Saturday 18 July 2020

Tabulae Mortuae III (Archives XIII)



Clich to increase; copyright Gert van Dijk
 It is with some trepidation that I show you this particular dead painting. (If you wish to see more, just use the search function to find 'Archives'.) It is one of the oldest in the series of paintings that later became the Furaha universe. The subject is neither thought out well nor painted well. The sky used to be ochre, but I secondarily, after a year or so, decided to paint it over with bluish tints to improve the demarcation of foreground and background. That helped a bit, but not enough. I admit that I have now decreased the contrast of the background digitally to improve the sense of depth in the painting.

At the time of painting I was still enamoured of ballonts (there are many posts on this blog about 'ballonts'). I was exploring what you could do with them. So here is a ballont species with the ability to hover a bit above the ground, tiptoeing from stem to stem if it chose to do so. If endangered, it was supposed to be able to release its hold and shoot upwards like a cork in water. I did not stop to think how such animals would be able to regulate the upwards force of their balloon. Perhaps it could contract its bladder forcefully, decreasing its volume and compressing the gas inside.

Anyway, I remember that the tree (?) in the background started out as a gigantic slug-like creature moving across the landscape with interesting mushroom-shaped organisms on top. When the painting was redone, I transformed it into a sessile lifeform, but the mushrooms stayed. These can obviously tilt or bend in such a way that they deflect the wind. Although I have no idea what these mushroom organs are actually for, I still like the idea of them forming a buffer against the wind.

You will not be surprised to learn that the tomatl did not make it into the modern, more sensible, Furaha universe. Now they do, and the quality of the paintings have improved too, or so I like to think. It was fun to simply paint whichever shapes suggested themselves, without wondering whether they made any sense or not. Progress...         


7 comments:

Unknown said...

Love the design of the ballont in the painting!

Kevin the horse said...

Shame the ballonts had to go, they're such a unique and alien design, but unfortunately they're about as biologically plausible as a Gyrosprinter. Curse you, realistic physics and your hatred for cool and weird things!

ypsigon said...

would sessile vertebrates or vertebrate-analogues becoming sort of like a barnacle make sense tho

Keenir said...

*looks at the picture*
*notices the ballont looking back at us*
me-thinks we've been spotted. :)

a splendid painting; and its a fine idea of how to begin (and continue) a project.

Maybe its not a True Ballont (living its entire life in the air), but it moves like you described, and can take to the air as an escape strategy.

to Ypsigon:
Its actually happened...look at tunicates - they and their close kin gave rise to the salps...which are basically underwater ballonts.

Keenir said...

what the...???

it asked me if i wanted to use my Google ID, which has my name; i said yes...and it posts as Unknown? gah. sorry.

-Anthony Docimo.

Keenir said...

{i had an evil thought}

what if the ballonts (at least the True Ballonts) are the biological/?/biotech probes of the gas giant organisms, as they take a look at the tiny worlds around them?
:D

-anthony.

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

Unknown(1): Thank you

kevin the horse: Funny! (and sad, about the ballonts)

ypsigon: I doubt it, but that's not what this post is about

Unknown(2,3,4/ Anthony:
- Thank you
- I have no idea what google sometimes does such things. I often have some difficulties after i have temporarily used anther account.
- That is a very funny idea!