Gnemo's Sketchbook

Don't Feed the Howndders!

2007-12-28T16:38:00.000-05:00

Don't ever, ever feed a howndder. These are pleasant and friendly creatures. However, if you make the mistake of throwing one a scrap of food it will follow you night and day begging for more, at first politely but with increasing intensity. You cannot hide from or outrun them, as they are the greatest trackers on the continent. Several of them followed us back to our airship and we spent several hours shooing them away. It was quite sad to hear them howl as we lifted away. One industrious howndder held onto a gondola robe but was shaken loose so he wouldn’t fall to his death when we lifted higher.

Slow Going

2007-12-04T00:26:00.000-05:00

This is the most sure-footed creature on the planet. It wobbles a great deal as its legs swing to and fro but it'll surely get you to where you're going. Make sure you have plenty of shade, a good book to read or something to daydream deeply about.

Rock Lobbers

2007-08-28T14:20:00.000-04:00

Young predators are in a big surprise if they think these creatures are easy prey. Once pummeled by these rock-throwing mammals a prowler is not likely to forget the experience. Living on a mountain of stones, an endless source of ammunition, the Rock Lobbers are the dominant species.

Besides throwing rocks, the Rock Lobbers also use their prehensile noses to capture insects, find water and as whips against smaller trespassing animals. Normally they wouldn’t advance as closely to a predator as seen here. The forward Lobber has been pretending to be lame to lure a hungry Grindhundt away from a hidden nest. The ruse has worked and the Grindhundt, despite his armored skin, is about to receive some hard knocks.

By the way, I’ve updated and corrected an earlier entry here. I do my best searching through Gnemo’s notes and drawings but sometimes I make mistakes. The full understanding of something may not be revealed along with a drawing but will be contained in later notes. This is something of a puzzle with many missing pieces. I have to guess what some of the missing parts are and sometimes my guesses are wrong. So now, Godandreas has been renamed. It is now Chwotashun and the story behind it is considerably more interesting. Scroll down.

Airship Musing

2007-07-14T16:09:00.000-04:00

For some, traveling slowly is better. For them absolute privacy and luxury is much more important than speed. This way, by the time you reach your destination you are filled with creative energy and ideas. These beautifully ornate and intimate little airships were built to transport people needing careful rumination, deep reflection and airborne meditation.

Cloud Cruise Liner

2007-06-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

On the great Cloud Cruise Liner Skyship the richest of the rich travel this world at a leisurely pace. This massive airship cruise liner has no equal. Every possible luxury is on board along with the most exotic of entertainment. Still, the most popular pastime is sit on the ship's deck or look out its massive windows and to simply watch the clouds float by.

Passengers are loaded and unloaded via smaller airships seen here. This airship rarely moors.

Swimming Hole

2007-06-21T21:10:00.000-04:00

From Gnemo's Journal:

The nooks and crannies of the Booth Tree made it quite easy to climb. I came across a number of Marsulephants along the trees branches. They paid little attention to me as long as I was respectful of the tree. From a higher branch I saw some of them swimming in a water-filled hollow of the tree. When I climbed down to them I got sprayed with water but in what I interpret as just being playful. Fortunately I'd packed away my sketchbook at that point.

Ed: Marsulephants are arboreal pachyderms that have a symbiotic bond to the Booth trees and live in their branches.

Snowpeys

2007-04-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

These burrowing animals live in the northern most part of Terrain where there is perpetual winter. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few nice days and that’s when the snowpeys come out to play.

Some species of snowpeys are solitary creatures while others live in large communities. They all love sledding on their unusually long furry tails though.

Teenage Gnemo and One Swinging Marsulephant!

2007-04-18T17:54:00.000-04:00

Above: Rummaging through stuff here I found this loose drawing that Gnemo did of himself. It was pretty beat up but I scanned it and I cleaned it up in Photoshop. Gnemo didn't do many self-portraits. My guess is he went to draw the model airship, looked up to notice his own intense expression reflected in a mirror and decided to draw that too.

Above: Somehow this got left out of the previous posts of Marsulephants. I think that this little fellow thinks that he's Tarzan. Gnemo's note reads, "One Swinging Marsulephant!"

Monument to Chwotashun

2007-04-15T19:47:00.000-04:00

The people of Gnemo's world are a polytheistic group. They still have favorites among their many gods. This is a monument to one of the most beloved.

The world can turn on a phrase. In this giant library is held all the great quotes of history: those that brought forth an important truth and those that greatly deceived. Here students and scholars come to prepare themselves against obfuscation in all its myriad forms. This is a college for the study of language as a deadly art.

This metaphorical goddess at the entrance represents the seductive power of words as well as the beauty of clarity. Young children are familiar with the fables of this goddess. Each is a lesson taught through human foibles and shortcomings. In each tale she ultimately exposes the trickery of someone’s words with her own beautiful and succinct phrases. Those are carved into the stone of her pedestal.

You'll find it only after crossing a rickety rope bridge across a deep canyon. See: Canyon Temple

Booth Trees & Marsulephants

2007-04-06T19:30:00.000-04:00

Excerpted from Quow’s journal:

The gargantuan trees in the distanced rustled with activity. As we approached, a ring of giant animals with long snake-like noses and curved mouth-tusks took on a defensive posture. We prudently decided to keep our distance. After all, they’d never seen humans before.

I sent the majority of men away and set up a small encampment equipped with binoculars and a telescope. From the spyglasses we could observe this unique natural wonder. I asked Gnemo, my artist recorder, to give them a colloquial name. After considerable observation he called the animals marsulephants and named the towering trees Booth Trees. The boy has a knack for names as well as an exquisite eye for detail.

It seems that the dominate life form here were the trees. They weaved their way through every section of these islands.

I let Gnemo have the telescope and he sat at it with pencil in hand for the long hours of the day. His sketchbooks filled with drawings and notes. Those boy’s eyes peered deep into those trees. Later he and I would take the scout blimp out for a closer look at Booth Trees growing on the upper mountain cliffs. From both vantage points Gnemo made some incredible observations and did some excellent drawings covered with meticulous notes.

These trees live on a series of islands we've been exploring. The islands vary in size. From the look of them they seem to have popped straight up out of the ocean.

It was a classic symbiotic relationship. The marsulephants were the giant tree’s protectors and the tree provided for them. My guess is that these trees employ a similar fiber to the condos shells. Without it they couldn’t grow as large as they have. We use this carbon fiber to build our airships. It is especially strong and light.

The marsulephants’ young are not fully developed when they’re born. They nurse within a pouch on their mother till they’re old enough to live on their own. It’s at that point a very strange thing happens, the parents pick up the youths in their massive trunks and they fling them into the higher branches of the trees to be caught by smaller marsulephants. Gnemo has observed this with his keen eyes and has noticed how the young ones are immediately indoctrinated into a society devoted to protecting the tree, their home and their single source of nourishment.

He also observed the ritual of adulthood when a marsulephant can no longer live in the tree and descends back to earth to become a parent. In what I can only call a ceremony the marsulephants gather on a single branch inching outward to its edge. Under their weight the branch slowly moves towards the ground. A single marsulephant, a particularly large one, passes by the others on the branch touching them with obvious affection as it moves down the thinning branch that by now has nearly touched the ground. With one last look at its friends it hops off the branch and waves its trunk in farewell. He or she then goes off to find a mate that from separate Booth Tree tribe and joins that tribe or brings back its mate.

We were fortunate to see a battle between marsulephants and a creature we call a slitherscarr. A large group of them attacked the tree with their razor sharp teeth to get at its rich sap. There are special pockets that the tree produces that only the large marsulephants can reach with their long trunks but the predatory slitherscarrs tear into the tree to steal the sap. Several were caught by the marsulephant and trampled. Fertilizer for the tree I suppose.

Gnemo also observed other animals living in the Booth Trees, like the skullduss, an egg laying predator that the tree provides nests for. It’s especially good at consuming small leaf eating pests but occasionally attacks a small and weakened marsulephants. Their favorite snack is a fuzzum. The fuzzums try to stay near the marsulephants who have a general dislike of the skullduss for obvious reason and will attack them if they approach.

Other creatures living in these trees are grittons and wormwalkers. You can see them below respectively.

Deeper into the jungle is a network of ponds that are held with in trees high in the mountains. We boated and portaged our way through them. These trees are likely related to the Booth Trees.

The close-knit society of the marsulephant was endearing to observe. We named each individually and Gnemo and I were sad to leave them but we have Gnemo’s pictures to remember them by. He even climbed a tree and did a little portrait of myself and Ensign Peric at the roots of a young Booth Tree.

Brief Stories

2007-02-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

One cold, sad and lonely night Gnemo found a musical place where he could reflect on all that had happened to him. The cavernous room was empty but for him and a musician.

The patterns these ladies created with their ultra-light fabric was hypnotic.

Giant airships carry massive cargo across the rocky continent.

The working class neighborhood had the most intricate and colorful architecture.

The durantees nose was a deadly weapon.

The aeros dove deep into the cold water for their daily diet of fish.

Six limbs are better than four.

The Stone Dead and the Living Mythology

2007-01-31T15:34:00.000-05:00

This drawing above is of a temple guarded by a stone dragon. The entire monument was carved out of granite and it leads to an expansive cave filled with ancient scrolls and sacred artifacts.

Strictly speaking this next picture isn't really of dragons. These are merely six limbed creatures called gadroons. They don’t breath fire and full grown these animals are no more than eighteen inches long. Here we see a group hatchlings get their first lesson in flight.

Canyon Temple

2006-12-07T12:57:00.000-05:00

A great advantage of polytheistic cultures is the all the wonderful and varied temples that are built. Every god needs a home and it needs to be one that truly honors the god. Here is one of the many drawings of temples you’ll find in Gnemo’s sketchbook. Not that it’s important to appreciate the art but these people are actually metaphorical polytheists. I felt the need to be specific because it does make a difference in the story if not the art.

One thing I wonder though, with all the work they did on the temple, why did they built a flimsy rope bridge instead of a stone one? Perhaps constructing a loose and swaying bridge over a perilously high cavern to reach the temple emphasizes the firm power of the god within. I should post the interior next.

Gnemo's Sketch Journal on my website

2006-12-05T15:13:00.000-05:00

This is a new beginning. The title link above will take you to the low resolution and full color version of Gnemo’s Journal on my website (around 20 pages at this point). If you have a problem linking to it, as a couple of people have complained about, it’s because your internet security is blocking the site. You may have to turn it off. If you know how I can fix this problem with my server, let me know.

I’m working on a higher resolution version of the sketchbook/journal that can be read much easier. You’ll likely find it frustrating though if you don’t have a large monitor and a fast connection.

Instead of pages from the sketchbook, I’ve decided to use this blog to put up newly “found” Gnemo art. It’ll be mostly drawings with the occasional painting. When I add new pages to the sketchbook I’ll make an announcement here.

It’s time to put up some architecture. You might think I’d get tired of doing these cityscapes but I never do. If I had my way I’d replace the rectangular glass blight I see in too many cities with something more inspiring.

Gnemo's Sketch Journal P3-P7

2006-09-28T19:32:00.000-04:00

One of Gnemo's actual sketchbooks but with embossed type added (above)

Introduction To Gnemo Sketchbook (above): Rather than print this sketchbook exactly as scanned and confuse the reader, I’m including all of Gnemo’s notes that I felt were relevant in the appropriate places. Before he mysteriously disappeared Gnemo obliged us somewhat by going through all his sketchbooks and adding updated comments to help explain his drawings. It’s convenient that even though young Gnemo quite often drew on both sides of the page, he usually did his more complicated drawings on the right, leaving space to add notes. I hope that this will give the story an additional useful point of view.

These sketchbooks were started in Gnemo’s preteens and continued on well into his life. At times, some of his notes can be quite childish but they reflect well his feelings at the time, so I’ve edited them only where I have to. Frequently Gnemo didn’t finish one sketchbook before starting another, so some work seen here has been garnered from other books and loose sketches. Other than what I’ve said here, very little has been changed because I want you to have the same experiences I first did when I when I opened that trunk and pulled out a tattered dusty sketchbook that had traveled greater distances than I can easily imagine.

You will occasionally see my notes on the left as well. They will be inserted into a box and will be followed by a ‘– Ed’ to distinguish them from Gnemo’s own notes.

-- Tom Kidd (2006)

GNEMO'S CAPTION (above): The one little sketch at right (at right in the sketchbook but below in the blog -ed) that begins this diary would take me very far. My young imagination ran wild that day but it was not nearly as wild as my future would be. I remember this time well because it was not long after my parents’ death. You can still sense some of the bitterness I felt in the drawing and note below.

-- Gnemo 2002

One of my dad’s medals -- pretty much my entire inheritance. Sadly, I don’t know what he received it for.

GNEMO'S CAPTION (above): I’ve noticed how oblivious people are of anything outside their perceived needs. There are strange things all around the city that no one seems to notice, no one but me. Hidden in plain sight is this odd building. It’s impossible to see in full view from any one angle because it’s blocked by ugly mirror glassed towers but I’ve constructed this picture from multiple views. What mysterious eccentric character lives here? It’s probably just split up into dozens of high-priced apartments but I hope not.

One day I saw the little car below (drawn from memory) zip into the building through a hidden doorway. The plot thickens!

NOTE ON BACK OF SKETCH: As I added the finishing touches to this sketch from my balcony Peale’s telescope found me and I would soon find Peale. At first I thought it was an accident but I’d ultimately find out it was not. From my present time I can look back and say that my great adventure began this day. My childish comments are especially naive in retrospect.

GNEMO'S CAPTIONS (above): My uncle told me that before he begins each job he writes himself a mission statement. He says that having a plan in written form will keep him on track, keep him from being distracted.

Scene outside my window last night, but not quite?

After I drew the strange, palace-like, building yesterday I showed it to my aunt and uncle and (other than to question why I waste my time with drawing when I could easily take a photograph, which they always do) they told me that they’d never seen it. Yet, the building is no more than three blocks from their condominium. Get this -- they weren’t the least curious about it either. How could they not see it? As I look at myself in the mirror today I give myself this mission:

I will dutifully search out and draw all that is unusual. Each day I will take my sketchbook out into the city to find the things that other people don’t see, either sightseeing or as they rush to their jobs. This is the promise I make. This is what I dedicate my summer vacation to. This I will do unwaveringly.