The art of ambigrams

I discovered ambigrams quite recently, doodling them on a napkin at Boston Pizza. Ambigrams are a delightful little visual trick with words, by which you can rotate or reflect a word to read the same way upside down, backwards, or other various ways. Some ambigrams consist of a word or phrase that reads as an entirely different word or phrase upside down or in another direction. I’ve always loved both calligraphy and logic puzzles, which is very much part of the construction of an ambigram– and what better theme to put these to than Poirot? We know, from Lord Edgware Dies, that Poirot learned the trick of reading upside down while in the Belgian police force, and puzzles of logic are second nature to him. Ergo, the inevitability of Poirot ambigrams.  😉

Here’s an ambigram that turns Poirot into Hastings (shown with inversion):

And, as it happens, David Suchet’s name ambigrams really nicely. This graphic reads the same upside-down. I’ll wait here for you to carefully rotate your laptop. Don’t drop it…

Once you’ve started making ambigrams, you find them terribly addictive. What other sort of ambigrams, in keeping with this blog theme, might be fun to attempt?

Poirot brooch studies

Poirot brooch studies. Acrylic on paper.

Since I have a lot of catching up to do, what with posting (or re-posting) things I’ve concocted over the past year, I might as well start from the beginning. These little brooch studies (the flowers are a little over an inch wide) were possibly the first “fan art” kind of thing I made pertaining to Poirot, and were done about a year ago. Fans of the television series will recognize his silver-and-amethyst lapel brooch, which in the context of the series was presented to him by Virginie Mesnard in The Chocolate Box.

I was actually thinking of Curtain when I made these little painted studies, and themes of death and life, which are represented by the poppy and the white rose. Poppies show up from time to time in my fan art, as they have some natural associations with Poirot: World War I, British-Belgian relations, Ypres, In Flanders Fields and that side of things. The flowers also commonly symbolize themes like drugs (e.g. opium) and death. White roses (as well as red) have associations with England, and signify truth and new life. Both poppies and white roses are considered to be “remembrance” flowers.

For more on the boutonniere in general, check out this article from The Art of Manliness blog. (The website’s symbol is, appropriately enough, a mustache.)  🙂

Welcome to Seven Storeys High!

‘This employment requires precision of the fingers. With precision of the fingers goes precision of the brain. And never have I needed that more than now! …I can build card houses seven storeys high…’
-The Mysterious Affair at Styles

My name is Kelly and I’m rather into Agatha Christie– so much so that my Poirot fan art and random speculations have been taking over my social media output. It seemed like a good idea to collect everything onto a blog and keep it tidily in one place. Because without order and method, well… you know.

Expect to see anything and everything from traditional-media fan art, to graphics, to humor, to ponderous analysis and speculations of all sorts, to who knows what else. I deal in Agatha Christie’s Poirot, books and screen alike.