Paper Art

 I'm very pleased with myself.  I haven't really tried anything like this before, but at the moment I have time to experiment.  I saw a picture of a stag made up of lots of little pieces of scrap paper, in an old copy of Big Issue, and I thought I could do something like that.  Then I combined that idea with the style of an old picture book of the life of St. Patrick that I'd admired when I worked at the Children's Bookshop, and I came up with this:

Paper Art: Crowley in black with black wings on a red swirly background, and Aziraphale in cream with newsprint wings, holding a green book, on a background that looks like planking.

I did Aziraphale first, and got a bit more ambitious with Crowley.

I'm thinking of doing Inspector LeBrock and Billie from the Grandville novels by Bryan Talbot next.

 

Sunday at WorldCon 3 - Charles Vess, the Morrigan and hurling

I headed off to the Point to see Charles Vess next.
I first became aware of Charles Vess's work when I saw his illustrations for Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Later I discovered his work on Sandman, and for the last four years he's been working on the Illustrated Edition of Earthsea, collaborating closely with Ursula Le Guin.
He gave a fascinating slide show, talking about his childhood in a small town in Virginia. At one point, the interviewer asked him: "Did you live on the same street as Norman Rockwell?" because he described such a typically small town America of the sort Norman Rockwell painted.
He discussed his influences as an artist, starting with the covers of Tarzan novels, and the comic strips Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant. He even showed one of his early pictures, where he had combined a knight from Prince Valiant with a woman who had Dale Arden's face.
Later he showed a bronze statue of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream he had worked on, and talked a bit about collaborating with Ursula Le Guin - that evening he would win the Hugo for that work, as well as a Hugo for best artist.

Then it was back to the Convention Centre to queue for a wristband for the Hugo Award Ceremony, and then the panel about the Morrigan.
The speaker was Lora O'Brien, who had also been on the Irish Folklore panel. She's legally a pagan priestess in Ireland, and teaches. She described her relationship with the Morrigan in this way: "When the gods come to you, and are pissed off with the world, it takes a shitload of work!"
Although the Morrigan is usually seen as a battle goddess, sometimes in the form of a crow or raven, there's a lot more to her than that. "There's nothing fixed about the goddess".
She features in the Irish myth the Tain Bo Regamna, which is a prequel to the more famous Cattle Raid of Cooley. In these legends, the hero Cu Culainn is an outsider to society, at odds with the Morrigan, who knows how things should be done.
One of the sites associated with the Morrigan is the Cave of the Cats, the Uaimh na gCat at Rathcroghan. This is an entrance to the Otherworld and a place of initiation. The entrance is a womblike narrow passage which you have to enter feet first to get down to where the cave opens up to a big cavern.
Lora also talked about how the Morrigan's name was mis-used in computer games - usually as a cool name for some large breasted sexy goddess. When one of the audience tried to explain the thing in one particular game about the character giving birth to a baby demon, Lora countered with "It's fucking disrespectful," adding that Irish people swear a lot, so she wasn't apologising for her language. (It's a classic example of cultural appropriation by the computer game makers).
She finished by saying: "If anything I've said here pisses you off, I'm doing God's work!"

Outside in the real world (and showing on the big screen in Martin's Bar) Dublin was hosting the all-Ireland hurling championship between Limerick and Kilkenny.
So it was quite amusing to see this version of the Iron Throne in the dealers' room:

WorldCon on Saturday - Astronomy, Art and the Captain's Chair

The first panel I went to on Saturday was How Astronomy Might Break Physics.
One point that came up was that the universe was not expanding at the same rate in all directions, which was not expected.
There was also a good discussion about what might loosely be termed 'colonialism in space'. It is the case that only rich countries can afford the telescopes that are now studying the universe, so they tend to only look at the areas of sky above those countries, and assume that what they are seeing is universally true. However, there are lots of other directions to look in, and things might be different there.
They also talked about the sorts of things that telescopes couldn't detect, and someone in the audience shouted out "Phlogiston!"
"But that's combustible, so we'd detect it," was the immediate answer.
They also talked about the Hubble Constant, which is used to measure the speed at which objects are moving away from the Earth by looking at the red shift. However, the value of the Hubble Constant can change, so the panel said that it was more of a Hubble Tension, trying to make different measurements agree - and this could be the start of a change of understanding of the physics involved.

I thought it unlikely in the extreme that I'd be able to get into the next panel I'd planned to go to - Artemis: Apollo's Big Sister, so I went off to the Point to have a proper look at the Art Show instead. (This is where my plans collided with reality and the result was a totally different day!). I'd hoped to be able to buy a Jim Fitzpatrick print, as he was signing that afternoon, but I didn't see any at the print shop area of the Art Show. It was wonderful to see the pictures he did bring along to exhibit up close, some of which were also in this year's Con Book. There was a lot of good work there, by featured artists Afua Richardson and Sana Takeda (who is the artist for the Monstress graphic novels). Maeve Clancy had done a whole comic strip about Syrian refugees trying to find safety, which was very powerful. I think my favourite work of the whole show, though, was the Lady Astronaut panel, done like a medieval manuscript in English and Hebrew, with part of the Jewish Sanctification of the Moon prayer. It was stunningly beautiful, and the minimum bid for the auction was E1,000.
On my way out of the Art Show, I met some people from Blackpool, where I spent all my childhood holidays. I was dressed as the Jedi Librarian for the day, and the tall young man dressed as the Flash was really pleased to see someone else in costume so he didn't feel so self-conscious.
Off to one side a filk session was going on, by Kerri-Ellen Kelly - one song she performed was Carmina Burana in Latin and Klingon!

The absolute high point of my Con came a bit later in the dealers' room. USS Cuchulain are an Irish Star Trek group, and they have built the central part of the bridge of the original Starship Enterprise - and they were letting anyone who wanted to either sit in the Captain's Chair or at the Helm. They even had jackets in various sizes in the Starfleet colours for people who wanted to be in uniform.
So I now have several photos (slightly blurry) where I'm sitting in the Captain's Chair of the Enterprise, dressed as a Jedi Librarian! It was so cool!

Zhou Shu Liang, Painter of Native American Scenes

Over on Facebook, I've been sharing beautiful art to break up the relentless bad news of current affairs, and I came across this artist. Zhou Shu Liang was born in China, and comes from a family of artists. In 1982, he moved to the United States and gained his BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Arts in 1986, and his MFA from Boston University in 1989.
While he was there, he spent some time painting scenes of the Wampanoag Indian culture at the outdoor museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He's made Native American culture his speciality since then, and his paintings are beautifully detailed. He pays a lot of attention to historical accuracy, and has made many contacts and friends among Native tribes across the US.
Many of his pictures show Native warriors, but the one I particularly liked when I visited his website at www.liangstudio.com was this one:

It's called Pueblo Market 1920 - and it immediately made me think of one of the main characters in my Steampunk stories. The white lady bending over the little girl's wares is just as I imagine Amelia Harper would be.

ZS Liang's prints and paintings are available at several galleries in the United States.

Black Victorians - Fanny Eaton

This painting is usually known as Head of a Mulatto Woman, by Joanna Boyce, one of the Pre-Raphaelite circle of painters. The model was Fanny Eaton, a mixed race woman from Jamaica. She also sat for Millais, Rossetti, Sandys and others, to supplement her earnings as a cleaner. Her husband died in 1881, leaving her alone to support her ten children. She also worked as a seamstress, and later as a cook on the Isle of Wight. She died in 1924, aged 86, at the home of one of her daughters in London. Fanny's maiden name was Antwhistle.
Much of this information comes from the blog Travels in Art and Aesthetics, where the blog post recieved comments from several of Fanny's descendants.

Joanna Boyce, also known under her husband's name as Joanna Mary Wells, painted portraits, scenes from everyday life and some landscapes. She was the sister of George Price Boyce, a Pre-Raphaelite watercolourist. She died in 1861 following complications after the birth of her third child.

Art at WorldCon

The Art Show at this year's WorldCon was one of the biggest ever, with over 2,000 pieces of art on display.
I had to take two goes to get round it - my brain was too full!
And what wonderful stuff it was.
Chris Foss was one of the guests of honour, so some of his work was on display, as well as some Grandville panels by Bryan Talbot. They were for sale, too, though well out of our price range - and an auction finished off the art show at the end of the Con.
Jeanne Gomoll, the fan guest of honour, is also an artist - she designed the James Tiptree Jr quilt which was on show on the other side of the dealers' hall, along with Tracy Benson. The quilt is on its way to a permanent home, which I think is a museum or library in Oregon.
Out of the many brilliant artists exhibiting, the one whose work really jumped out at me was Anne Sudworth, who paints wonderfully detailed, realistic pictures. Greetings cards of some of her work were on sale, and I wasn't surprised to find that the one of Whitby Abbey had sold out by the time I made my choice. It was an added bonus to meet the artist herself while I was standing in the queue to pay - and the person in front of me was also buying some of her greetings cards. She has a website at www.AnneSudworth.co.uk
It wasn't just paintings that were on show - there were sculptures and masks and jewellery and embroidery and clothes with LED lights running through them and model spacecraft and weaving and pictures made with cut out paper. There were even jigsaws, from Judy Peterson.
One artist, Vincent Jo-Nes (there should be an umlaut over the o and an acute accent over the e), paints pictures that glow in the dark, incorporating discarded electronic components. Paola Kathuria creates works of art on computer - the Young Man was very impressed with her work, especially the glowing snail-shell shape called Hexodus. She, too, has a website, at www.paolability.com
I rather liked the travel posters, modelled on the 1930 - 50s British Rail posters, but for SF destinations, by Auton Pursur.
Alastair Reynolds turns out to be a man of many talents, too - I knew he was a writer and astronomer, but I had no idea what a good artist he also is.
Each of the stands for the guests of honour to meet and greet had been decorated, too - stuffed dragons and a life sized Wizard of the Pigeons sitting on a bench surrounded by stuffed pigeons for Robin Hobb, for example. There were even some live pigeons on Saturday, of the nine different varieties that Charles Darwin owned and studied.
Costumes were on display, too, as well as photos of people wearing costume - my Young Man knew some of them (he was able to point out Anne Sudworth to me, as well).
There were also Artists in Residence throughout the con, talking, and working and selling merchandise. They included Chris Achilleos - the other really famous Chris who has painted many famous book covers.
There were demonstrations and art classes, too - we passed by while people were sitting in a circle sketching a couple of models in the centre (and yes, one of them was a rather good looking young black man with his shirt off, but it was a complete co-incidence that we kept going past!) There were also demonstrations of bead jewellery, gold leaf, acrylics and oils and watercolour, and clay modelling.
Where writers have the Hugo award (named after Hugo Gernsback, the magazine editor), SF artists have the Chesley, named after Chesley Bonestell, who painted pictures of the Earth from space in beautiful detail before we had ever gone into orbit.
There was even a book of the exhibition, a bargain at £5, fully illustrated in colour.

Two Views of Venice

I've been listening to some of the Eighth Doctor's adventures from Big Finish recently, and one of those was The Stones of Venice, with India Fisher as the Doctor's Companion Charley Pollard. Venice in the 24th century is about to sink beneath the waves, and the Doctor has brought Charley there to see it happen. It was written by Paul Magrs.
Now, I can write what I know about Venice on the back of a postcard, but there were one or two things about this story that bothered me. The Duke, for instance. Things may have changed by the 24th century, but La Serenissima historically was ruled by a Doge, who was some sort of elected official. I also found it odd that works of art were being allowed to drown along with the city. Surely, even today, the Italian government would make some sort of rescue attempt, and in the future possibly a world government would want to save works of art for posterity. So these things niggled at me, and I didn't enjoy the story as much as I might have done, even though the web-footed amphibious gondoliers were quite fun.

For contrast, after I'd listened to the story, I watched a video called Venice through Canaletto's Eyes, made by the National Gallery. It's quite impressive to see the pictures alongside the buildings and canals today, even though there are views that Canaletto could not possibly have seen, and places where he combined two different viewpoints to make one picture. He moved buildings around, too. His pictures are so good, though, that it doesn't matter if he heightens the drama of the surroundings - he captured what Venice was like, and you can still go and see something of that today. Hopefully before it sinks into the lagoon.

How Some Landmarks Stay the Same

I was very pleased to find that, despite all the new building there has been in the time since I last went to Manchester, some things are still where they always were - and I could still navigate my way round the town centre. Mind you, even some of those things have changed - Piccadilly Gardens is much bigger than I remember it, with a modern water feature as well as the Victorian statues - and it's criss crossed with tram lines, and with a tram station at one end.

Albert Square, where the Town Hall is, has been pedestrianised. Once it looked like this:

This is what happens when a French Impressionist artist goes to the grim industrial north of England. The painting is by Pierre Adolphe Vallette, who was LS Lowry's tutor.
Now the Square looks like this (taken from the same direction, but further into the Square):

From what my mum has told me about family history, I think that the red brick building in the background was once the Press Club, where my gran worked for a while (they could always tell when she was on duty at nights, she told me, because she put the table cloths out and made sure that everything was served properly, just as it was during the day. The other woman who ran the kitchen at nights never bothered). It's now quite a posh looking restaurant, with traditional local food.
Underneath it was once the Kardomah. I remember being taken there when I was quite small, and being amazed by the Arabian Nights decor of the place. It was down in a basement - which now seems to be a noodle bar.
And just to one side was once B Division Police Station, which I think is now a fish restaurant. I think that might have been where my step-dad was a desk sergeant for a while.

James Hance SF and Fantasy Art

On Facebook, I follow The High Council of Timelords who post, as you would expect, Doctor Who related material. Just recently, they started posting pictures by an artist called James Hance. He was doing a charcoal sketch of each Doctor, in order, over a couple of weeks - and they are just superb! I think my favourite has to be David Tennant, but here they all are:

He's selling them as prints on ebay - under the name "jimjeroodles".

He's also done sketches of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock - and something else. I knew I'd seen his name somewhere before, and then it came to me - he also drew this:

Can there be many things cuter than a cross between Winnie the Pooh and Star Wars?