Ancestral Lunar Village – an imaginary place

July 15, 2016

Imagining what an ancestral village was like during a lunar moon
The experience of visiting ancient villages for me is to dive into antiquity, imagination, and magical possibilities. I have often wondered what it was like to live in a culture whose pulse was oriented to the lunar cycles – like the culture at Chaco Canyon was. Apparently when one lives by set cycles, the minds of the people synchronize more, whereas when there is no real rhythm to life like we know it with our uneven months, it is harder to organize.

My inspiration

The experience of visiting ancient villages for me is to dive into antiquity, imagination, and magical possibilities. I have often wondered what it was like to live in a culture whose pulse was oriented to the lunar cycles – like the culture at Chaco Canyon was. Apparently when one lives by set cycles, the minds of the people synchronize more, whereas when there is no real rhythm to life like we know it with our uneven months, it is harder to organize.
This image came about from my thoughts on ancient villages I have visited in Japan and elsewhere. I did a few drawings at a toro site in Shizuoka, Japan in the past, which are shown below. I just love the look of these structures used for living, storing food and such.

Pen and ink drawing

Defining certain areas with an additional rough sketch

While this ink drawing from my sketchbook is complete as a drawing, it needed definition in places in order to translate to a colored version. To resolve that I made this rough sketch. From this I jumped into making the vector version, which I turned into color once all the shapes were drawn out.

The final artwork

This final image is of course more of a playful expression of shapes, color, architecture and nature, where everything seems to be happening at the same time in the dynamic life of the village.