Urban Sprawl

Oh dear,

This weeks prompt for Illustration Friday is "Urban" - which you probably know now, but I'm guessing that, at some time in your life you will probably forget.

So it's important for at least one of us to write it down somewhere - just in case.

In case...

In case? Of what?

Oh I don't know, it's like, it's like... don't you ever have the urge to save your bus tickets and file them away alphanumerically in the top drawer of the manteau in the second bedroom where your Auntie Agnus used to sleep in the eighties  ?

Go on, admit it.

You never know when some black suited men are going to bang at your door one Friday night wanting to know where you were at exactly 8.15 am on July the sixteenth 12 months ago. Well, if you have a carefully arranged drawer of bus tickets (like myself) you will be able to tell them exactly where you were - that is if you happened to be on a bus on that particularly morning and kept the ticket.

So there's a moral there. I'm not sure what it is, or how important that moral is, but it's a moral all the same.

Well now that's out of the whey (my wife has started making cheese)....

This image is enthusiastically dedicated to the encephalitic dog-hearted varlot (EDHV)) who threw an empty beer bottle on my front lawn last Friday night, hoping the cover of darkness would shield them from retribution.

Well, it (the cover of darkness) failed.

I have a good description.

This EDHV was between seventeen and fifty, either a male or a female, probably somewhere under 180 kilos and likely to be under 250 cm in height. They were wearing some kind of footwear and staggering slightly. They were probably also wearing a black bra and a striped ladies cap - but are no longer, cause they are the two items of apparel I found by the side of the road on my way for a surf the next day.

No to mention the half empty coke bottles and the suspicious looking resealable plastic bags that, judging by their size and emptiness, must have previously held something.

So dear beer bottle-less, black-braless, brainless twit (I left out the double you the first time I wrote that last word), you should be shaking in your size 6 to15 shoes, waiting for retribution.  Myself? I'm going to get dressed in my new shiny black suit and come banging on your door this Friday night.

You better have your bus tickets ready....

Err, while looking for a definition of Urban in case I was getting it mixed up with Urbane, or Suburban - as opposed to the antithesis of "rural" I found this defintion of "hipster".

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.(snip). Although "hipsterism" is really a state of mind,it is also often intertwined with distinct fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers... etc etc etc

I think I'm going to be ill... ;)

Thanks for looking. I hope you are well and sharpening your pencils to good points.

Edit: hah, I just read this and realised I sound like a cwanky old twit ;) Well, that's okay....

Don't you love cranes? So elegant arent they? Just like ballerinas- but they (cranes) don't wear tutus. And they don't make really big crashing noises when they land on the stage after doing a ronde de jambe grand jette pas de tout grande and peitit mal coup de grace avec escargot.

But seriously, have you ever sat really close to the ateg (that's an anagram for "stage") when ballerinas are dancing? They sound like elephants. That's why they need the orchestra - not for the music, but to drown out the noises of those wooden stuffed ballerina shoes landing on the wooden floor of the stage.

See what you learn when you visit? Amazing isn't?

Just think, next time there's one of those embarrassing pauses at your next dinner party you'll be able to say:

"Guess what Lady Lord Mayoress? Did you know that the most common cause of ballerina death is by foot septicaemia? Remarkable isn't it? But even more remarkable is that, in 90 percent of cases this is caused by infected splinter wounds traced back to the wooden inserts of their ballerina pumps? That's why I'd like you to sign my petition against wooden inserts used in ballerina shoes. Not only are they causing frequent deaths in the u nder eighties age group but they are putting a reprehensible strain on our health system. With this I will not up put!"

Or something like that :)

Haunt

 

 

 

 

The White Rats

".....make sure that the rat is pinned down on its back before cutting."

from a manual on rat dissection

The Absence of Pain

The first time I thought how pleasant it might be to extremum vitae spiritum edere was in 1994.

I was sitting at a set of traffic lights at the corner of Turton and Maitland Roads in the city of Newcastle. The lights were red, it was 10 past nine in the morning, I was heading off for work and I had on a starched white shirt, black pants, and a yellow ochre tie that my wife had made me.

The time of year was late winter, the morning sun was in the northern sky and beamed through the windscreen. The sun made me a little drowsy as I watched the traffic buzzing past.

The suggestion of the pleasantness of death, of non-being, crept up on me like a soft shadow. It started with a smell - the smell of fresh loamy dirt infused with the comforting aromas of rotting leaves.  

Advice for Medieval Monks.

     Sorry I've been away, fell down a well again (as my friend the Labrat noticed). Whilst down the well I was thinking about my work and I realised that a lot of my images were ... err disturbing.  Not to mention the accompanying text.

    Well, they weren't disturbing to me, just to other people.

     Now, contrary to what it might indicate, this doesn't mean that I, personally, am disturbing. That would be like accusing my Wacom of being haunted, or my Cadmium Red Winsor and Newton pigment of being cruel.

    In fact I'm a fun loving guy who loves to grow flowers (dandeloins), vegetables (garlic chives) and rarely pulls the wings off flies -  unless they are really, really annoying me.

   It's just that I do medieval. I like to do Jungian Shadows. And I like teeth.

   Last week I did the Illustration Friday prompt "Duet". I'm sorry I didn't post it.

   It's at the end of this post - which is, you guessed it about the prompt 'Bottled".

   But in truth, this post is about thanking a few friends.

   I've turned off comments for this one. Instead of commenting, can you do me a big favour and visit   Ces and Bella who are organising a fund raiser for the recent Tsunami in Japan? It's a chance to aquire some of their amazing work and help people as well.

   You  can find Ces here. And Bella here.

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       And my conscience has been bothering me. People I have met through blogging have been exceedingly wonderful to me. I don't know why, I don't think I deserved it one little bit. I've been lucky enough to have been honoured bt being featured on a few blogs - and you know what, I've never said thankyou in the appropriate manner.

      Ugh.

        So here goes. First up I'd like to say thankyou to my friend Janne Robberstad, who in October last year named me as an artist inspirational. Now Janne, if you haven't seen her work, is one of those people who can do anything - and I mean it - and do it with flair. You can see her post here.   Thanks Janne :)
       Please take a look at Janne's work.

Next I'd like to say thanks to Amalia. Amalia's blog 'Art Memoirs' feautures artists from around the world. She featured my work in December last year. The post is here.  Thanks Amalia, that means a wonderful amount to me. If you haven't seen Amalia's own art, then you aint seen nothing!

       And thirdly there's the wonderful Bella. Now I can't really give you a link to that post for various reasons (the main being the opening line of the post), but I can tell you her work is so gorgeous that her last post attracted about 130 comments!

     You can find Bella here.

     Now the last artist I'd like to thank is Jack Foster. If you think my work is odd, strange macabre, well Jack Foster, who makes me laugh like a kid when I see his work (I laugh with it not at it!) has managed to make a small story about it that proves that I am a fun loving guy after all. Thankyou Jack!!!
     Please have a look at his post. It cracked me up. And it makes me look nice.

And lastly, thanks so much to everyone who commented on my last few posts!  You are very kind.



The Martyrdom of Saint Valentine (May all Your Cards Be Hand Made Ones)

According to the twelfth century Belarusian Book of Martyrology (known to acolytes as the Кніга пакутнікаў) hidden in the vaults of the Medieval History Department of Cambridge there have been an amazing number of  Martyrs who have gone by the name of St. Valentine.

 
To be exact, history records a whopping twenty four Saint Valentine Martyrs. And oddly enough, The Book of Martyrs records that the big common denominator of all these martyrs (apart from them all being dead) is that they all met their maker (passed on, dropped off, keeled over, kicked the bucket, cashed in, bit the dust, gave up their ghosts, croaked, bought the farm, turned  up their toes) on or around the 14th of February.
 
Hence we have St Valentine's day on that day.
 

Yet this number of deaths of people with the same name over the centuries on the same day is surely not  a coincidence. And if it is no coincidence, what exactly does this suggest?

Though the ill mannered amongst us might suggest that it indicates that the Medieval Catholic Church was too free with its Sainthoods and somehow managed to actually make money from them (I wonder how), it suggests to me something else entirely.

Now in the old Roman times if your name was either Julius or Ceaser (or even prince) then the Ides of March might have been your Bete Noir - (means 'black beast' - I always thought it meant your 'black French hat').

But in Medieval times if your name was Valentine, or even sounded like it (Ballantyne, Mallentyne or just plain old Tyne) then it would suggest to me that the Ides of February were a good time for either:

1) making sure your life insurance was alll paid up or,

2) staying locked  inside a house that was neither in a flood zone, a fire zone, had no internal      sharp objects, nor a manservant or butler with an Italian surname like Medici or Borgia.

3) dying as a martyr

Now if you were foolhardy and decided on option 3) "Death by Martyrdom",  the ways to go for a Valentine were many and varied.

Historically you had a choice of either a good old fashioned stabbing (2), beheading (5), intesterizing (dont' ask what it means - 4), drawing and quartering (1), crucifixion (1) or, most popular of all, stoning (7).

There was also the choice of 'not known' (chosen by four Valentines) if you were quiet and shy and would rather keep the manner of your death private.

So what's this have to do with these illustrations?

Good question.

These illustrations actually illustrate a little witch who has cast a spell on her 'mate.'

The mate, whose retinas' critical flicker fusion frequencies (see previous blog  post for details on this) are in fine form has just become aware that all is not right in the forest. He has suddenly decided that you can't trust cupids.

The next image is a sliver of a card I made this year.

Thanks for looking :) Have a great and wonderous Valentine's day and may all your cards be hand made ones.

PS: clicking for big enlarges the pics.