Maritime Narrative Illustrations

Eight Illustrations designed and executed for Hull’s MaritimeCity MaritimeTales week, in which a series of videos were published of readings from famous works that mention the sea. In order to maximise the usefulness of the images tried to create them in such a way that they might have more than one focal point, allowing a video editor to pan and scan across the images and trying to create visuals echoes connecting one image to another, to allow the same. These are detailed below.

Notes on “Easter eggs” in images

Moby Dick 1
On the far right of the image is a small silhouette of the Jumblies Boat on the horizon.

Moby Dick 2
Quequeg’s pipe is the same as the one in the Jumblies boat.
The pub sign on the left is the Siren from the Odyssey 2 image.

The Jumblies
On the far left on the horizon there is a silhouette of the Owl & Pussycat boat.
The “handle” of the sieve is based on one of the Roos Carr figures (an artefact in the East Riding museum here in Hull).
There are various items depicted in the boat that are mentioned in the poem, inc the monkey with lollipop hands atop the pipe mast, who is eating Stilton, the owl and the pig, and the woman’s foot wrapped in paper.

The Owl & The Pussycat
The back of the boat they are sat in is based on a carving from one of the medieval carvings from a Hull museum.
Whilst the island on the horizon (a nod to a Bocklin painting) also appears on the horizon of the Odyssey 2 image.

The Odyssey 1
The goddess/creature Scylla has four eyes, and barking dogs about her waist as well as the serpent heads (I based them on sharks as somewhere it mentions that might be part of the basis of the creatures name) as those are descriptions ascribed to her in some texts.
In the very bottom right I dropped Long John Silvers parrot.
You can see Charybdis in the foreground of the image.

The Odyssey 2
I went with the singing bird like creatures for Sirens rather than the more mermaid like versions.
The island on the horizon to the right of the ship also appears in the Owl & The Pussycat image.

Treasure Island 1
The sailor on the far left of the image has a tattoo of one of the sirens from the Odyssey 2 image.

Treasure Island 2
The grimacing figure at the bottom left of the image is carving a scrimshaw whale that looks like the whale in the Moby Dick 1 image.