A R

It was a poor woodcut, hand-coloured mostly in blue and red. It was of a plain, middle-aged woman whose sagging chin and slightly bulging eyes gave the cynical the feeling that someone had put a large fish in a dress, but the artist had managed to capture something extra in that strange, blank expression. Some pictures had eyes that followed you around the room; this one looked right through you. It was a face you found in every home.

An irrelevant background side note: I did these illustrations in one of these wooden houses in an isolated village deep in the Carpatian Mountains (Slovakia). It's quite a retrograde and religious place, and you can find these..woodworks, icons and eerily looking paintings of saints in every house in every room...so you can imagine it did have quite the vibe for illustrating some parts from the book in this place as I brought the book with me.

Flag Wars Bonus Round

Flag Wars Bonus Round

Spanish shawl (Flabellinopsis iodinea) off the coast of California, U.S.