A New Fantasy Journey - In Paintings - Maybe

 

Recently, I've been toying with the idea of producing a book of my paintings of the imaginary land of Cealanda. Beginning in 1992, I started painting a series of landscape paintings of an imaginary country which I named Cealanda. The premise of these painting was that I painted scenes which I encountered while roaming the ways and byways of this imaginary country. The reason behind this premise was that prior to these paintings, I often used old photographs that I found in books as the subject of my paintings. I decided that if I ever wanted to sell my work, it needed to be entirely my own work. I find painting from imagination far easier than painting from life, and it gives me far greater scope, hence the imaginary land, a device I took from the Austin T Wright's Islandia novel in which he created an entire fictional continent, from its history to its geology.

For the next decade I painted maybe 50 watercolor paintings a year, following the seasons on watercolor paper, though the first dozen or so paintings  I did in colored ink. Beginning around the early 2000s, I started using thin acrylic paint on what was marketed as watercolor canvas. I felt that watercolors on this canvas were too dull, and by using acrylic paint, I could, not only produce a brighter painting, but I could go back after the paint dried and apply washes to enhance the mood without "lifting" the paint, unlike with watercolors.

In the end, I have a collection of several hundred paintings that represent a wordless journey in a fantasy world of imagination that I painted over twenty years, getting better at it over the years. It has been a journey in several respects. There are no dragons, no sorcerers, no ring to rule all in Cealanda. It is a rather pastoral, common place world, but one that you can't get to except through your imagination.

A paper book printed in full color would be likely be very expensive to produce, but perhaps I could use it as a Christmas present... The more viable option would be to make it as an ebook. However, it would have to be published as a PDF version rather than as an epub, so that every page remained as I laid it out. A flowing epub book would be a mess. Being both in color and with the page aspect set in stone, it would have to be aimed at tablets and computer reading rather than your e-ink ebook reader or phones. Given the dimensions of these paintings, I might be able to fit only one on a page, if I wanted them large, or two if smaller. That, and the size and shape of the book is something I will have to experiment with someday.

As of now, this is just a long term idea that I've only recently been tossing around in my head. It will be some time before I get serious about it, if I ever do. Just something to do when I run out of things to do. Still, I do believe it would be fairly easy to do, as I have collected most of the paintings I would need in one spot on my computer, so it would simply be a matter of selecting the ones I want to present, out of the hundreds that I painted and then come up with something to say about them. Perhaps I could tie them together with a fictional travelogue as well. Who knows? As I said, it is just something I'm thinking that I might like to do. Still, thinking about it, and doing it are two very different things, so no promises. In any event, it would be a 2025-26 project, at the earliest. Time enough for you all to forget about it, if I find I'm too lazy to do it.