The stars

One constant position of awe I hold is for the wonder of the stars. Its good, sometimes, to remember just how small we are in comparison to the rest of the universe.

I think my love for science fiction comes from my paternal granddad. I didn't realise it until last year that he was a lover of science fiction, with the dune books by Frank Herbert, the Foundation series omnibus by Isaac Asimov, and H. G. Well's complete stories sitting on dusty shelves amongst a few others. To be sure most of his books are more of the action/adventures of novels his time, with authors such as James Clavell and Leon Uris scattered about. Its sad that his eye sight is fading, and it becomes painful for him to read for more than a few hours a day. But it reminds me how temporary this life is compared to the stars, the galaxies, and compared to the wonder of eternity.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Topsy the Elephant

I know this is a little sick, but....
This is a very old recording, one of the earliest recordings onto film by Thomas Edison, of the Execution of Topsy the elephant.
Typical of the Victorian era, Topsy was publically sentenced to death for the murder of three trainers. here trainer had tried to feed her a burning cigarette, of course, but that didn't seem to be of any help for poor Topsy's case.
First they tried to poison her, but it didn't work. Then they decided to hang her. Can you believe it?
But Thomas Edison convinced them to electrocute her, which was actually a good thing as it only took a few seconds for her to die.
We watched this film in class a while back, and there's no blood or anything, but don't watch it if you are a bit sensitive to animal execution.

The BEST

In my class 'Who are You', which sounds like a self-discovery course, but is actually a self promotion class, we have been challenged by our teacher to promote our selves, if its the last thing we do. He gave us the common talk on how we are going out into the real world, where jobs are outnumbered by graduates from all over NZ, and theres no way we could all get graphic design jobs. he talked about money money money for a while, then about what makes a employer choose you over someone else (specifically mentioning that married people have a harder time, and married females even more so. Was his message don't get married? I haven't worked that out yet).
Anyway, some people may have found it motivating, but I found it off putting. In many ways I still see my drawings and work as art, as opposed to a commercial commodity.

A few days later I presented a mood board for the concept we were going to use in a self-promo video, and failed miserably. I had it all in my head, but when we were going around and critiquing other classmate's boards I realized how pragmatic he was in the critiques. There was no interest in subtle messages, or a meaning or message, but a whole lot on what it blatantly said about you. While I was trying to discuss place and mood, he was more interested in something that made you unique, such as the way you like graffiti and do in the summer beekeeping.

Ok, Maybe I missed the point, but this way of looking at the world seems so lifeless to me. Absolute pragmatism gets on my nerves, as does an obsession about being the best at making good money in whatever niche you're in. I believe you should aim to be the best at what you do, but that this desire should not revolve around money.

What do you think?

Post-script: I have just upped another book review, this time for Cormac McCarthy's All the pretty horses. check it out here on my other blog.

Two more reviews

Two more book reviews are up on my book review blog, check em out.

Illustration Project

Its been raining on and off.
I'm probably starting a project at university on the character Rupert the Bear, has anyone heard of him? He is a 1950's children's book character:




















As you can probably see the line work is superb and I am lucky enough to have a few old annuls of my mothers, albeit that they are falling to pieces and often have pages missing, and looking on the net I see I could make a few hundred dollars out of them if I were to put them up for collector's items- though I never would. This interesting bear spend his days on strange mythical adventures with mermaids, or in cities underground, and the authors use descriptive text and poetic descriptions to explain what exactly is going on in the pictures.

Another option is to do the character of Jesus as illustrated by Brian Wildsmith in the book The Bible story. He is also very well illustrated and uses many powerful and the bright colours of the late sixties, and the beautiful lines which are fluid but simple. Click on the image to see what I mean.

My final option is Tintin, a fantastic character, very close to my heart, and hugely influential in many areas of illustration and narrative but possibly an overdone subject.
















end.