Christine Ristaino's new book, the Italian Virtual Classroom, and Quacknulack

My older sister Christine is perhaps the nicest human in the universe, aside from perhaps my Mom. Some people don't like to be called 'nice,' but hell, I calls em likes I sees em. Every once in a while she's been kind enough to throw me a gig. Christine is an Italian professor at the University of Emory in Atlanta, GA, and she's been co-developing a virtual classroom through which Italian students can study the language from any location on the planet! Modern tech is wild, man, wiiiiiiiiiiillld! For a full explanation of how this virtual classroom works, please go here. When the classroom was first launched, I was asked to do a cover for the study booklet. Here it is:

Christine asked me to create an image that covered the various stages of Italian art. That's the statue of David and the painting of Venus as IVC students. I tried my best to draw and color each figure or object in a different style. Is it successful?
Christine has co-authored a just-released book entitled
Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle des Femmes" in Seventeenth-Century Italy
You can follow the link to buy the book from Amazon.


Years ago she used to teach at the University of North Carolina, and I was asked to draw a t-shirt design for the graduate romance association, which was affiliated with the school's romance language department. Not sure why, to be honest. Needless to say, the idea I came up with was a little too weird for the department and they chose not to use it. Oh well. "Too weird for college" is definitely a complement. The advantage of having my own blawg on the intrewebs is that I can actually show the design to you:

I personally thought "Quacknulack, a humanoid duck from Zubenelgenubi" was a cool idea. I mean, come on! He's wearing a flower pot for a hat! They do that on other planets, you know.
Why is my genius so misunderstood?