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phoenix

Posted on December 31, 2006 @ 11:21 am by massimo | Filed under: animals,blog,china,mythology,wordpress

phoenix china aynaku illustration travel

 

“There is also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I did not myself see except in painting, for in truth he comes to them very rarely, at intervals, as the people of Heliopolis say, of five hundred years; and these say that he comes regularly when his father dies; and if he be like the painting, he is of this size and nature, that is to say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and in outline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle. This bird they say (but I cannot believe the story) contrives as follows: setting forth from Arabia he conveys his father, they say, to the temple of the Sun (Helios) plastered up in myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the Sun; and he conveys him thus: he forms first an egg of myrrh as large as he is able to carry, and then he makes trial of carrying it, and when he has made trial sufficiently, then he hollows out the egg and places his father within it and plasters over with other myrrh that part of the egg where he hollowed it out to put his father in, and when his father is laid in it, it proves (they say) to be of the same weight as it was; and after he has plastered it up, he conveys the whole to Egypt to the temple of the Sun. Thus they say that this bird does.” — Herodotus, The Histories, Book II:73

My illustration is done after the Chinese manner. It precisely refers to a painting from the Sung Dynasty depicting a goddess riding the Feng-huang bird, the Chinese phoenix, which I bought in Beijing…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: phoenix

hymalayas

Posted on December 23, 2006 @ 11:21 am by massimo | Filed under: blog,india,people,travel,wordpress

roerich india travel illustration aynaku

This illustration is inspired by Nicholas Roerich’s paintings dedicated to the ethereal beauty of Himalayas. Born in Russia in 1874 Roerich went to India in 1923 and settled in the Kullu Valley, Himachal Pradesh.
Here he painted a large gallery of pictures that not only reflect the magnificent vision of the mountains, but also embodies something of the spiritual history and legends with which they are associated. Some of his works are permanently exhibited in a beautiful and ancient wooden-building in the village of Naggar, where – merely by chance – I had stopped during a bus ride among the enchanted Himalayan valleys of northern India.
Here I learned that besides his renewed brilliance in art ( however Roerich is not an outstanding figure in art history), he also was an untiring worker for world peace and dreamt of an international understanding trough art and beauty until his ideals were finally incorporated in the international pact for the protection of cultural institutions and monuments in times of war and civil commotion, a pact known as “The Roerich Pact”, accepted by 35 Nations including the USA…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: peace

help

Posted on December 16, 2006 @ 12:15 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,china,travel,wordpress

 

subway-copy.jpg

In November 1994 I landed in Beijing’ International Airport, coming from Helsinki. As soon as I kept on asking those basic information I needed to get the city centre, I realized that the language would be the problem for me while in China. Actually very few of the Chinese population speak any English at all. Every traveller knows that a few words spoken in the local language will bring smiles of appreciation and establish friendly relationships between visitor and host. While I was well aware of the fact that my pronunciation of the local language did not correspond exactly to the pronunciation of native speakers (actually it was far beyond my objectives…), I was sure it must be within an acceptable range of variation! No way. I learned quickly that the tone can drastically alter the word’s meaning and these tones can not be learned from a guide book.
Just consider the sound “ma”: in the first tone it means mother, in the second tone it can mean hemp or numb; in the third tone it means horse, while in the fourth tone the meaning is to scold. Funny? You should also realize that the levels of the tones are not absolute but relative, depending on the speaker’s age or sex…A few days later I got lost in the over-overcrowded Beijing’s subway during the peak hour. Platform signs were only in Chinese and the mass around me was too damn busy and in a hurry to even notice me. I felt lost and lonely and really needed some help to get out of there, but nobody spoke a single word of English, not to mention my pathetic efforts with the local tones and the like…Finally a gentle lady approached me politely and -smiling a lot- put me on the right train.

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: help

mask

Posted on December 8, 2006 @ 7:45 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,mythology,travel,wordpress

Bali is pure fascination and Balinese traditional masks are a component of it. The Balinese carve many elaborately detailed wooden masks with a wide variety of forms…

might

Posted on December 2, 2006 @ 10:23 am by massimo | Filed under: blog

These week’s Illustration Friday topic is might.
It has been a rather busy and demanding week for me and I need some rest, so all I do is to submit an old post of mine that fits the topic…Just click here, thank you!