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Here is another image from my little moleskine sketchbook which I carry around. This past year I have been trying to become better at drawing an image with a nib and then coloring it with watercolors (the go-to methodology of illustrators who want beautiful diagrammatic details). I am getting better at this technique…but I am still not a master of photographing small artworks with a cellphone camera (the true signature medium of our age). Anyway, here are a bunch of hapless galley slaves rowing along in glum resignation as their captain and officers take the fragile wooden ship through a mermaid-haunted reef. Huge poisonous monsters and weird idols stand on the deck. Hungry seabirds and devilfish size up the sailors as a Chinese junk sails by out in the navigable strait and a German airship floats by like a leaf. I see no way that this small composition could represent our entire Rube Goldberg economic system of world trade. Also there is a flounder, floundering along the sand hunting for worms and copepods. Let’s hope that no larger fish or fisherman show up to hook or spear or dynamite the poor hungry fish!
Oops…better get back to rowing…
As a Halloween treat, here is a pen and ink drawing which I made of a great dark fantasy metropolis (which is also a lurking predatory fish). As you can see, there are three stages to the composition: the cerebral top portion inhabited by angels, gods, and flying marvels; the primal underworld at the bottom (which is filled with wailing souls, dark sacrifice, and insatiable hunger); and, in the middle, a glistening city between the two extremes. In the sky, Apollo, god of prophecy and the arts, rides his chariot angrily towards a blithe Icarus. At far right, Death watches the city while, beneath the towers (beyond life?) the inhabitants…or possibly their souls walk through a Tartarus of appetites and chthonic marvels. I am sorry that it is too small to appreciate (it took me forever to draw all of the little ghost figures and monsters which are under the fish). The piece speaks to the larger nature of humankind’s collective existence (and our appetites) but I feel the supernatural monsters and crystal landscape with the heavens also speaks to larger possibilities we could aspire to. I am sorry it is slightly crooked in this shot: this was the best picture I have but it is slightly distorted (until I can get a finer scan made).
It is the first day of October, which means you need to start getting ready for Halloween horror coming to Ferrebeekeeper at the end of the month! Every year we have done a special theme week to highlight the monsters lurking in the many shadows of existence. As all of you know, there is darkness out there: it lurks just beneath our appetites, our skin, our mortal lives…Ye! there is a ghastly void beneath the pretty autumn flowers themselves! As a teaser of things to come later this month, I am doubling back to an earlier post which had one of my drawings in it.
The drawing was hard to see in that post (because WordPress seemingly no longer blows images up to true size if you click on them) however it took me an enormous amount of time and it looks very ghastly and disconcerting in the real world. It is another one of my allegorical flounder drawings, but this one concerns the hunger, carnage, and obliteration which, alas, seem to be ineluctable features of all systems involving living things…perhaps of all systems, full stop.
There is a story I imagined while drawing this: what if you were wandering through the barrowlands of Europe when you found an ancient flatfish made of hammered gold? You would grab the treasure and begin to carry it off, however closer examination might give you pause, for, graven into the solid gold, are vile butchers, sorcerers, monsters, and dark gods. Assembled on the surface of the piece are a monster andrewsarchus, an underworld goddess leaping out of a well with entrails in her hand, cannibals, and a parasitic tapeworm thing. All of these frightful entities are gathered around an evil sentient tree with hanged men it its boughs, and the entire tableau is on the back of a terrible moaning flatfish which seems almost to writhe in your hand. When you look up at the sky the night is descending on the wold. The megaliths take on a sinister new aspect and the very stars seem inimical. it is all too easy to imagine the black holes eating away the center of each galaxy. With dawning fear you realize you need to put this unearthly artifact right back where you found it.
Happy Halloween! This year, I have been working on a new series of artworks centered on flatfish. I suppose flatfish have supplanted toruses as the primary focus of my art. People seem to like flounder better than donuts (the asymmetric fish have more personality…or at least they have faces), however the universe is not shaped like a flatfish (according to current models), so it raises the question of what the flounder means symbolically. Flatfish are regarded as a delicious prey animal by humans, however they are excellent predators in their own right: they are sort of the middle-class of the oceans. Like the middle class, the pleurectiformes are experts at blending in, and they change their color and pattern to match their circumstances. Today’s circumstances, however, are not merely muddy sand flats—the whole world is filled with wild eclectic ambiguity which is hard for anyone to follow (much less a bottom-dwelling fish). My full flounder series thus explore the larger human and natural ecosystems of the late Holocene and early Anthropocene world. Each one lives in a little predatory microcosm where it is hunting and hunted.
The bizarre asymmetry of the flatfish also appeals to me. Since my artwork seemingly concerns topology, this may be significant—although a classical knot theorist would blithely observe that a flatfish is homeomorphic with a torus (assuming one regards the digestive tract as a continuous tube). At any rate it is currently Halloween and the flounder need to blend in with the monsters, goblins, witches, and mummies of the scary season! I made three black and white pen and ink flounders to use as Halloween coloring pages. These are supposed to print out at 8.5 inches x 11 inches, but who knows how wordpress will format them for your device? Let me know if you want me to send you a JPEG.
The top flounder is a classical Halloween artwork of haunted houses bats, witches, pumpkins, and mummies. In the center, mortality and the devil grasp for the human soul. The mood of the second artwork is more elusive and elegiac: dark fungi grow upon the sole as an underling hauls a dead gladiator away in the depths. Serpent monsters fill up the sky and our lady of the flowers blesses a corpse. The final pen and ink drawing is unfinished (so you can add your own monster) but it centers around a haunted jack-in-the-box and a ruined windmill. A bog monster, scarecrow and lady ghost haunt the doomed landscape.
I also threw in three little colored Halloween flounder at the bottom–as a teaser for my Instagram page. You should check it out for your daily flounder (free of commentary and text, as is increasingly the way of our digital age). I hope you enjoy these colorful treats and have a wonderful holiday!
Chartreuse Cloud Monster (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, cardboard and paint)
Hypothetically, sometimes, at one’s day job one has a pushy colleague who loudly demands things and stridently lobbies for oh say…all new office furniture. It is a conundrum whether to simply bow to the wishes of the assertive colleague who demands a credenza from the internet, or whether one should go to one’s superiors and assess whether this is the right use for the office credit card. One could potentially be caught between bickering superiors fighting over a cheap credenza. Hypothetically.
In unrelated news, office credenzas come packed in extremely heavy cardboard boxes. This cardboard seemed perfect for building something, so instead of throwing it into a landfill, I cut it out and brought it home to build into strange new life (thereby erasing any unpleasant office politics which may or may not have been involved in its acquisition).
Tawny Elder Monster (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, cardboard and paint)
Last year I crafted a three-dimensional anglerfish/horse type monster in bright fluorescent colors to go with the blooming cherry tree. This year I decided to build three ambiguously shaped blossom monsters out of the heavy cardboard from some, uh, office furniture. The first monster (chartreuse, at the top), was meant to represent the life giving power of spring clouds. He is a cloud creature squirming with tadpoles–or maybe Yin/Yang spirit energy…however the guests at my party thought he was a three eyed camel with sperm on him (which I guess is also true, from a certain point of view). I wonder if Henry Moore had to deal with this sort of rough-and-ready interpretation of his abstract sculptures.
The second statue, which may be the best, is an orange figurine somewhere between a wise bird and a tribal warrior. It has the cleanest lines and the best paint job and it is only marred by a slight tendency to curl up (there is always something! Especially if one is dealing with cardboard sculpture).
Pink Sphinx Figure(s?) (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, cardboard and paint)
Finally I made a sort of pink octopus/sphinx with a glowing pink interior. Again one friend looked at it and said “It’s a Pierson’s puppeteer!” (this being a meddlesome three-footed, two-headed extraterrestrial super-being from Larry Niven science fiction novels).
Another friend looked at it and said “Why is it so explicit? I can’t believe you would show such violent erotic ravishment at your cherry festival!”
So, I guess my blossom monsters are more evocative and more ambiguous than I meant for them to be (I was sort of thinking of them as a cross between Dr. Seuss and African carvings). Please let me know what you think! Oh and here is a colored pencil drawing of the orange one cavorting beneath the cherry tree!
Blooming Cherry Tree (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
Jelly Lagoon (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, color pencil and ink)\
I didn’t get home until late on Friday night–so I guess this week’s final post is once more going to be drawings from the little book I carry around. The first is a surreal tropical underwater landscape. I wish i had included more jellyfish–but I am happy about the jelly duck and the orange artichoke/balloon thing. I am also fond of the underwater ghoul and the lurking crocodile monster. For some reason, now that I work of Wall Street i have been drawing all sorts of predators and floating ghosts. Speaking of which…
Monster Party (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, color pencil and ink)
Here are some monsters at a convivial party of some sort. It’s a bit unclear what is going on, but I feel like the hobgoblin in the purple and teal robes might well be the designated honoree. Look at how proud and happy he looks. Another ghoul is there looking super excited too–although the green vegetable guy with gills looks as though he might have a bit of social anxiety. I need to draw more furnaces and fireplaces. They are really dramatic.
Prospect Park Sketch (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, color pencil and ink)
Finally here is a summer picture of Prospect Park. All of the parkgoers were bland and ill-dressed so I just drew verdant trees and creamy clouds. Just as I finished a teenager in a hijab walked by and a blackbird flew across the sky. It was too late to put them in the picture, but they are walking through the empty page towards it!
Have a lovely weekend! I am looking forward to next week’s posts.
Landscape with Monsters (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, ink and colored pencil)
Today was another day which rushed by! Here are three more sketches from my little book. I doodle these during lunchtime, my commute, and other spare moments so they are not very polished, yet they sometimes attain a robust charm with their spontaneous verve. I particularly like the mysterious haunted landscape above with the sphinx, the red spider, and the vampire (to say nothing of the absurd tragicomic ghost). I keep putting mummies in my pictures: these ancient human remains are a very tangible and fascinating link with our ancient past (but they also are a solemn reminder of mortality). I think of all the characters in the drawing, the worm rising from the pit may have the most personality.
Fireworks over the East River (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, colored pencil and ink)
Here is a picture of fireworks drawn from a Williamsburg rooftop as my friends and I watched the East River Fourth of July show (you can see the towers of Midtown there at the bottom). Below is another enigmatic allegorical donut. The snack sits atop a stone crab while a gorgon glowers between two dancing pink shrimp. The entire piece has an elusive votive quality, but its religious overtones are greatly eclipsed by the outright miracles of the last picture.
Donut with Arthropods and Gorgon’s Head (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, ink and colored pencil on paper)
This final selection shows a flying saint soaring the sky with a large heron. The holy man (an angel with a bowl of broth?) is soaring up to a castle surrounded by a fearsome carnivorous garden. More benign flowers also bloom in the castle garden as the first pink tinges of sunset stain the sky. I imagine he is bringing nourishment to the castle-dwellers, but it is hard to tell exactly. As always, I welcome your comments! Thanks for looking at my little pictures.
Carnivorous Plant and Angel (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, colored pencil and ink)
Painting by Fantalov
Halloween is approaching and, in the spirit of the season, I would like to present some great artworks of magnificent monsters from classical mythology (an exercise which should also help flesh out the deities of the underworld category). Leading up to October 31st I am going to highlight paintings of the different offspring of Echidna, the “mother of monsters,” whose brood cast a long, many-headed shadow over Greek mythology. But we come to an immediate problem: Echidna herself is under-represented in art (indeed her whole story is shrouded in uncertainty). Likewise, Typhon, Echidna’s husband and the “father of monsters,” is not as familiar to artists or poets as his dark progeny.
Echidna was an offspring of Ceto and Phorcys, primordial sea gods who ruled the ocean before the Olympian gods seized power. Possessing the body of a snake and the torso of a woman, Echidna was a fearsome creature in her own right. When Gaia, the great Earth mother, gave birth to her last and greatest child, the monstrous giant, Typhon, Echidna wed him and joined his rebellion against the Olympian Gods. This was a very bold romantic choice because Typhon was no Adonis. The giant has been described as being as tall as the stars with a hundred snakes in lieu of each arm. His legs were two enormous viper coils. His beard was a monstrous mop of ragged hair–which was presumably fire proof since flame flashed from his eyes. Typhon’s body was covered with wings and his voice was an unearthly combination of beast noises.
Typhon
For a while it looked as though Tiphon would overthrow the Olympians: the great monster tore off Zeus’ muscles and kept them hidden in a cave. Only with the wily intervention of the trickster gods Pan and Hermes did Zeus recover his strength. In a final conflict of power, the King of the Gods hurled the mountain Etna upon Typhon, imprisoning the giant beneath the great mass. To this day the volcano heaves and belches flame. Echidna escaped (to rear her children sired by Typhon) and Zeus allowed her to do so in order that the monsters would provide a future challenge to heroes and demi-gods. The offspring she had are as follows:
- Orthrus
- Cerberus
- the Lernaean Hydra
- the Chimera (a fire breathing beast: part goat and part lion)
- the Caucasian eagle (who, every day, ate the regenerating liver of Prometheus)
- the Crommyonian Sow
- Colchian Dragon
- the Sphinx
- the Nemean Lion
- the Dragon Ladon
I think you will like the family pictures from this group!
Echidna Nursing her Brood (from D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths)
In some stories Echidna preyed on mortals until finally the hundred eyed giant Argus put an end to her (I wish someone painted that fight!). In other tales she escaped to a lair deep beneath the earth where she bides her time, waiting to avenge her husband and her children. As a last peculiar note, that lovable and peaceful monotreme the echidna is named after her, not because of its ferocity, but because it was so strange and alarming to European taxonomists…
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