Just Add Water

a brief departure from the typical posts here…

while i try not to include my personal work in subtilitas, readers may have noticed content has been a little sparse here lately, largely due to a few large projects wrapping up. one of which is a book i’ve been involved with through the cactus store, which was just released this week.

xerophile is a compendium of desert plant and habitat photography three years in the making. a selection of over five hundred photographs of arguably the rarest and most bizarre plants on earth, photographed in their remote natural habitats over the past 80 years by a global cadre of obsessed cactus aficionados made up of both the amateur and the professional—from phd. botanist to banker, art teacher to cancer researcher. aside from the field photography, we’ve also included several interviews with the explorer’s themselves, who’s stories only add to the mystique of their images. 

posts should begin to be more regular next week. thanks as always for reading.

Nutmeg and Kerosene - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Candle + Book Giveaway

Hey everyone! The Literary Snob is teaming up with The Happy Bard Candle Co. to do a double giveaway this September. We’re all on the same trivia team in the real world (Sean Bean Lives!) and I absolutely love Happy Bard’s literary inspired candles. They’re about to release their next line of literary candles and one of the new scents will be a fan submission! So we’re holding a contest and double giveaway to find the fairest combo in the land. 

Reblog this post with your submission for a literary candle scent. You can send in as many submissions as your heart desires and tag anyone who dreams of being a candle virtuoso. The Happy Bard Candle Co. will pick their favorite submission at the end of the contest, create the candle, and send it to you! Plus I will send the winner one of the newly released Vintage Minis of your choice.

GIVEAWAY RULES

Reblog this post with a book & fragrance combo suggestion

Follow The Happy Bard Candle Co. on either Instagram or Facebook

Follow The Literary Snob on Tumblr

Have fun and be creative!

RULES

There is no limit on submissions, so reblog away! Currently, The Happy Bard Candle Co. cannot ship internationally, so anybody can participate but only those in the U.S. can win. Contest ends Saturday, Sept. 30 at midnight.

We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! Plus I might throw in an extra prize for whoever makes me laugh the hardest. Good luck!

Sonnet for President Trump

Shall I compare thee to a Shakespeare play? Thou art less clever and less literate, But how else should poor poets have their say? Alas, our leader lacks a donkey’s wit! Sometime too fierce the fire of ego burns, And when a man is made to look a fool, He rages ’gainst the mockery he earns, As little boys will cry when teas’d at school. But thy eternal tantrums shall not wane, Nor shalt thou e’er unclench thy tiny fists, Nor listen when the people dare to say, “’Tis you, dear sir, who made a scene of this.”         So long as men can breathe and speech is free,         The Bard shall speak and show thy shame to thee.

(4 July 2017, in honor and defense of freedom of artistic expression)

He came from a distant star. So far that when he passed by Vega--some 300,000 years ago--Vega wasn't even there yet.

MEET OUMUAMUA, THE FIRST INTERSTELLAR ASTEROID 

The whole story is fascinating but these bits caught our attention:

Pronounced “Oh-moo-ah-moo-ah,” it means “a messenger from afar arriving first.”

Observations of the wildly-varying light from ‘Oumuamua showed scientists it wasn’t spherical, but probably had a cigar shape measuring 800 meters by 80 meters by 80 meters—that’s something almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty, but half a mile long. It’s red, and likely made from metal and carbon-rich matter like some comets.

There are many unknown things in our galaxy, and some of them are zooming at us at incredible speeds.

Cogito Ergo Sum (I Think, Therefore I Am)

I tend to overthink things. For instance, I made about a dozen drafts of this comic before settling on the final words and drawings. I think the next thing I make will be easier, but I’m probably mistaken. 

For more comics about the joys and frustrations of creative thinking, check out my book, The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity, published by Abrams ComicArts:

abramsbooks.com/shapeofideas

Great posters, on par titles, sub par episodes.

Star Trek: Discovery midseason finale tonight! Check out the first 8 of my retro episode posters as you prep for Episode 9: “Into the Forest I Go”.

I second this

petition to ban “slideshow” as an article format on the internet

#StarTrekPuns