Wild

 

 

Holly came from Miami, Florida
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"
She said, "Hey, honey
Take a walk on the wild side"

Walk On The Wild Side

Lou Reed, 1972

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember those "halcyon" days of our youth?

 

No, me neither.

 

 

 

 

 

The first time I heard the word 'Halcyon", was the same day that I heard the word "Luddite".

They came from the mouth of the same man, a friend of a friend.

  

I was a naive 29 year old. He was a worldly man with too much money and a world weariness that hung around him like the smell of a freshly boiled onion. We were on our friend's boat out on the harbour, drinking almost French Champagne and watching  the world go by.

 

Our mutual friend was newly very rich and enjoying his wealth by acquiring paintings, toys - (Sports Cars, Ocean Cruisers etc)  - and houses over looking the water. Even with all that, he was a "good bloke" - and very generous. We met when we were studying English Lit together.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I had to ask what both words meant - and I've never forgotten what a Luddite was - because as I grow older, I feel like I am becoming one.

 

But Halcyon? I never quite grasped the meaning. 

 

So let me google it.

 

 

Ah, here it is. Halcyon:

 

A fabled bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was supposed to have had the power to calm the wind and the waves while it nested on the sea during the winter solstice.
 

Well I never knew that.

 

So the Halcyon days of our youth translates as: "those particular days of our youth that we used a fabled bird to calm the waves so we could nest on the sea."

 



And by some dogmatic coincidence, that is exactly what my illustration is about......

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verdaccio
 

Do you know the word Verdaccio?

 

Well, it's something the old master's used to use occasionally (not the word but the technique). It's where you paint a green monotone under painting - a dead painting) then glaze over it with translucent colours. The idea is that the green under painting glows through the warmer layers and gives that nice harmonious glow that suggests depth in human flesh.

 

I've been invited to a show with "Nightmares" as the theme - so I've been working up this painting.
for a few weeks. It's 90 by 120 cms on linen.

And in  that time I've spent a lot of time looking at anatomy drawings as well as Greek statues. It's all very interesting what they were doing a few thousand years ago. I've also been looking at Da Vinci's working methods and his sketches. How smart was he, eh? What a mind....

In verdaccio  you are supposed to paint two tones lighter than the finished painting is meant to be.
So I still have a lot of work :)

The big advantage is that, in taking out the colour parameters, you just need to be making tonal decisions for the underpainting stage. It's a learning curve -  but not very steep. I'm also changing the characters as I go, slimming them down, changing hand positions etc.
 

Above and below are pics of  it as a work in progress in situ in the studio. If you look very closely you may recognise some of the characters.... :)

PS: Whoever invented the saxophone obviously thought no one in their right mind would ever try to paint one.

 

 

 

 

And finally, below, a self portrait (the big guy, not the rat).

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking. Hope you are well!

 

 



Swept Away

"And so this loverboy found him a flamingo
and this flamingo showed him how to tango
 and
when they tangoed it would send
their hearts a flutter, tease him 'till he stutterd
made him so young and tender
 sweet to surrender,
 was so young and tender,
sweet to surrender,
was so young and tender......"

Well if you've been listening to this blog for a while, or just hung around the wrong  types of cafes and pubs in the seventies, you'd know that those words belong to Tim Buckley's "Sweet Surrender".

Now I always thought that the words were "Sweet is Surrender".

And if you are a human being and not some google gahgah robot, then you'll recognise that sometimes Surrender is truly Sweet.

That feeling...... that feeling of relief when you finally give into temptation, that feeling of sublime de-stressing when you mimic Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; that feeling of elation as you step over the imaginary line and sail off into the abyss ....

That feeling of flashing your ankle on public transport, of giving into the temptation of chocolate, of opening that second bottle of  expensive wine,  or that feeling of forbidden carnal temptation involving leather, feather dusters and Elvis Presley records ....

Ahh Elvis.... :)

And so, I guess I should have warned you that this post is about the little girl named Mildred who gives into temptation in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes" - and loses her feet to the King's Execitioner for her trouble.

Of course Andersen, as a writer for children, doesn't dwell on the amputation.

Instead he dwells on both the epiphany and Christian theme that runs through the story - the epiphany being for both Mildred and the reader; the theme being that once the little girl truly repents her sins (her sins were that she tricked a little old lady and wore Red shoes to church) she is allowed back into the body of the church, and hence, metaphorically, the Kindom Of Heaven - where all little girls named Mildred belong.

Thank goodness Andersen didn't dwell on the amputation. That meant I could do it.

If you hadn't guessed this is my image for Illustration Fridays 'swept'. In Andersen's tale of divine retribution and redemption, the little girl is literally 'swept' along by the red shoes, and then literally 'swept'  off her feet by the king's executioner.

Well, maybe that should read "her feet are swept off by the king's executioner...."

I like Hans Christian Andersen. Not only was he a deft hand with a pair of scissors (see his cutouts), but he had a metaphorical axe the size of a ..... er an axe!

Thank you so much to everyone who wished me well in the book exhibition. Yesterday was the opening. There were tons  of people, there were some amazing works by a multitude of artists that I felt proud to be showing with.

And I was lucky enough to be given an entire room for my work :) How cool is that!  After it leaves Newcastle the exhibition will be going to Mackay in Queensland and thence, if things go well, to Tasmania.

Yippee! :)

Oh here is the child 'friendly' version - except Mildred looks like a vampire! I went for the colour 'bleed' look from the fifties :). Blood, pig, ravens are for special people.

 

PS the l ittle girl's name wasn't "Mildred"..... it was Karen, but my friend Karen Whitaker, the fabulous artist, doesn't deserve to have her feet chopped off. ")

She does however, have a fine set of toasters on her blog at the moment which are well worth a gander :)

see  you!

 

The Secret of The Dancing Ducks



Psst... want to know a secret?

In my library there's a small blue book which I keep on the shelf reserved for books on novel wrtiting. The book is called 'How To Write A Damn Good novel". It's written by James N. Frey and is a fine book, so much so that I've read it at least seventeen times. On page 67 of Frey's book - a particularly dog eared and well worn page - is a sentence that I find intriguing.

That sentence states that, if at the beginning of a novel (or short story), a shotgun is hanging over the mantle of the hero's house, then, by the end of the novel, that shotgun ought to have been fired.

In other words, we as writers have a silent contract with our readers. That unspoken contract states, that, if you stick with me to the end, then I, in turn, promise to deliver the goods.

That's where "The Secret of the Dancing Ducks" title comes in. The title of the post is my promise to you that, if you read this post, then eventually you too will know The Secret of the Dancing Ducks.

But before I get to the Dancing Ducks and their arcanum, I'd like to touch (talk, converse, gossip, chitchat, shoot the breeze, jaw, chinwag, natter) on some important elements about secrets in general. That's if you let me.

Firstly, have you ever noticed that, as soon as someone mentions that they have secret, then everybody wants to know what that secret is? 

Humans appear to have am inbuilt want-to-know-mechanism that makes us stick our metaphorical noses into places that our feet don't (or won't) fit. To spy on our neighbours we stick our noses between the gaps in paling fences, to see what's going on down the street we poke our noses through windows, and in to see into adjacent rooms our noses sniff out keyholes and the cracks at the edges of half opened doors- all in the name of furthering our knowledge. That's partly why we have done so well as a species. Our inquisitiveness has helped us spread around the earth. Our noses have sprayed our DNA in every dark corner, our curiousity has marked our territories like dogs - and our propensity for being busy bodies has turned the Earth into our own backyard.

(Speaking of dogs, did you know that they have two hundred million nasal olfactory receptors? - sorry, not that I care - I just had a burning desire to tell you that).

Of course, many secrets are meaningless to anyone but the secret's keeper.

But not always. 

If, for example, you watch enough television, read enough books, or see enough movies then you will know that plots are often driven by secrets. In movies and in real life, secrets can sometimes provoke a life or death situation, can sometimes cause a marriage or divorce, and sometimes give us massive headaches.

Oddly enough secrets are like objects. They have old owners - and they can have new owners. It's a given that a secret has less value if its present owner is inclined to blurt it out across the universe. If everyone knows a secret then it becomes an 'unsecret' - so to speak.  The corollary being that, to be really really really valuable, a secret must be known by only the annoited few. And in the case of the best secrets, those annointed few must have coaxed it from its original owner. 

And hence to these illustrations. For they too have their secret - and trust me, these illustrations and their secrets are ultimately related to The Secret of The Dancing Ducks.

 According to the tennets of 'secretness' outlined above, the very fact  that I have announced that these images have a 'secret' should theoretically be enough to stir your interest. And according to the shotgun contract I made with you at the beginning of this post, that secret should be worthwhile learning. And lastly, according to the second tennent of secretness, I must not tell you that secret straight away.

In fact I must make you wait.

But how do I keep my secret from you as long as possible?

So far I have used misdirection (you pretend to look in the other direction while I slip the rabbit from the hat), delaying tactics, blind paths, subplots, thrown metaphorical hand grenades across your path, said "Hey look at that naked person" while pointing you back the way you came - all in the name of making you wait. 

And in this way I can make the secret seem more valuable.

Or can I?

To be honest, at this moment, I have an overriding and burning urge to reveal to you my confidential, covert, cryptic, discreet, disguised, dissembled, dissimulated, furtive, hush-hush, incognito piece of information that makes these illustrations special.

But before I do....

Did you ever read Foucault's Pendulum?

It's by Umberto Eco - that chap who wrote "Name of the Rose".

The essential themes of Foucault's Pendulum involve The Knights Templar,The Rosicrucians, The Gnostics, The Freemasons,The Bavarian Illuminati,The Elders of Zion,The Assassins of Alamut,The Cabalists,The Bogomils,The Cathars and , lastly but not leastly, The Jesuits.

In the beginning of his book Eco promises the answers to the secrets of all these things. Yet in the end we are given nothing but a demonstration of Eco's amazing ability to make us think he is intelligent.  Consequently Foucault's Pendulum was the last book of Eco's that I will ever read. 

A strong statement I know.......

These images?
They were made for Illustration Friday's 'Burning.'

Their original genesis was/were the Witches of Salem.

And that, believe me didn't work. (See album cover at the bottom)

Their second genesis was 'Nero fiddling while Rome burned'.

But Nero fiddling didn't seem quite right.

And after checking my facts it seemed that Nero did nothing of the sort.

And so I put the two together....

Feel free to click for big.
Thanks again for looking.
The final image is just below.

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:)

In the lost valley of Vallenstaren, deep in the Forest of Guggle....

In the lost Valley of Vallenstaren,

Deep in the Forest of Guggle,

 In the ancient tree-house Fallofolia,

Lives a forest gnome named Ghent.

He is 912 years old;

He loves Knitting socks,

And has a penchant

For swallowing other people’s gold fish.

The last two images were the original gnome, before he was "child friendly". There's another version of him higher up. I don't know; should I make him more approachable? I havent decided whether he will be part of a story... you know, "grumpy old gnome sees light and lets Reginald the goldfish go."

Thankyou for taking the time to look and click.

Oh, oh! Nearly forgot the gold fish!