Weekend Reading: Projects Everywhere!

It’s been a busy week, full of projects which have nothing much to do with my actual work – although unsurprisingly they all have connections to the ancient world!

One project that has been keeping me busy is an illustration project. I can’t say much about it at this point – but I’m having to read a lot of Caesar, which is a change for me! I don’t think I’ve ever actually studied Caesar’s work formally – it never came up on school or university courses. Specialising in Roman historiography as I later did, I obviously read Caesar, but more as a means to an end than in a focused way. Now that I’m reading it properly, I’m running across all sorts of fun things that I never really noticed before!

I’m currently fascinated by Caesar’s description of the Hercynian Forest, which is full of bizarre details. One of my tasks is to draw the ‘unicorn’ which Caesar describes. There are some great artist’s impressions online, which have been providing me with considerable entertainment. Just for fun, I also asked an AI interface to create a picture for me of Caesar’s unicorn – but it told me first that it couldn’t because unicorns don’t exist, and then created an image which it wouldn’t let me see because some of the terms in my query were blocked…!

I also stumbled across this deeply weird book, which strangely I am not tempted to purchase…

One of my latest personal projects is to set up a Patreon. You can find it here: https://www.patreon.com/TheCobraIllustration. The idea behind it is to separate out my teaching-related content (which will stay here, freely available) from my art-related content. It also allows me to post things privately behind a paywall, which means that I can post photos and little videos without worrying about horrible comments from trolls (that’s a major problem for me on this website these days). And I can do nice things for the people who help me!

So if you’ve ever wanted to support the work that I do, please take a look at my Patreon page and consider becoming an official supporter! There are different tiers, each with its own set of rewards. The basic tier will give you access to my regular sketchbook posts, videos and photos, as well as one bookplate a month to download and print. Higher tiers are only available to a limited number of people, because they include signed limited-edition books and original art! I’m grateful for any support this year, as I try to find my feet in the world of classical illustration.