Account: The first five Places I've Never Lived
Influences and inspirations for the houses depicted in my illustration series.
First of all this is called SUPER CORRUPT CROSS-PROMOTION, so if you aren’t familiar with my Places I’ve Never Lived newsletter you should look at it.
The idea is that I’m drawing and writing a story of ‘every place I’ve never lived’. In reality I’m just using the exercise to draw lots of different styles of buildings that I find interesting (supposedly monthly but they take too long to draw).
I’ve not studied architecture or anything like that but you’ll learn if you continue to read this newsletter that I find buildings really interesting and base a lot of my works around them and how people relate to them culturally or through sensory input.
So, I thought I’d use the account section of this newsletter to talk about my influences and inspirations of each of these fictional buildings.
This Gothic Manor
The gothic manor is one of the more clear-cut influences. I wanted to write a short ghost story and what better way to depict it than in something reminiscent of the Bates’ house from Psycho.
It’s definitely not a 1:1 design but, the porch pillars and decorative wire features on the awnings (and the roof spike style appears on my weathervane). In reality my drawing is a mixture of an American gothic style and something more akin to the American version of Queen Anne architecture, those curved porches and shingled roofs you see in a lot of media set in the south.
I think of the Sharp Objects house as a quintessential example of this, with the spire, verandah all the way around the ground floor supporting the floor above and a lot of contrasting angles.
This Local Bonsai Nursery
This one is, at least partially, based on a real place in my city. Adelaide had, until recently, a bonsai nursery that made all kinds of bonsai that used Asian plants as they would be traditionally but also used lots of native Australian plants too. I thought this contrast was always really interesting and decided to use it as the jumping off point for my story.
I set my story in Brazil because I really want to learn about regional architecture styles that are unique to different countries. Rather than set it in Australia I took the idea of using local plants and manipulating them into bonsai forms and applying that to Brazilian plants found in the rainforests.
I then combined the idea of stilt houses, which Brazil has an abundance of, with the concept of a quarto-e-sala which is just a four-quadrant house with space to live, sleep, eat and use the bathroom:
This Beachfront Shack
I’m a sane person (debatable in general but true in the sense to follow) so I believe climate change is the pressing issue for us to think about. I thought of that when my mother was looking at beachfront property in a longing kind of fashion and couldn’t help but think about the abundance of shoreline buildings that are already considered uninsurable.
With this in mind, and my noted (in my family at least) hatred of being at the beach, I decided to set this one in the near future when the owner would have to build up shabilly from the initial building. I wanted something very generic as the beach house, so I drew the most typical kind of building I could come up with. Including that classic beach shack lattice work on the porch.
Obviously all the ropes and pulleys and rickety-looking structures are inspired by the (not as bad as its reputation) Kevin Costner vehicle Waterworld… or at least the Universal Studios ‘experience’.
This Small-Town Repertory Theatre
I’m so interested in Art-Deco architecture and design. So many great buildings in Australia (even in tiny towns) are built in an art deco or streamline moderne style (see Geoffrey Goddard’s Australian Art Deco Hotels for more information - I might post about this book some time). Most commonly are pubs and theatres (both movie and stage), I even semi-regularly volunteer in an art-deco cinema run by the Theatre Organ Society of Australia (they have a literal Wurlitzer theatre organ that pops out of the stage before screenings and an organist plays an overture - I can’t stress enough that if you’re in Adelaide that you should watch all your films here) called the Capri.
Anyway, all that is to say that I’m enamoured with the style, especially how varied it gets in general. The direct inspiration is the kind of deco building with multiple floors that is rounded at the edges, using elaborate finials, decals and a decorative spire. I used a fairly classic deco colour scheme of green and gold because… well, it looks good.
A good example of what I’m angling for is on the cover of Goddard’s book:
Obviously it’s not a direct reference but in shape and form you can see the influence.
P.S. Sadly that building now looks like this:
Better than being demolished at least.
This Elaborate Treehouse
This one is the grinding of an axe, in picture form. It is a direct reference to the Herbig Family Tree in Springton, South Australia. It even kind of alludes to being in the Barossa Valley in the text of the story. I heard about the Herbig Family Tree when I was a kid and pictured something similar to what I drew. In reality it looks like this:
As an adult, cool. Compared to a child’s imagination… something of a let down.
The website linked above states that:
The Herbig Family Tree is a large, hollow red gum tree at Springton. It is estimated to be 300 to 500 years old with a diameter of seven metres at its base and a height of 24 metres. A small stream runs nearby.
The tree was the first Australian home of 27 year old Friedrich Herbig who arrived in South Australia in 1855. In 1858 he married 18 year old Caroline Rattey and took her to live in the tree home. The first two of their 16 children were born there. In 1860 he built a two roomed pine and pug hut nearby, and as his family increased, built a stone cottage adjacent to the hut.
I basically took that story and expanded it with hyperbole, I imagined they didn’t move out after their second child and instead stayed there and built it up further. Although, I don’t think even my fictional versions of the Herbigs had 16 children… nuts.
Thanks for reading. I’ll do this again when I have five more to share! Until then please check out Places I've Never Lived and maybe even look at the prints I have for sale on my Society6 page.
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