Captain Robinson's Expedition to Lightfoot Sound 1886

Looking through my grandfather's old photo albums last night and this post card fell out.....

Well, to be precise, it slithered out like a very large silverfish, hit me on the leg, then slid across the floor. When I finally managed to retreive it from the dust and mice poo under the fridge I discovered that it was an old photograph of a dirigable.

It took me only a moment to realise that the dirigable on the card is almost exactly the same as the one in the image which starts this post.

I felt a bit odd when I saw it - it's too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, if you know what I mean. I heard that music they play in scary movies - you know, it sounds like : "ooooheeeeeeeheeeeeeeeehhhhhhhooooooaaahhhh ---- errre" (you have to say that out loud).

There's not much on the back of the card - just that the photograph was taken by Lala Deen Dayal.

Lala Deen Dayal it turns out, was a famous Indian photographer of the time. He was well known for photographs of camels, of the Viceroy of India in unusual yoga poses and sumptuous interiors of the Bashir-bagh Palace.

It was less well known that he had a fetish for dirigables. The correct name I believe is "amoria dirgibalitanes".

 Interestingly : "the word fetish is derived through the Portuguese feitiço from the Latin factitius (facere, to do, or to make), signifying made by art, artificial (cf. Old English fetys in Chaucer). From facio are derived many words signifying idol, idolatry, or witchcraft. Later Latin has facturari, to bewitch, and factura, witchcraft. Hence Portuguese feitiço, Italian fatatura, O. Fr. faiture, meaning witchcraft, magic. (from Catholic Encyclopeadia)"

Hmmm... meanwhile back on subject:

I don't know what Lala Deen Dayal was doing in Lighfoot Sound though, as it's about two thousand miles from India. The stamp is Canadian; and the post card was sent by a General A.W. Cutler.

I'll have to look more into this one. I couldn't find out much about Captain Robinson either - but it's early days.


All in all? At the moment? A complete mystery. But tomorrow? Tomorrow is another day.

Thank you for looking. I hope you enjoyed your stay :)


PS thats 21 posts in 20 days. I have one to catch up......

King Canute

One of  my favourite painters has, for a few years, been Edward Hopper. If you are familiar with his work you know that Hopper, for all his greatness, rarely paints a good human figure. They are too pale, or too bent, or too angular or too.... just not right.

But for  all his faults he has succeeded in describing the essential isolation of humans from each other. A typical Hopperesque painting might have two or three figures in an enclosed environment, each facing away from each other, as if the others did not exist.

In his paintings the protagonists are so close - and yet so far.

Though Hopper places his people in American  environments of the 20's and 30's, logic tells us that this inability to bridge this isolation has been part of human nature since we started as a species.

So thank you Hopper for the inspiration.

And of course that leads us directly to our subject - King Canute. (Well it doesn't really, but I will pretend it does.)

If you are like me, you probably don't know that King Canute, also known  as Cnut, won the English throne in 1016, just 50 years before the Norman 'invasion.' Again so close, and yet so far.

With all the things I know about the Normans (funny helmets, arrow in Harold's eye, Hastings, Bayeaux tapestry, the Droit de signeur) I know nought about King Canute - except that, try as he might, he couldn't stop the encroaching tide.

That isn't to say I don't think about Canute quite often.

In fact I do - most often when I am having my morning run along the beach and my shoes are wet from a sudden surging wave that has caught me unawares.  To be honest, usually I've been daydreaming about making up some scary monster that I can scare kids with in my next 'illustration" - rather than taking in 'the moment'. 

So serves me right.

And to be more honest, at six o'clock this morning, this illustration started as an illustration about a bent and gnarled tree. At about half past six, the tree became an island. At a quarter to seven the island became inhabited with Canute, who refusing to leave the seaside, has been caught by the encroaching tide.

Originally Canute was staring out to sea, on his lonesome. But then I realised he needed more.

He needed enigma.  So at ten minutes to eight, just when I should have been ironing my shirt for work,  I introduced the figure on the right - and suddenly had more than a story. I had drama, plot points, metaphor and balance - not just the balance of composition, but the balance between age and youth, gluttony and moderation, stoicism and distress.

And another figure to clothe.

Oh well.

The final image is below  this text. The dark clouds are above the youthful figure, the light is on the King's old and swollen face.

I wonder what it means?

And I wonder which one is me?

Thank-you for looking. Again. Clicking for big in this case give accidental almost "photo-realism". Something I strive against.

Oh well :)

Old King Cole: WIP: Detail

Please find enclose a detail of the WIP, tempted to put smoke in his pipe but instead I put a small tear in his eye....

and the most popular version of Old King Cole....

Old King Cole was a merry old soul

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler he had a fiddle,

And a very fine fiddle had he;

Oh there's none so rare, as can compare

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

Old King Cole: Work in Progress

 

Well there wasn't any surf today..... I've been working on this for a few days, trying to find the right angle and the right lighting. Very hard to do with a few character's geting them all to inter-relate. I was tempted to go the dark way. There's a few variations here if you'd like to look....

The story of Old King Cole is quite interesting.

Good King Cole,

And he call'd for his Bowle,

And he call'd for Fidler's three;

And there was Fiddle, Fiddle,

And twice Fiddle, Fiddle,

For 'twas my Lady's Birth-day,

Therefore we keep Holy-day

And come to be merry.

 

I made an exciting discovery today, how to emulate pigment drop out in water colour in my photshop elements program. Now to use it somewhere....