Edward Lear 011 (2017)

There was an Old Man with a flute,

A sarpint ran into his boot;

But he played day and night,

Till the sarpint took flight,

And avoided that man with a flute.

Illustratie bij een versje van Edward Lear. Wie was Edward Lear? Ik citeer de Engelstalige Wikipedia: Edward Lear (12 or 13 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
Het illustreren van EL is een zeer aangename bezigheid. Ten eerste zijn zijn versjes zeer visueel, ten tweede een tikje absurdistisch. EL is degene die zijn eigen werk het best geïllustreerd heeft, maar in mijn illustraties wijk ik bewust af van zijn versie. De letters-spellende slang komt bijvoorbeeld in zijn versie niet voor.