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 Transpotated Joy of Being Cessinated

(Warning: Rambling post ahead)

Did you know that English is a language of relatively few words?

Yes, hard to believe isn't it?

If you are a native English speaker, your personal vocabulary is only about 20,000 words. And, of these words, you probably only use 2,000 on a regular basis.

Two thousand? It's not much really, especially if you spend a lot of time talking, or blogging, or even commenting on art work. Using myself as an example, just listen out for my use of  nice, wonderful, gorgeous, colourful, super, beautiful, excellent, congratulations - these and serviceable words like them come up over and over when I comment. And over. 

Not that there is anything wrong with them. On the contrary, they are all positive words that make us feel good and should be used more often. But they are just prime examples of the chosen few - some of the 2000 old faithfuls that I rely on in our communications with fellow beings.

Hola gente maravillosa, siento que no hay traducción al español. Voy a tener que traductor Google buton dispuesto lo antes posible. Pero este mensaje tiene un montón de palabras que (I made up the words!) he aprendido de memoria - por lo que no tendrá sentido. No tiene sentido que los hablantes de Inglés - pero no se lo digas a nadie. Feliz hacer arte! (be Happy in your art making)

Okay, well that's the one sided story. Admittedly, as English speakers we have a whole lot more than 2,000 (or even 20,000) words to choose from.

In fact, according to The Global Language Monitor, at this present second, there are exactly 1,007,711 words in the English language. But wait! By the time you finish reading this post there will be 1,007,711.5 words in the English language - depending on how slowly you read. (Of course you may not read the whole post and that means your vocabularly will be sadly depleted - because I have a surprise at the end, and it's not just that Eves' palm in the next image is missing.)

Well, 1,007,711.5 words seems a real lot doesn't it? But hold on to your horses, don't let the clappers go, nor spill your milk before she is counted.

Given that there are 508 million people who speak English as a first or second language, simple mathematics tells us that we have only 0.001968th of a word each to call our own. That's not even a single letter each in the longest word in the English language which, as you probably guessed is something like Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano...pterygon at 183 letters (it means a long legged crustacean who eats Chinese takeway every third Sunday of the month).

Well how can we fix this problem?

Obviously we need to invent new words. We need more words to share around. At the moment a new English word is magicked up out of thin space every 98 mins.

One every 98 minutes? Not much isn't it? Considering those 508 million people, I reckon that that is a poor effort. While some of us are inventing new words, what are the other 507,000,956 people doing?

But the theory that a new word is magicked up every 98 minutes is merely a theory - just as it says.

And like every theory, it has its faults. And not surprisingly a  brief analysis shows up its faults quite quickly.

The most obvious fault that I can see is that the theoreticians over at The Global Language Monitor didn't figure on me.

Yes me. (I'm the guy hugging the tree on the left at the back in the next image)

Poor humble me. I mean it's obvious to me that if there were more people like me in the world that the gross rate of new words being magicked up (the NWBMU rate) would suddenly inflate to a massive three words an hour - which, by amazing coincidence, is exactly the speed that I type at.

So, with this in mind I had a walk on the beach today. And while I was dodging the tentacle blessed Bluebottles and the scurvy scum cusking bottom creatures' dehydrated washed-up bodies that littered the hide tigh mark I came up with several new words - the most magick of them being "transpotated."

Now 'transpotated' by another amazing coincidence, isn't the Illustration Friday prompt this week.

The word for IF is, in fact, "Transportation".

Transportation? Yes, I kid you not. Transportation - a particularly weak, assidious and denostrating word. 

Where is the assonance? The consonance? The sybillence? (okay I admit it has some assonance and consonance - but only a twiggle of each).  Where is the kink in its armour that will allow people like myself to easily mispell it?

It's all too easy a word. "Trans' the preffix meaning 'across'. "Port' meaning 'to carry'. The suffix 'ion' indicating that it is a noun. And so we have from 'trans' and 'port' the words 'transported', 'transposed', 'transporation' etc. All bland, billious and beltany. Not much is it?

But as I said, the the theoreticians who came up with the NWBMU rate didn't figure on me.

And so, after my walk this morning I would like to proudly announce that English has four new words. Yes! Not one, not two nor three but four!

Since this morning English has the new words 'transpotated', 'transpotatederd', 'transportater' and last but not least:  'transportadeness' - which is the art of being ready to be 'transportated."

And so finally, at last, and not without time - to the guist of the matter.

These four new words  ('transpotated', 'transpotatederd', 'transportater' and 'transportadeness')  I would like to dedicate to my friend Ces, who, with her generous gift of a nut, has recently 'transpotated' me from my usual state of 'untransportadeness' into a world of otherworldly Cessinatedness.

It will be of no surprise to you that Ces's gift of a nut was not just any nut. As you can see in the leading image of this post it was a nut, not only worthy of the invention of four new words, but a nut ideally suited to be the new Goddess figure of the inaugral Ces Nut Dwarven Appreciation Society of New South wales and the Southern Highlands - of which I am the newest founding member....



Do you know Ces' work?

If not I would highly recommend a trip.

Ces is inspiring, brilliant, concaphanous, a great artist, generous and just a little nutty.

She has also just founded (with others) the BBB society - which a little bird informs me is short for The Big Breasted Budgerigar Society.

Her artwork rips. Which is good.

Is any one still reading? If you are still here I would like to thank you for your time. You are very kind.

Below and above you will find some of my weeks work. Cinderella's Chariot,  renditions of a Cramer induced Adam and Eve, and also something for Creative Cup, which has just announced it's first challenge. If you look closely you will find that the apple in one scene transports Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, that the Pumplin Carriage transports Cinderella to her father's home, and that the tea pot in the Creative Cup transports me into a world where tea tastes nice, and the surf is great every day.

Thankyou for reading. I enjoy typing and I must get a spell chicker one day....

And thank you SO MUCH for all those people who commented on my last post. I'm off to visit your blogs when I get back from the studio and thank you personally. Watch out, I have some new words in my armoury!



Hic Sunt Dracones.

 Hic sunt dracones.

Here there be dragons!

What a saying eh? It's like pirate talk, but serious.

 Marked on all the best  medieval maps,  "Hic sunt dracones" is just one of a collection of  flavoursome warnings that also include : "in his locis elephanti nascuntur", "in his locis scorpiones nascuntur" and "hic cenocephali nascuntur" ("in these places elephants are born, in these places scorpions are born, here dog-headed beings are born"). From Wiki.

Hic sunt dracones is also the name of that first image right up the top.

The image tells the story of  eight dwarves who, every night at dusk hear a horrible bellowing noise emenating from the earth beneath them.

Finally, after weeks of terror and sleepless nights, they decide to send the bravest of their number (Baeowulf) down into the earth to investigate.

But as so often happens in life, the brave dwarf is on a fruitless quest because, in reality, the dragons and demons the dwarves seek are lurking in the shadows directly behind them. They are- unseen because they are unlooked for.

You are probably not aware that Baeowulf is one of my favourite stories, and that Baeowulf means "Bee Wulf" which means a "Bear,". In my household Baeowulf also has the honour of maintaning its dypthong - much like Aegypt, Aetilogy and Haematology. Baeowulf ...? Well the political correct manner is "Beowulf" but I like my spelling better because ... because it's mine. :)

So here's a bit of literal translation (from here)

He gave then Beowulf the sword of Healfdane,

Golden standard victory to reward;
Embroidered war-banner, helmet and armor,
Famous treasure,sword - many saw
Before the warrior borne.

Which to my untrained ears sounds much better than the clumsy transliterations accompanying it.

But:

To the crux of the matter: the Illustration Friday  prompt for today is "Beneath". And I've been working on Goldilocks and the six dwarves for about a week, so that is lucky. You think I'm kidding? Well this morning as I was telling my wife about how the dwarves kept eating her porridge... then I sudenly realised that it wasn't Goldilocks at all, but Red Riding Hood and the Six Dwarves ..... hmm.

"Now whose been eating my porridge said the little dwarf?" It has a kind of ring to it. I wonder would the Brothers Grimm be interested in it. Still it's all very confusing when you get to my age (26).

I've also been working on Rapunzel - not that I tell anyone, else the prince be jealous. So I threw her in this post too - but she, like the dwarves, is a work in progress. Her hair is hard to do when it is that long - (it's common knowledge that I have enough trouble with my own). And yet, frizzies and flyaway hair aside, she hangs in there with the theme "Beneath".

The dwarven names? Well I was going to call them 'funny' names like Rhinitus, Stupid, Boring, Unhappy etc, but I thought it was too close to Grumpy, Sneezy et al - and since Walt Dysney owns the metaphorical DNA helix for all cute dwarven names, I didn't want him jumping up out of his cryo-tank to come looking for me.

So, avoiding Gimli, they are called Cedric, Edward, Gayus (he's the Roman one with tight pants), Beaowulf , Godric, Arlo and Roderick. The eight one has no name because .... okay, his name is Freya, it's a girls' name and it makes him depressed. I promised I wouldn't mention his name on the net - so you didn't hear that, okay? Thanks for keeping it quite.

Oh there was something else.... hmm.

Ah. A BIG else!

 Did I tell you what a wonderful scintillating witty brilliant artist my friend Ces is?

Today I received a special nut - not only is it the best nut I have ever received .... no but seriously I am stompfooted and bowled over twice by it's beauty and by Ces' generosity.

But more on that later.

Thankyou for looking :)

Hic sunt dracones.

Aquí hay dragones!
¡Qué decir ¿eh? Es como charlar al estilo pirata, pero grave.

Marcado en todos los mejores mapas medievales, "Hic sunt dracones" es sólo uno de una colección de advertencias sabroso que incluyen también: "en su locis elephanti nascuntur", "en su locis nascuntur escorpiones" y "hic cenocephali nascuntur" ("en estos lugares los elefantes nacen, en estos lugares escorpiones nacen, aquí los seres con cabeza de perro han nacido "). De Wiki.

Hic sunt dracones es también el nombre de ese derecho la primera imagen hasta la parte superior.

La imagen cuenta la historia de ocho enanos que, todas las noches en la oscuridad oye un ruido horrible bramido emenating de la tierra debajo de ellos.

Finalmente, después de semanas de terror y noches sin dormir, se decide enviar el más valiente de su número (Beaowulf) hacia abajo en la tierra para investigar.

Pero como tantas veces sucede en la vida, los dragones y demonios están de pie justo detrás de ellos, porque son invisibles para el inesperado.

Usted probablemente no son conscientes de que Beaowulf es una de mis historias favoritas, y que Beaowulf significa "abeja Wulf", que significa "oso". Beaowulf también tiene el honor de su maintaning dypthong - como Aegypt, Aetilogy y Hematología. Beaowulf aún mantiene una dypthong cuando escribe de la manera correcta política de "Beowulf", pero me gusta mi ortografía mejor porque ... porque es la mía. :)

Bueno el viernes Ilustración del sistema de hoy es Bajo. Y he estado trabajando en Ricitos de Oro y los seis enanos por una semana, por lo que es suerte.

También he estado trabajando en Rapunzel - no es que le digas a nadie, de lo contrario el príncipe celoso. Así que le lanzó en este post -, pero ella, al igual que los enanos, es un trabajo en progreso.

Los nombres de los enanos -, así que me iba a llamar a los nombres raros como estúpido, aburrido, etc infeliz, pero pensé que estaba demasiado cerca de Gruñón y otros - y desde Walt dysney propietaria de la hélice de ADN metafórica de Ricitos de Oro y los seis enanos, que no quería que saltar fuera de su crio-tanque a venir a buscarme.

Así se les llama Cedric, Edward, Gayus (que es la romana con pantalones apretados), Beaowulf, Godric, Arlo y Roderick. Los ocho uno no tiene nombre porque ....

Oh, no era otra cosa .... hmm.
¿Te dije lo que es una maravillosa artista brillante brillante ingenio de mi amigo es Ces?
Hoy he recibido una tuerca especial - no sólo es la mejor tuerca que he recibido .... no, pero en serio me stompfooted y rodó más de dos veces por su belleza y por la generosidad de Ces.

Pero más sobre esto más adelante.

Gracias por mirar:)

Illustration Friday: Subterranean

"In the Cave of The Dwarven Kings"

Well there's a story that goes with this, not my story....I just have to write it. Thanks very very much for all the comments on the last post. .... cheers andrew

 The images expand if you click them.

Saint Enrico: Dwarven Acrobat and Chicken Sexer

    Well.... I was coming back from the surf a few weeks ago and this fellow was out on the lawn across the road - doing somersaults.

   He saw me pull up, flipped himself onto his feet like an agile leipreachán and came across to the car. He walked on the gravel a little oddly, as if he'd sprained his ankle. But after a moment I realised one of his legs was a little shorter than the other - so he limped from the pelvis.

   He stopped three feet from the car and smiled. What few teeth he had were dirty yellow - like old ivory. And his broken nose looked like a back street plastic surgeon's rebuild. 

  He eyed me up and down, looked at the bald tyres of my four wheel drive... then shook his head sadly. His right eye wobbled a little and I saw that it was false, and pointed towards his nose more than it should.

   The glass eye gave him away; finally I recognised him.

  It was Enrico Bastardi Santa Ferdinardi, the little Basque chicken sexer who'd come to see me at my offices the previous week (chicken sexing is very hard on the eyes).

  He wasn't really a dwarf of course, he was merely very, very short.

  He, his three children and his mother had moved from the Basque region of Europe eighteen months before, and, he explained in his twisted English, that they had secured 'apartment 2' in the block of flats opposite...." à l'extrémité du couloir..."
 I followed his pointing finger to the neighbourhood eyesore. Victory Flats they were called, like something out of Orwell's 1984, all broken windows and crumbly grey brick coated in granulated salt from the seaside breezes.....

   Enrico had an interesting face I decided, and would be good for my illustration work. So I hired him for a few short sessions. The going rate is $47 an hour - draped or non draped, so we settled on $46, as long as he kept his clothes on - which suits me down to the ground thank-you-very-much.

    It also turned out he been the leader of a Dwarven Group of Female Acrobat Impersonators back home in Europe, and insisted he pose for me doing one of his favorite skits. (see the daguerreotype like pic at bottom right.) He also posed for this circus poster, which was quite difficult as you can imagine.

   Tommorow I might hire him for a few hours. I need someone for the "man who isn't there..." You know: 'he wasn't there again today, I wish that man would go away' '.....

 

Please click images for enlargements.