Nick Carter
Junior Member
Registered: March 2002
Location: Leichhardt, Queensland, Australia
Posts: 12
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Nick Carter
Using Photoshop 6.1 and Micrografx Windows Draw.
Since the opening of the challenge I've been thinking of how to represent my
'Thoughts of War'. Yesterday I gathered my materials and started.
Art type 'Allegorical'
1] Started with new image set to 800 by 570 pix and 72 DPI.
2] Scanned in the photo at the bottom [more on that later].
3] Placed it in the new image, selected and adjusted the perspective.
4] Increased my canvas to 1000 pix in height.
5] Ported into Micrografx, placed perspective lines, and ported back.
6] Fitted 3 photo's into the top portion, one was of an Arizona desert scene
which I thought was particularly appropriate. Merged them at different
opacities and then some smudging.
7] Selected the side panels, one after the other, and fitted the centre into
them.
8] Placed the skull from my 'Hemera' disc into the top portion.
9] Selected out one of the planes from the challenge, placed it in its own
level in the image, and made 3 copies.
10] Used, perspective, scale and rotation, then moved them into position.
11] Selecting each plane, I coloured it.
12] Black for Famine
13] White for Pestilence
14] Red for War
15] Pale Green for Death. They have left Hell and adopted more modern forms.
The other two are still back in Hell, waiting to come forth, can be called Fear
and Arrogance, but their names are really legion.
16] Changed the opacities of the Horsemen as they are, as yet, not fully formed.
17] The top frame uprights I changed into the black writhing 'Trees of Antilife'
framing The Portals of Hell.
18] A bit more blurring and smudging and its ready to send off.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the photo. I was born in England in the City
of Portsmouth, at that time the premier naval port of England and the
Commonwealth. The time was 1938, a year later we were at War, my formative
years were the War years. Being a child, I learnt and adapted. Adapted to
making commonplace the sounds, sights of War, adapted to death, destruction
and deprivation. Most of what my younger Sister and I experienced I have
buried deep deep in my memories, I do not wish to relive them, but that photo
brought some of it back. What you partly see in the photo, is the results of
the last bomb landing on Portsmouth. It was what was called a flying bomb, by
that time we were blase about things, used to sit at our parents bedroom
window, when an attack was on, watching and listening. A flying bomb sounded
like an old outboard engine, 'putt! putt! putt!, when that stopped you knew it
was on its way down, and you waited. That one landed between the next street,
and the one after. Just under a hundred yards away, most of the destruction is
out of sight to the right of the photo, the bottom right and left rows of the
houses in those streets were obliterated. The light of the blast turned my
sisters eyes in, took years of corrective lenses to bring her eyes back, so
that she could focus properly. Of the 70,000 dwellings in Portsmouth, only a low
percentage escaped the War unscathed.
Yet the destruction that we experienced was as nothing compared as to what
happened elsewhere in the War Zones. Hundreds, thousands of innocents, allied
or not, were KILLED Each and Every day through the War years, and in many
cases it did not come quick or easy.
At the end of the War, two cities experienced 'True Ground Zero', between them,
because of blasts happening in seconds of time, over 200,000 people died,
suffered, and died. Tens of Thousands of children gone in the blink of an eye.
There is NO glory in War. The skull of death can wear many faces, mostly that
of leaders who bring war on their country. The ethics of any leader who
WISHES/WANTS to send [ not lead ] his country into War must be questioned.
Unleashing the Horsemen, and their weapons are so much more lethal now, much
horror on both sides will take place before they are sated, at least for a while.
Other ways can and must be found.
Those at least are my 'Thoughts on/of War'.
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