On the First Day of Winter …
It’s the first day of winter, and what a special one Melbourne gave us – freezing cold and rain! Although we had some sunshine too, which was deceptive at lunchtime: stepped outdoors and was blasted by the icy arctic wind.
Petra, in Jordan, the subject of this month’s calendar illustration, is also called the Rose City, due to the colour of the stone from which its architecture is carved. The buildings are carved right out of the rock. It is a place out of fantasy that I would love to see; one of my friends visited there in the last year and she was awestruck.
I love history, and ancient history in particular, and that part of the world is steeped in it. I have visited a few of the Arab Emirates, and also Oman, but I kept mainly to the cities and did not experience anything similar to Petra, or to the pyramids of Egypt, where I like to imagine one could feel the weight of years in spite of tourist hordes. I do love the food of that region though – Middle-Eastern is one of my favourite cuisines.
Hot, or cold, happy June dear Snapettes!
Collage Experiments
Black Clouds SurroundI have always enjoyed collage illustration, and over the past year or two have been developing the style of my ‘random poems’, incorporating watercolour (simulated in Photoshop) with the collage, on a vintage paper base.
Here are a couple of recent experiments in pure illustration (that is, no dada-style or random poetry as I call it). The illustrations about different aspects of mental health are portfolio samples, the concepts for them developing and fermenting in my head as I leafed through magazines, cutting out likely photographs, amputating an arm here, a head there. They were very fun to assemble – there is often an element of humour in my work (black or otherwise), and so much potential for it in this kind of collage.
Don’t Be Who You Aren’tI am also experimenting further with more traditional pen and ink incorporated with collage. There are pros and cons to both traditional and digital illustration, but I enjoy the different freedoms of both.
Downstairs
This postcard, in the reception area of the theatre I work in, caught my eye as I was heading home this evening. Downstairs is a bistro a few steps from our office, and many of us make coffee runs, imbibe in a few Friday night drinks, or enjoy an occasional spot of luncheon there. Ours is not the only theatre nearby, either, so it is not surprising they should target the theatre crowd.
The whimsical antique illustration is an unusual choice, given that the venue is quite modern. It is clearly of a theatrical bent however, and it did tickle my funny bone. The gentleman’s dress on the far left dates the illustration to the Regency period in England (1811–1820).
On closer inspection, apart from the period details (dress) and the typical caricature style of the era, the sketchy – even scribbled – pencil strokes give the illustration an appealing immediacy and modernity. I suspect it is a sketch, rather than a finished piece, and therein lies its charm.
Now that I’ve read the menus on the reverse, I feel a bit peckish.
May Days
It’s the last month of autumn, and we really have entered the season’s final glory days, for winter is coming!
This illustration of Havana, Cuba is so cheerful it is a suitable send-off – I only wish I was celebrating the last of autumn there. Some of those flowers look like hibiscus, a flowering tree that holds fond memories for me: there was one planted by the door of a house I once shared with a friend. The flowers were bright fuchsia pink.
Another friend of mine, who is Mexican, told me that in that country hibiscus water is the ubiquitous drink served at table – she had never seen the tree before! She had only seen hibiscus flowers in their powdered form, before they are added to a jug of water. Of course, once I showed her a picture, she realised she was quite familiar with the trees, and just how common they are here – in this part of Australia at least.
I wonder if they drink hibiscus water in Cuba?
Renoir’s Nymphs
Bather with long hair, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1896Today’s pictures of Renoir’s paintings is brought to you courtesy of my unconscious mind. Overnight I had a strange, convoluted dream which began with me in the role of historian, researching the lives of an aristocratic Swiss family of the nineteenth century. I watched the young women of the family bathing in a river, cavorting like some of Renoir’s water nymphs. They had the same figures too.
Flash forward to the present day and I was in a modern suburban street surveying their open-top carriage, a relic complete with faded cushions and book shelf that was stacked with modern, luridly-covered romance novels.
Bather, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1890The carriage escaped its moorings and started rolling down the hill before I could catch it (I was busy propping up an elderly but frail lady). Fortunately, and much to my relief, a shrub on the nature strip stopped the carriage short in its passage.
The dream didn’t stop there, but wandered through a disused mansion, a courtyard windswept with autumn leaves, and into a modern house lushly carpeted in white – and from there onto lunch with work colleagues, until my alarm woke me early this morning.
I can’t wait until tonight’s adventures!