Six famous views around St Austell
I don’t know when I first saw the similarity between the China clay white-tipped mounds around St Austell and the 19th century Japanese woodcuts of Hiroshige and Hokusai, but when I did it seemed so obvious. Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (now Tokyo), contains many images of Mount Fuji in the distance looking white and flat-topped, much like St Austell’s fly tips used to look. Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji similarly contains the mountain misty in the distance, with clouds and hazy landscapes looking suspiciously like the area around St Austell.
I did start illustrating them myself, then realised I had not the patience nor the skill involved, so I decided to try AI instead. The results aren’t great. I know technology moves fast, but it’ll be a while yet before it perfects what I had in mind: a mix of the beautiful simplicity of the Japanese prints with a bit of modernisation in the form of urban blight. No matter, fun to try, even if this technology is going to end up wiping us out, Terminator-style.
