Ben Long: Moving Landscapes – Dedham Lock and Mill & The Stour Valley (after John Constable)
(via floresenelatico)
A collage of stills from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (episode: Encyclopaedia Galactica) hinting at advanced technological lifeforms creating planetary shells, colossal blooming patterns of inter-planetary structure, Dyson spheres even.
On the train - E.H. Shepard, pencil
Treecutter, 2012, watercolour
a short accompanying extract from the book I’m writing:
When he saw the figure suspended in the branches of a grand apple tree he felt a jolt of disgust. The figure’s weight was part held by a taut orange rope looped to the tree’s trunk above, part by an outreaching branch that gave and creaked as he applied his foot to it. The chainsaw hung beneath him and puttered on.
Lao stood and watched, confused. Rolling his wrist to twist the rope around his forearm, the treecutter heaved himself up to wrap his thighs around the branch and held his palms against the bark. With a deft flick he yanked up the chuntering saw and caught it’s heel in the other hand. Pressing its blade down through the tree’s limb it screamed and revved angrily and Lao felt the tension in the clench of his back teeth, He swung a short rope around an adjoining branch and clipped its carabina to his waist harness, swivelled, leant out and placed a boot on a third branch. He gunned the saw and made the last cut. The severed end hung in the air for a moment in which Lao made a half step forward, and dropped.
Uprising, 2012, pencil on paper stained by linseed oil, paprika and soil
Just finished designing this logo for Fat Out. Like branching roots we hope to explore and intertwine ourselves in the underground and support the growth of something large, living and openly interconnected, a musical ecosystem.
Oak trees in Sherwood Forest (detail), 1877 - Andrew McCallum.
Nocturnal Landscape (detail), 1938 - Paul Nash. In Manchester art gallery
The River Irwell in Salford
Paper model of Hogsmeade, also at the HP studio tour
Part of the model used for exterior shots of Hogwarts, seen at the Makjng of Harry Potter Studio Tour. It’s over 8m tall and incredibly detailed, including rivets on the hinges of doors made from pinheads and creeping ivy made from dried plant roots.
St. Catherine’s Gardens, pencil.
Sitting in the garden today it struck me as an archetypal British view. I think the landscape of our suburban homes and gardens says more about our national identity and temperament than any grandiose public or corporate architectural statements.
I think trees are a vital part of that picture. Having drawn lots of trees recently in Manchester and Yorkshire I was looking forward to drawing some in Formentera, which we recently visited. The island is hot, dry and windswept. Scrubby twisted shrubs shade scuttling geckos under broad-fingered palms that sway or toss violently in the sea wind. Its quite attractive, but I didn’t feel compelled to draw the vegetation; the shrubs were all mean bunches of little leaves massing nebulously, the palms seeming to wriggle always out of grasp. I missed the shapely, elegant limbs, rustling leaves and sheltering canopies of the woods and forests at home. When we arrived back and travelled by coach from Liverpool, the usually dull motorway-side landscape was enlivened in turn. Gainsborough-esque stands of trees, still winter-bare and slender burst from furrowed field corners and punctuated the land in an easy rhythm of nature both constructively tamed and ancient, sacred. Like the tree in the garden above, they seemed to raise their many arms joyously, ever upwards through the cold, which makes my heart sing.
Similarly the verdant moss covered rocks and trees of Snowdonia, its dark uneven woods and clear trickling streams seem to embody a mysterious, mythical memory that runs deep. Clearly not everyone spends their childhood holidays in the mountains, but the association with trees especially is present everywhere. Even though the great old British forests have largely gone we have in our cities generous leafy parks and swathes of luscious suburban gardens. The road which I grew up on had trees buckling the pavement which blossomed in a yearly festival of bewitching colour. In the garden apples fell on the lawn and birds flitted in the branches all around you. More recently I’ve lived on bare streets in Liverpool with nothing to relate to but cold cars and huddling wheelie bins, and it drains the life from you. We should have more trees on our streets and in our gardens, and not forget the value of a respectful relationship with them, lest we forget who we really are.
