to my way of thinking, a real tattoo. It tells people what you are and what you believe in, so there’s no mistakes.

—Mark Twain