Monday, February 1, 2016

Nikola Tesla and His Favorite Pigeon


That special connection between a man and his favorite urban fowl:

Tesla may have been a germaphobe with OCD, but he had extremely positive feelings about New York City pigeons. Not only did he feed them in Bryant Park, he brought sick and injured birds back to his hotel room for nursing. As previously mentioned in the blurb for our Tesla and Pikachu napkin, he claimed to have a special relationship with one white pigeon that he said he loved "as a man loves a woman."

This image here was not one of my better efforts. Tesla became quite emaciated in his later life and removed his distinctive mustache, so he is a bit difficult to recognize in photographs and I did not have much success with his likeness.

I also had some trouble deciding what the situation should be with the light source in this image. Initially, I was thinking about trying to make it look like the glow from a plasma lamp, but I tried to stay away from drawing actual bolts of electricity, and the results are pretty muddy.

Our older son is still working on his research paper on Tesla. His younger brother says that he asked for a plasma globe for his recent birthday not because of all of the talk about Tesla, but because he had seen one in a YouTube video.

As it turned out, my image doesn't do plasma lamps, pigeons, or Mr. Tesla justice.
But the kids are quite excited about the real plasma lamp, so perhaps my drawing can be a little bit cool by association.


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