The Self-Isolation Residency 17th may 2020: Day 49

Apropos of nothing; 'Moon Milk'.

So, just a quick note, apropos of nothing, today marks the end of the seventh week of this blog.

This is possibly the first time that I have been able to pick up the subject of some work from the previous day so easily during this residency. The sketches that I began yesterday based on Italo Calvino’s short story, ‘The Distance of the moon’ have really stayed with me over night. I’ve reflected on them even more in the intervening time and even reread certain passages to refresh my ideas. When I thought back over the story last night, I remembered certain elements which I’d previously forgotten but that now felt very relevant to me. So have had as quick refresher on the subject early this morning I began to make more studies to include these aspects of the story that I’d previously forgotten.

As I’ve thought about this story, and the ‘illustration’ that I would like to create to express it, I’ve began to realise that I have really set myself quite a task. Of course, any piece of work of this type, if it is to be done well requires an amount of research and development. But when I analysed all the nuances of this tale again I realised that there were not only more aspects that I would want to include but that even the ones I had already recognised were perhaps more complicated than I had previously acknowledged. A lot of this is of course due to the fact that the subject t matter is so surreal. Therefore, to do it absolute justice, I would have to try to express the surreal ‘imagery’ of the writing in visual form.  One of the more complex areas that I had already began to consider is how to illustrate the main section of the story where the Captain’s wife, Mrs Vhd Vhd (and no that isn’t a typo) dances, ‘upside-down’ in zero gravity on the underside of the Moon just above the boat. Need I say more?
But it isn’t just these bigger, set-piece, images that I need to understand to express but the little thinks too. For instance, what does the large spoon that is used to collect Moon milk look like as it pours its load into the waiting bucket?