Monday, July 30, 2012

CAVES IN THE CLOUDS / HILARY BRACE


I almost called this post "Hilary Brace: Aviation Artist," but I don't think she thinks of herself that way. Brace claims that she's just drawing imaginary landscapes. Maybe, but what I'm seeing here (below) are cloud caves of the sort that my Dad said pilots used to see. 


My Dad said that he'd seen them, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. Flying as a passenger in commercial airlines I've seen bits and pieces of cloud caves, though they weren't as clear and romantic as Hillary makes them. Commercial jets travel too fast for cave exploration.



Nowadays it's against the law to fly through clouds if they can be avoided. All the traffic makes it too dangerous. My Dad didn't have to worry about that when he was young. There were no cloud laws then. He even flew in open-cockpit biplanes (which were old-fashioned even in his time). Imagine what he must have seen!


My Dad's long gone now. I wish I'd thought to ask him what the caves were like.


I'm guessing that they didn't last long...no more than ten minutes maybe.  After that they'd close up (above), trapping the poor pilot inside. Of course he could fly through the walls to escape.


I wonder what it would have been like to fly through the caves in a thunderstorm. It must have been cold and windy and wet. Maybe there were hailstones. Maybe flashes of lightning illuminated the walls.

Here's (below) a link to a great video of a sputtering lightning flash. Imagine being inside a darkish cloud cave when a bolt like this one appeared.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120723.html


Caves like this (above) remind me of Jules Verne's story, "Robur the Conqueror." I wonder if he imagined his character's giant airship hiding in caverns like this one.


Remember those old film clips that showed barnstormers standing on the wings of planes? I assume they were braced somehow. Imagine what it must have been like to be one of those guys flying through the corridors of a cave in the sky!

  



8 comments:

Joshua Marchant (Scrawnycartoons) said...

I misunderstood the first paragraph and thought Hilary Brace used airplanes to sculpt the inside of clouds by flying through them.

Gorgeous paintings in any case, great find!

Anonymous said...

I think there has been at least one time where I've been on a plane that went through one of those clouds, but the clouds weren't that thick at all. Can't remember when it was though.

Speaking of clouds, do you have any tips on drawing them so they don't look like lumpy pieces of poo? I've always found drawing good looking clouds a challenge.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Roberto: I like the way Wood used to draw clouds.

Joshua: What you said reminds me of the Barks story where Donald shapes clouds.

Alberto said...

These. Are. So. COOL!

I went to look them up (briefly, at work right now) but "cloud caves" or "caves in the clouds" this must exist in reality. There must be a picture, or obscure Latin name for it.I still love the paintings/drawings. I wonder if images like
THIS ONE have inspired her. I love the sun beaming through that "cloud cave."

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Albert: Holy Mackerel! I don't know if it inspired Hilary, but it inspires me!

JohnK said...

Cloud pussies

Unknown said...

I was doing a Google image search for "cloud caverns" because I flew through one on March 7, 2008, but was too awestruck to reach for my cell camera (that wouldn't have done it any justice anyway). These paintings are all that I could find.

The cloud cavern I saw was on a flight from Odessa, TX to Houston, TX in the pre-dawn hours. I could see daybreak beginning in the horizon and we started flying through some clouds. A short while later, sun not up yet, we flew into a cloud cavern. I saw pillars, mountains, valleys, ceilings, and plateaus very similar to these images.

It was a dark blue/gray hue since the sun hadn't risen yet. But then, the sun rose...

ORANGE! YELLOW! PINK! RED! I WAS IN HEAVEN! I was just awestruck. I hadn't EVER seen anything like that and I now consider my life complete to have seen such a sight. Thank you for posting these pics!

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

K. Marinov: I'm envious!!!! Even a lot of pilots never see what you saw. Thanks for writing!