AN EXPERIMENT (SORRY FOR THE SLOW DOWNLOAD)

ORANGE TREE FORESTS (PART 1)

Here's (above) part of the cover of a recent kids book, "Where is the Cake?" by T. T. Khing. Cartoonists who read this are going to think I'm nuts for posting about it because the color and cartooning in the book are pretty weak. Believe me, I'm aware of that, but I'm going to ask you to ignore that and concentrate instead on what the artist does well, which is imaginative topography.

Take a look at that forest.  Look at how small and densely-packed the trees are.  Notice how it's simultaneously attractive and frightening. There really are forests like this; in fact, I live near an orange grove that's like that. This whole book is a celebration of the concept of miniature forests.

BTW, note the size of the house, which is perfectly in sync with the size of the forest. It's hardly bigger than a tool shed. The artist rightly perceives that this is the correct size for houses in tiny forests. Extra rooms should be underground where they don't get in the way. The outdoor table and chair are great additions.

Here's another view of the tiny forest.  The trees are made to snake along the ground in undulating ribbons separated by grass and narrow pathways. The artist had a great landscaping idea here, and someone should make it happen for real, right away. 

It looks like the artist means to depict hedges here, but I prefer to imagine that the plants are more of the same small trees that we saw in the pictures above.  It's fun to think of irregular rows of orange trees punctuated by quiet little meadows.  The foreground boulders are a nice contrast, and so are the tall cucumber-like trees.  So is the little creek.


Creeks are naturally much more common than we suppose. Almost every big city used to be criss-crossed with them, but nowadays they're paved over, diverted, and pumped out. Maybe we should bring some of them back. 

AN ORANGE TREE FOREST (PART 2)

Let me digress from the book to talk about real Southern California orange trees.  Those are European olive trees above, but I chose them because they're similar in appearance to the unusual type of orange tree that I used to see on a college campus near where I live.  I liked to imagine that the trees were planted by David Fairchild, a locally famous botanist who is reputed to have been the man who introduced the Eucalyptus tree to this city.


Anyway, this campus grove was an incredibly magical and quiet place. You could easily imagine trolls and witches living there. That's amazing when you consider that there was always a hurly burly of students about fifty yards away.  The grove was accessible, and much loved, but few people wondered into it because the ground was soft and inconvenient to sandals and tennis shoes. I never saw orange throwers in there, never graffiti, and I never saw any homeless people. Most importantly, the trees were small enough that you could pack a whole magical forest into a small space. 


That last point is why I'm writing this. A tiny forest is the perfect solution for urban parks and backyards, and yet you never hear orange groves spoken about in that context. What it amounts to is that an important landscaping tool has been overlooked. That's why I was so glad to see this kids book. It's all about the fun you can have in a miniature forest.  

AN ORANGE TREE FOREST (PART 3)

Above, the momentum of the hedgerows (trees) suddenly stops at the base of the steep little hills. Nothing to do but climb over them, something kids would be only too happy to do. Of course the hills would have to appear more natural than they do here. 

Here (above) we see monkeys running across the treetops like they were paved roads.  Hmmmm, that's interesting. I guess if you had planks up there, you really could run along the tops of this kind of tree. At least if you were a kid you could.

BTW, check out the shapes and spaces in this picture. Small, densely-packed trees stand like grazing cattle on closely mowed grass.  Narrow little paths wind around the scene, giving scale to everything, and the ground is only an inch higher than the creek. I've never seen flat look so appealing.

Notice the two trees at the top that form an entrance way to the scene, and another appearance of those steep little hills in the background. Could a real landscape be made to look like this?

I hear you saying, "'Not a very handsome page," and you're right...but wait, what's that in the top of the tree?  Monkeys...and they're sitting on the top of the palm tree!  It never occurred to me til now that you could fasten a chair to the top of a palm tree and sit in it, just watching life go by on the ground.  Of course you'd have to share the space with rats and spiders. I'll bet the spiders get as big as crabs up there.

AN EXPERIMENT

'Just an experiment to see if I could "glue" two halves of a picture together in a single post. 

This is my favorite Mad cover ever.  Buyers must have felt that they got their money's worth just for the cover, and everything inside was free.  


I can't wait to see how this will interfere with the right sidebar. Don't blame Blogger. It's my fault...I want to watch the collision.

MORE MAPS (PART 1)

I hadn't intended to put up more maps, but I just came across a treasure trove of interesting cartography, and I couldn't resist putting up some examples here.  The map above is Japanese, from the time of World War l.

Above, a detail showing Western Europe. Note the arrows in Germany, including an arrow labled "Japan." What does that refer to?

I did all this research in an attempt to answer Katie's request for the address of the guy selling posters of Keith Thompson's "The Great War 1914," shown in a post below. I finally found it: 


http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/grandmap.html


The price seems steep considering the size of the poster, which is only 13" X 19." On the other hand, if the poster is half as beautiful as the reproduction on this site, it'll be worth it. 

MORE MAPS (PART 2)

Impressive, eh?  Now I feel bad about praising the Hockney-style map in one of the previous posts.  Sure it was pretty, but as the illustration above demonstrates,  for tasks like this you just can't beat draftsmanship.

Of course the best draftsmen are cartoonists (example above). It's hard to resist the conclusion that cartoonists should rule the world, but alas, the world is unconvinced.