Pictures

[Roland Deschain]

The guy in the bar is magnificent!

That's Olentzero, the Basque version of Santa Claus (LINK). Basque mythology is very much like The Wicker Man, complete with some freaky (and cool) imagery. My friend's friend was from the village, so we went to visit her. It's situated in the western part of the Pyrenees, just south of Hondarribia/Hendaye. That was a very drunken night, with some stories I don't put up online. PM if you want them, lol.

You've been to some interesting places!

Thanks, PoN. That was just two holidays, believe it or not.

And that picture is great. It's been doing the rounds recently, and has made me chuckle yet again.

[Sibling DavidH]

Here's another Green Man for Aggie.  It's at Rowlestone Church, Herefordshire, a couple of miles inside the Welsh border.  The whole doorway is a well-known example of work by the famous "Herefordshire School" of sculpture around 1140:



The Green Man is on the left impost (the bit where the arch sits on the pillar):



BTW it's pronounced 'Rollastun".

[Roland Deschain]

Nice Green Man there. It's surprising how much Pagan imagery survived through Christianity, a lot still doing so today. I know the Viking peoples kept their imagery, but integrated the Christian myths into it, and the Celtic peoples did too. I'm glad they did, as there are some beautiful designs like this still surviving to this day.

[Sibling DavidH]

Absolutely right, Roland.  Look at this Sheela na Gig at Kilpeck.  The thing goes back way beyond Christianity and is found all over Europe.

[Roland Deschain]

I was going to comment on how vaginal that sculpture looks, and then I found THIS WEBSITE, which quite adequately explains about the Sheela na gigs, and confirmed my thoughts. There's always been something appealing about pre-Abrahamic religion, as if it pulls me in. The imagery is wonderful, regardless of meaning.

As an aside, if you're ever in Bodrum (Turkey), there are a number of stalls selling male fertility symbols (basically poor statues of a guy with a massive penis, and when I say massive, I mean huge).

[Sibling DavidH]

I like Bodrum.  Those figures can be seen on the walls of Pompeii - the Romans called him Priapus, but he's been all over the Mediterranean lands for a very long time.

[Swatopluk]

Priapus statues were the Roman equivalent to garden gnomes. There was also the belief that they would keep burglars away because the erection was also a threat of anal rape.

[Swatopluk]

Here we have a sketch of St.Ultherius aka St.Ulufer.
I still have to add the bull he fought. My drawing skills did not enable me to have it as I wnated to, him standing triumphant on it with the tip of his staff on its neck and a foot on its back. I think I can prolong the staff and simply put the bull below.

Has any of our resident artists an idea or the skill/equipment (how) to make a mosaic out of it. I'd provide the intended colour info. A version in the style of a medieval book illumination (ideally, so it could be put into an initial) would be great too.

Important detail: The cross staff is deliberately drawn with one arm of the cross convex and the other concave, so it can be used like a halberd.

[Swatopluk]

Here a cleaned up version (attached to post above).

[Sibling DavidH]

It looks almost Early Medieval, but you're not quite there yet.  Keep at it, it's fun.

[pieces o nine]

Swato -- a mosaic texture is easy to add in an image manipulation program (I use Photoshop). This is a very quick download of your image, a handy graphic borrowed to simulate color, and a quick run through the texture filter. There is quite a range of cell sizes (this is the smallest), cell wall thickness (again, the smallest), and lighting options. With a little care, you'd get a very convincing result, which could be 'aged' a bit to show a little damage, fading, missing tiles, whatever you like. For best results you need a clean, dark outlines so the program can see discrete areas to fill with color(s); these outlines can be retained or made to disappear as you like.

[Swatopluk]

Not bad, but nobody would take that for a 1000 year old piece.

I was thinking along the line of the guy at the lower left in this mosaic

http://www.daringtodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Foto-1.jpg

I used this painting for some details too

http://www.kirchengucker.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/otto-iii.jpg

The important thing would be that it is not a x-y-grid but that the tesserae follow the lines.
I tried with MS Paint (pathetic, I know) but I failed to get the tesserae in all necessary orientations while keeping them small enough.

I am almost tempted to try it for real but that would be a major investment with doubtful results.

I usually keep to ornaments. I am terrible with naturalistic stuff.

[Swatopluk]

OK, I tried to mosaicize at least a small part of the picture just to show what I mean. It took me about three hours, so the chances of getting the whole image that way are at best low.


And it's too elaborate for 10th or 11th century rural Britain anyway, I fear.

[Sibling DavidH]

Too tidy even for Roman work.  Never mind, back to the drawing board.

[Swatopluk]

I think it is not a question of tidyness. This looks to me more like a modern splinter mosaic (using opaque glass). The 'pieces' are far too irregular.
I think the only way would be to actually score a beach to collect enough pebbles of different natural colours (buying would be far too expensive) for an archaic pebble mosaic (as the pre-classical Greeks did).