Swearing Budgies of the World - Initial Idea

I have been struggling to come up with inspiring project ideas of late, so I was delighted when the Swearing Budgies of the World popped into my head. It didn't exactly pop fully-formed though. I was thinking about my pages in the Artshole 'zine and how much I enjoyed drawing budgies accompanied by surreal statements. I figured it would be nice to try drawing budgies in different styles, other than the two I did for the 'zine. My idea was for a series of, say, perhaps 20 budgies that would eventually form a rather lovely book. And then it hit me...

When I was a young lad in the 70s and early 80s, a few of my friends' grandparents kept pet budgies. Now, and this could be the effects of time on my poor brain, I seem to remember that they were nearly always called Joey or Peter. Sure, there were probably a few exceptions but by and large that was what budgies were called back then. So I started thinking that it would be nice if all the budgies in my book were called Peter or Joey.

And then my second flash of inspiration struck - if the budgies are theoretically from all around the world, they could have a regional version of the two classic names. So, in France we would have Pierre, in Spain Pedro, in Italy perhaps Beppe, being a shortened informal version of Giuseppe (Joseph). Suddenly I had the makings of an original and interesting project. I compiled a list of countries and found the ones with the best Joeys/Peters. Some of them were too close to the English to be interesting - the French for Joseph, for example, is Joseph, albeit most likely pronounced "sho-seff" by a sexy lady smoking a Gauloise. A French budgie would probably be swearing too... OMG!

That's it! An added layer of pleasure could be had by having each budgie swearing in his own language! Budgies and swearing in one project, what could be better? This idea is so strong that I think I will make a series of A2 prints as well as a book.