Alphabet Transformations

        Here’s a series of doodles I set myself back in Dec. 2000 - Jan. 2001.  I drew one a day in my journal.  I’m not sure whether I got the idea from somewhere else or made it up myself, but the idea, obviously, is to transform each letter of the alphabet, in three intermediary steps, into an object that begins with that letter.  I had a lot of fun with it.  It was interesting to select a target object that had some sort of 
logical connection with the shape of the letter.  It was interesting to figure out the best view of it to take advantage of that connection.  It was interesting to figure out the intermediate steps, and of course it was fun to do all the drawing itself.

        I enjoyed it so much that later I assigned it to students who had finished their work early during a unit on Surrealism when we had talked about transformations.  Each student did only one or two letters as she had extra time, but eventually we ended up with a complete alphabet (plus lots of duplicates of the more exciting letters.)  I displayed the letters all around the top of the classroom.

        There’s really no need for deep analysis here - I was amused doing these doodles, and I thought you might be amused to see them.  (Remember that you can click on the pictures to see them bigger.)


        I’m off this afternoon to hang my art at the Boskone Art Show of the New England Science Fiction Association.  When that’s over I’ll be getting to work on preparations for teaching my printmaking classes in March.  (There are still spaces left.  If you’re interested in doing lots of fun rubber block printing, check it out here at Needham Community Education.)

        And finally, Happy Lunar New Year of the Dog!

[Pictures: Alphabet transformations, 26 sets of drawings by AEGN, 2000-2001.]