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!

 

 



She loves me, she loves me not....

When I had the epiphany I call 'the sadness of aging' I was 19 years old and it was 11 o'clock in the morning.

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.

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!



Caged: How the Wizard Jack O'Kent Imprisonned the Devil

THE THEORY OF THREES

Well, I have this theory.

The theory of threes.

It's an illustration theory where I suggest that a good illustration, to keep our interest, must reward further scrutiny.

Basically it means that, in an illustration we need more than two main elements..

As an example of two main elements :  we could have a boy on a bike (one element) and a girl and her friends watching him (the other element). In the case of the above illustrations in this post we have a "wizard" sitting on a chair holding a wand  (one element). The other element is the devil in the cage. NB: The temple walls and furniture are not elements. They are there to set the mood and to give us a background.

The third element in any good illustration (according to the "theory of threes") must be more subtle and not catch our eye at first. This third 'thing' is what rewards our curiosity and enhances our pleasure (the pleasure of discovery).

There can be more than one 'third element 'of course -as there is in the above illustrations. But ideally one of them is a dominant. It might be dominant for lots of reasons. It might be phyiscally separated from the main element grouping, it can represent a different action, or even be a different colour.

Confused? Yes? Well so am I. But that's okay.

I was  trained in a scientific regime. Consequently I like to kill imaginary butterflies and pin them in imaginary boxes so I can analyse them and give them imaginary names. I also like to analyse illustrations. (Maybe I should get a job?)

Meanwhile  - recently I have discovered through Roberta Baird's work that that 'third element" is even better if it contains a sub-plot. Ideally the subplot will underline the main plot.

Plot? Plot? Arrgh.

Well, consider it this way.

Consider that, in any image with two main illustration elements, the realtion between those elements make the main plot (how they interact, what is their relationship, who is dominant, what is their body posture etc).

Yet the third (or more) element provides a subplot - (in Roberta's illustration we have a cat and a 'dead' mouse).

A good suplot gives us 'thickness', it adds character and it adds backstory. A good subplot puts the parsely on the salad, the thyme in the sauce, the sparkley coriander seed thingos on the illustration icing. It also mimics or underlines the main plot.

But  wait! That's not all!

A subplot (and plot) indicates a temporal presence to the illustration - that is, it suggests a 'before' and 'after' to the instant frozen by the illustration - much like Degas' cut off figures indicate a world beyond the picture frame.

"What?" I hear you whisper.

Plot? Subplot? It's not Shakespeare .... it's just an illustration.

Am I mad?

Yes of course.

Is anyone still reading?

Maybe.

Buts it worth thinking about?

Yes I think it is.

Especially if you subscribe to the theory that an illustration, by definition, illuminates a text; and that a plot is, according to E.M. Forster (Passage To India), a series of causal events.

And if you need further evidence, seek out Bosch's work, or Breughel's. Look for the main plot (eg Good Verus Evil), then seek out the subplots. You'll find them aplenty.

So what's this have to do with my illustration for this week's Illustration Friday Prompt "Caged."?

Good question. But we'll get to that.

I was out in the surf today thinking about this theory of threes and realised that 'threes' pop up in all sorts of places.

Humans like to think in threes. We like to sort chaos into threes. Three is an easy number to grasp. It rolls off the tongue better than 'seven' - the other popular number (eg seven ways to get fit by not doing any exercise)

Yet 'threes' can also be difficult.

In Christianity we have the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit/Ghost - which sort of confuses laymen, little children and most other people.

With women we have the conflicting concept of Harlot, Mother, Virgin - which confuses most men (bless our souls) and some women.

With men we have the Renassiance man, the Warmongerer, the Thief.

And, stepping up to the next level, in 'mankind' collectively we have another the concept of three. That of Beast, Human, and Spiritual.

That is, we have all three things within us.

All within us. Yet most of the time we supress the Beast animal - well at least I do.

Animal is pagan. Animal is dirty. Animal gets you arrested.

As human beings we try to hide the fact that our food goes in one end, and out the other. As humans we cloth ourselves, we act civilised and do not covet our neighbour's wives - not in public anyway.

As spiritual beings we tell oursevles not to worry that our animal body dies, because our souls will live on. As spiritual beings we believe in God because God creates order out of chaos. God gives us a beginning. He gives us and end. And if we are lucky he gives us other things.

When I taught Sunday School we had a litle ditty. It went something like "Envy, jealousy, malice and pride. These must never in our hearts abide." Which of course, at its most base means - forget you are Beast, keep your emotions intact and be good. (And I admit, as a good Christian, to have suffered from none of these things - even when the bitch across the road bought a brand new Red Austin Martin two door with doube cam exhausts and a rear muffler.....)

Ahem. Where was I?

And so finally we come to the illustrations.

The caged devil, is of course metaphorically Pan, a Greek God famed not only for his sexual process, but his ... err sexual prowess. His prowess was such that he was said to be even able to impregnate Male Goats.... ahem again, very handy I am sure on those cold Mediterranean nights.

Pan, as well as having his pan flute in hand, is often depicted with a 'phallus', just in case the observer didn't know who he was. His friends were Satyrs, Satyresses, Faunesses and Bachinesses. Which in the case of the latter three (and possibly the first) made the aforementioned phallus a handy addition to his wardrobe.

So, Pan or no Pan, phallus or no phallus, what is the illustration actually about?

Well you know who the Devil in the cage is, even though I have taken the civilised Human way out, and not shown him up to 'advantage'.

The chap on the left, you might not recognise as the Wizard Jack O’Kent, who, in the fifteenth century was featured in many folktales in Herefordshire and Gwent (England) for his ability to outwit the Devil.

So Jack O'Kent is depicted here as having caged the Devil.

Yet there is something afoot.

The cage is full of holes, the devil does not seemd worried (he seems gleeful in fact), and Jack O"Kent, poor fellow, doesn't realise that the whole Cage is in fact a metaphor, in that the Devil Demon Pan represents the animal side that he (Jack) is trying to surpress.

Animal supression? Sure why not? But Jack, like most human beings, doesn't realise that it will never work.


The moment Jack's back is turned Pan will leap demonically from his cage to wreak his wicked will upon young ladies, sheperdess, shepards, goats, satyresses and any other poor creature that happens to stray into his path.

Not that I am saying that Jack O'Kent had those tendencies. I'm led to believe he was a fine upstanding wizard who seduced only the wives of rich people, poor people and middling people (just kidding Jack!)

Oh? And the subplot?

Well it would be unfair of me to tell you, because you wouldn'y have the joy of discovering it yourself.

Mind you, I might have forgotten to put one in.

Thankyou for clicking for big!

I'm sorry this post is so long. I was going to tell you why the Devil has horns. But that will have to wait for another time.

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last work. I'll be back tomorrow and thank you properly.