Six Lands A-Scaping & Five Snow Globes
Yesterday Was The Seventh Day Of Grindmas And Today Is The Eighth Day Of Grindmas
Hello Hello And Welcome To The Seventh And Eighth Days Of Grindmas—Sorry For The Delay.
(If You Missed Day Six, You Can Check It Out Here.)
Today we are celebrating six lands a-scaping, aka six landscape images. This one is a bit more of a wildcard relative to the other 11 days, but I’m still excited about it.
In grad school, I did a few projects that involved close study of various artists and their compositional techniques: Where is the eye of the viewer located relative to the scene? What visual cues exist around scale, proportion, and depth? How are incidental “entourage” figures used to reenforce or complicate the initial reading?
Some of these projects involved trying to replicate or hybridize certain visual styles. I can’t recommend this approach strongly enough if you’re trying to expand your own repertoire of visualization techniques.
Two artists whose work I come back to time and again are Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525—1569), Katsushika Hokusai (1760—1849). Bruegel and Hokusai are household names; you’ve seen a lot of their work and would recognize it right away.
What I’m most drawn to with these two are the ways in which their images are constructed—and in the similarities and contrasts between them. I’ve gathered three winter scenes from each of them here. Similarities in the overall compositions aside, I think there are some deeper affinities in things like texture, and rhythm, and the use of white space.
There’s also something moving in how uneventful they are. There’s lots of stuff happening, but in a quiet, unhurried way. At first glance, Bruegel’s Census at Bethlehem looks like a simple winter genre scene, not a religious narrative.
“I just think they’re neat!” is what I’m saying.
After looking at these artists off and on for years I wanted to use them as a jumping off point for some little illustration experiments, which are now available as jigsaw puzzles here.
I hope nobody minds that some of these are warmer and sunnier than the winter scenes.
Some other visual references and influences in here include the photocomposite of Philipp Schaerer and the renderings of DOGMA.
And this spot right here marks the end of the email I intended to send yesterday. Now, onto the Eighth Day Of Grindmas, with…
Five Snow Globes!
Over the past few weeks I’ve been making snow globes celebrating the worldwide sensation we’ve all come to call “Brutalism With Trees.”
I’ve learned two things in the course of doing this.
Making snow globes is very satisfying
Adequately photographing snow globes is more challenging than you might expect
If you’d like to acquire one of these to try photographing yourself, you can do that! These five eBay auctions run for the next ten days. Each snow globe is 4” or 5” in diameter, made of shatter-resistant plastic and filled with Brutalism With Trees and some glitter and filtered water. Imagine having one on your mantle.
Proceeds from the puzzles and the snow globes will be split three ways and donated to Open Architecture Collaborative, The Climate and Community Project, and The Architecture Lobby.
You can read more about those groups and the Twelve Days of Grindmas here.
And now we’re all caught up. More things—four of them—coming tomorrow.
—THA