A Gold Tooth Named "Cedric"; Rats Instead Of Children; Some Methodology.

Rats Instead of Children?

Hello, thanks for looking at these.

They came about from doodles while I was chatting on the phone. Something that Coreopsis planted in my small brain.

I thought I might need a 'view' out the window one day, so I conjoured some up. They are variations on four different houses placed across a landscape, then treated differently in post processing. I've also thrown scattered lights at them to get some variations in the lighting, to dapple it up a bit - so to speak.

This is how I work. When I'm not doing an illustration I will be getting things ready for a future illustration. Like making an ugly child, in case I need one in the future. Or a cute dog with a silly hat....

About the Images:

The bottom left hand image is an example of what the render might look like a small amount of fiddling. (A 'render' is the image that I produce with my 3d modelling program.)

Initially, with the views over the house tops, I aimed for that French village feel that you might find round Haute Provence or maybe Languedoc (Language of  Oc .. isn't that amazing).

But of course I had that moon and a few birds just wanting to get into the pic, so there is a Japanese feel in some of them. Blame Hokusai. :)

For images 5 and 6, I thought I would change the weather a wee bit.

To make the rain? If you havn't seen a tut, here's one. In photoshop, fill a new top layer with black, render some 'noise' then do a motion blur at the correct angle to make the rain drops. This will stretch the dots of noise into small rectangles. Change the layer parameter to 'screen' - then play with the contrast and opacity settings to brighten up the drops. Duplicate the layer, shift it a little so that it is not lined up with the original layer,fuzz it slightly, and you will have depth to the rain. You can also use the threshold filter to make it even more black and white if necessary.

The third image down has a mud texture overlayed in a new layer - I think it's parameter is 'overlay". Just for fun. It adds another dimension - a muddy dimension.

As far as the layout of the images. Sorry about that. It's the best I can do with blogger ..... ugh. :)

The two images below this text you are reading at the moment are early work on the Pied Piper. The surf was pretty good today, so I didn't have enough time to do the children following him. I did rats instead.

Rats instead of children?

Who would have thought?

Of course I made the big mistake of not putting his instument in his mouth. I wanted that marching band feel.

Oh well.... He had a tambourine as well, but that didn't last long!

The rats were fun todo, but the little blighters won't keep still....

If you are wondering how to do the rats as they are?

In my three d program I have four different rat models that I have placed in different poses on the landscape. Then I make a copy of the landscape in 3d and use what we call a surface replicator to replicate instances of those four rats over the landscape surface. I can make the random in size and angle, but cannot change the original poses.

I then make the landscape invisable and 'render' the rats en masse against a transparent background -so it is like blue screening on television. I then bring the render of the rats into my image which just has the pied piper and trees and  ground in it. I place a few different renders of the rats en masse around the Pied Piper and erase those that look a bit weird. I have probably used five layers of rats, one upon the other. I then adjust the lighting and contrast and colour to make them 'sit' better with the original work.

If you look closely some of the rats have missing heads, or two heads if they are lucky.

I think there are about eight hundred rats, but you can't see them all because I have cropped the scene quite visciously.

There is also one Rat with a gold tooth named Cedric somewhere near the back....

Bet you never heard of a  gold tooth named "Cedric" before?

Illustration Friday: "Breakfast"

 

Q:Well, why would giants eat children for breakfast?

A: Because they can!

Continuing on with the fairy tale theme.

If you are interested in the genesis of these images, it will be found in a  fortified cathedral I visited in Albi (France) a few years ago. From memory it was in the heart of Cathar country.

In the early 1200's, backed by the pope, the northern Lords of France invaded the Cathar region of France (in the south) and went about murdering the locals and seizing their land. It's a sad story, and if you read it you will quickly develop a sense of loathing for a man called Simon de Mountfort.

In this particular Cathedral, the back walls had a large dark paintings of Hell, reminscent of Bosch. {edit: (16.4m x 15.6m) mural of The Last Judgment covers both sides of the rounded west wall of the nave.}

Painted between 1474 and 1484, the idea of this painting was for the new Catholic overlords to show their new Cathar underlings what happens to sinners if they don't go to church on Sundays - and don't put a penny in the plate. There is an example of the Hell paintings here.

In real life they are even scarier.....

If you are interested in fairy tales and food have a look here.

In these images, the idea to blend over the kids' eyes comes directly from Wanda Torres ace painter.

The surf was good today - so I didn't get a chance to write a story --- sorry.

But I did do all these images this afternoon ---- gee I need a glass of wine!

Thanks for looking. If you click the images they get bigger ;)

Small note on Simon de Montfort.

During the Cathar wars, de Mountfort is reputed to have ordered a fortified town stormed, burnt to the ground and all it's inhabitants (mostly Catholic) put to death. The reason - there were a small number of Cathars living in the town and the Catholic inhabitants had refused to hand them over.

When asked by one of his men, how they would tell the Catholics apart from the Cathars, de Montfort answered: "Kill them all. God will know his own."  Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. ? Maybe: Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.

PS maybe de Monfort didn't say this, but it makes a better story....

"Silly"

Well, for those of you who don't know Monday Artday, the artist running it, a great guy called Mike Baker, has recently been battling doctors and scalpels and radiotherapy and sickness. He vanished for a while and I must admit, I'd thought the worst, but he reappeared a few days ago with Mark Twain's indomitable

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Mike says: Life has been rough but I'm planning on sticking to it for a few more decades. I still have cancer. It's moved to my liver. The chemo is working but it leaves me sick, in pain, nauseous, tired, and with a constant bad taste in my mouth. And I'm bald. But I have friends and family supporting me all the way and I'll be whipping this stupid disease in 2010. One more operation and a few more chemo treatments.

He's a brave man and a good bloke and if you have a moment to spare I'm sure he'd love your well wishes.

You can put them here if you like.

Thanks a lot!

You probably wonder what this has to do with an elephant standing on a stool, being scared by a mouse.

Absolutely nothing :)

It's just that I was at work today and this little kid bit me on the foot while I was trying to get away from his brother who was carrying a small calibre handgun thingy in one hand and a kind of sharp stick with a pointy metal bit on one end....

And so I thought I'd come home and do this image.

To get them back, kind of.

The mouse is me.

The elephant is the kid who bit me.

His brother is hidden under the elephant's foot.......

No, that's not right!

I am the elephant; the kid is the mouse.

Hmm, silly me!
And the dogs? Oh they are just for 'cute." (To make up for Uncle Arthur's Doinke.)

Thanks for looking.
Again.

Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick, Jack Be Calderwuggenbum.

"Why call me Jack?" thought Jack be Nimble, Jack Be quick.
Why not call me Reginald.
Or Brian or Arnold or Cediric or Calderwuggenbum?
Why call me Jack? The whole planet is covered in Jacks.
Jack and Jill. Jack Sprat. Jack the Giant Killer.
Jack and the Bean stalk. Jack and this and Jack and that. Union Jack. Everyone was Jack.

Little Jack Horner.
Jack in the box.
The House That Jack Built.
Little Jack Jingle, Jack-a-Dandy, Jack Rowland, Jack Tar, and Black Jack Davy.
The list went on.
All losers.
Murderers.
Thieves and Buccan-ears. (except for Jack Foster who has small ears and is a good bloke)

And on. 
Even in French - Frere Jacques. And one called Frost:  "Look out! Look out! Jack Frost is about! He's after your fingers and toes!"
So many, many Jacks!

Finally, frustrated and fabulously confused, our Jack, nimble and quick, sat down in a huff.
He was tempted to sit in the corner.....
But, not wanting a demarcation dispute, decided not to.


Meanwhile, a few feet away, the small red flame of the candlestick flickered toward him, beckoning.
Jack looked out of the corner of his eye, peered at the candle and it's flame.
"I won't do it," he said aloud to the candle. "Once I've jumped over you ..... well, it's all over, isn't it?

The candle flickered back accusingly.
"And then what?" Jack said.
"And then what?" the candle seemed to ask.
"Hmmph, "said Jack. "They'll print me out on some cheap paper,  stick me in another Mother Goose, give me some silly cute face, spread my skinny legs over the candle as if I am an olympic vaulter vaulting over a cage full of lions.
"The first kid to see it will go giggle giggle gargar goop and then most likely puke some half masticated Johnson's Baby Food on the page so it sticks together and the next time it's open  they'll rip me in two. Riiippppp, just like that."

End of Jack!

Jack waved his hand around in agitation.
His waved it around. And around. Faster and faster.
But his hand froze in mid air as the candle flickered a little and began to sputter.
Jack's mouth opened wide.
The candle had never done that before.
The candle sputtered again.
Jack's eyes popped in disbelief.
For an instant he took in the candles' bright light.
For an instant he felt the warmth of it's friendly, flickering, faithful, fancy, fickle, felicitious, finicky, feeble, facetious, floribund, fibrillatingly fragile flame.

Then, without any warning, and with the eensey wheensy smallest of noises, the candle blinked out.
Blink.
Blank.
The world went black.
Jack blinked once.
He blinked twice.
He opened his eyes. He shut them.
But no matter what he did, the candle didn't come back.
The candle was dark, the candle was black.
The whole world was black.

Jack sat in the dark for a long time, looking towards the candle.
He sat there all night.
And in the morning, when the sun came up, the world was still black.
Still he sat there.
He sat there all day. And the next day, and for the next. And for the next.
He sat there waiting. And waiting.

Danse Macabre; Geraldine in my Closet.

Well Danse Macabre? I can  thank Gurney Journey for this one.

I had the skeleton in my closet for a while; and the little girl from next door just waiting for me to turn my back before she crept into one of my images.

That bottle in her hand has a label that says "Do not open, or else!"

And the cauldron? I'd always told her it was a stage prop.

Heh. Silly me.

Oh, if you are wondering what the skeleton is saying it's:

Aucah lind feuta gab

Din lobin gragnot feuh

Bas tild gringt "Geraldine!"

Fann loab blaab.

Students of old gaeilic will recognise this as

I Told him not

To leave that Bottle around.

My name is "Geraldine!"

Hear me roar.

Well, in the original image (see top pic) the girl wasn't looking at the skeleton at first (hard things eyeballs, as an optometrist I ought to know :)). So hence the flash of light in the skeleton's hand -picture below this text). Not really my cup of tea. Too dramatic for us laid back colonials. But you have to take what you can get.

By the way, Happy Bastille Day!

Thankyou for all the comments on King Canute. I learnt a lot from reading them. Be back tomorrow and thankyou properly :)

Ps In seeking a Latin quote I found this.

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 :)

Troll under the Trees

\

Well yesterday, in the pursuit of happiness and the Australian Dream, I went for a drive to Lake Maquarie Gallery.

There I found a series of prints made by Australian Artists, who had allowed themselves to be overtly influenced by Japanese prints.

So I oohed and ahhed and was pretty mesmeirised. And even bought the book.

So, this afternoon, when I decided to do some scary trees, I revisited the troll under the bridge.

And this is what I found.

That the Artists who had visited Japanes prints had 'contaminated' my mind.

Well, I hope they had. :) Of course these aren't Japanes prints. But it was interesting to see the influence that they had had.

The small image above this text was the one I was in search of - as far as scary trees. But I still can't get it right!

Thank - you for looking.

How Uncle Arthur Caught Crabs

In the depression years Uncle Arthur, Gretel's father's twin brother, would often drop in unexpectedly to Gretel's house with some crabs he'd caught in the swamp.

Like Uncle Arthur's manner of dress, his method of catching crabs was unique.

Dressed in his normal everyday clothes (man pictured on left), he'd wade into the middle of the swamp wearing his crab catcher's hat (also pictured). There he would wait humming quietly, till he saw some tell tale bubbles coming up from between the roots of the mangroves.

Then he'd freeze. His face would freeze, his hands would freeze, his body would freeze. For a moment he would become, as they say, "at one with the swamp."

Then, usually within a two minute period, if conditions were right, up from the bottom of the swamp, in a great concophanical mountain of bubbles would float, one, and sometimes two, big blue-swimmer crabs.

The crabs would float on the surface of the water, staring up into Uncle Arthur's weird blue eyes, till he'd scoop them up in his crab catcher's hat. Once in his hat they would struggle and click and clack their claws together like captured tabby cats waking up in the back of an Rspca van.  But of course, by then, it was too late.

Now Uncle Arthur claimed he had the rare gift of Crab Whispering - which, he said, was kind of like horse whispering and water divining - except you did it with crabs. And it was more fun because you got to eat the crab later. Which was hard with horses, because once you'd whispered a horse up, then the last thing you'd want to do was eat it. Or so Uncle Arthur claimed. And no-one would ever dream about eating their divining stick - unless they had good teeth.

Needless to say, Crab Whispering or no, his neighbours claimed something else, and had accused him on more than one occasion of 'being mighty friendly with some of the younger good looking horses' in their back paddocks - especially on moon lit nights when the horses were too scared to go anywhere near the swamp lest the drop bears get 'em.

Of course that was all horse rot and hear say and Uncle Arthur's best friend, Wodger C. Wurmold, happened to be a barrister of law. And that very fact, mentioned in a polite screaming match with Uncle Arthur's neighbours, was enough to put the knocker on any mention of his amorous horse loving antics - true or otherwise - that his neighbours might be claiming.

But, regardless of his equus amor vincit omnia,  the sad thing about Uncle Arthur was his pet rodent - which was named 'Doink', after his mother- in-law.

Now Uncle Arthur couldn't go anywhere without the illustrious "Doink". In fact Doink was prone to popping up here, there - and, embaressingly, everywhere.

Once in the soup, once in the apple pie, and, incredably, once in the front of Uncle Arthur's trousers - when he'd forgot to check them for either echidnas (which love to hide in trousers) or Doink.

Of course that latter case was the most innapropriate and it goes without saying that no more will be said about that episode - just that the entire church choir (where Uncle Arthur sang 'sub-baritone solo') stopped singing in the middle of Handel's Messiah when Doink poked his head from the front of Uncle Arthur's trousers.

Even the Queen Mother, who happened to be visiting Lower Cessnock Cathedral at the time, seemed suitably unimpressed....

But that, my friends will have to be another post (see "How Doink Met the Queen Mother" Uncle Arthur's Memoirs, VOl2. Page 345)

Thank you for looinking and watch out for Doink if you click for big!


PS This one for welovetoillustrate. An amazing concaphony of talent there be lies there!

Oh, I forgot to mention the flies, didn't I? Uncle Arthur was adept at catching flies. That's why you rarely saw him with his mouth shut.