Dreaming Spirals

Lots of diagonal movement this month…

And the reed heads had these purple flowers which will become the seed heads.

My sketchbook is progressing.  I have gessoed a lot of pages in preparation for painting and have also glued several together to make them thicker. Continuing my theme of shadows over bridges,  I inadvertently drew on one upside down so decided to turn it to my advantage. 

I cut out the offending page (the one shown on the left here) and glued down just the left hand side so that it opens up…

…. to reveal the other side of the page.  The page on the right is an inkjet transfer of the page I’ve sketched – I transferred it over a thermofax screened page.  I don’t think it is finished yet though….  Like a lot of the pages in my sketchbook, I’m sure I will keep adding to them.

This evening, I just added a layer to this page:

It is a railway line viewed through a chain link fence.  I have been wondering how to portray the fence for a while and tried to rust dye the grid from a disposable barbecue on to some polyester organza.  It rusted fine, but I got the negative pattern of diamonds rather than the positive one of a diagonal grid.  So I cut a stamp and stamped this.  I quite like the uneven look it gives.  I decided to continue it across the other side of the page as well and I might doodle a bit on this side.

I’m really enjoying this sketchbook and having a theme to stick to.  I think I work much better with parameters and a deadline.

And just up the road I saw this tree with the remains of an ivy stem around it, forming a grid.  I think that will be working its way into the sketchbook and maybe into a piece of art cloth eventually.  I’m starting to see grids and lines everywhere!

Oops, it’s August and I forgot to post pics of the July reeds, but I did take these photos in July, honest gov!

They had got much greener.

Strong diagonals:

Less of the wave like effect.  Or maybe I had to stand on tiptoe to see it…

This month I noticed the plants that grew next to (and above) the reeds much more:

Like this rose bay willow herb.

And sorrel.

And what was living on them!

A lot more green now.

Spring green….

The brown stems are still poking up but the new growth is catching them up…

And the sea of reeds from previous months is just a hazy mist outlining the path of the pill.

Very dead looking on the tops this month….

But quite a lot of green too, foreshadowing this year’s growth…

It still reminds me of waves

I love reading, and one of my favourite authors is Diana Wynne Jones.  She writes fantasy fiction, and on a recent re-read of Deep Secret, the following passage made me reflect…

Now I had been fascinated by the glass in the windows.  I remember it from when I was small.  It waves and it wobbles.  When you look out at the front – particularly in the evenings – you get a sort of cliff of trees and buildings out there, with warm lighted squares of windows, which all sort of slide about and ripple as if they are just going to transform into something else. ……With everything rippling and stretching, you almost think you’re seeing your way through to a potent strange place behind the city.

In our house we have two sets of front doors with a porch in between, and the inner set have gorgeous Victorian stained glass windows.   Well, I’m not sure if it is  the original Victorian glass or if that got blown out during the war, but the other day I hit on the idea of taking photos through them. 

   This is one of them.

And it worked!  But judge for yourself…

I particularly like this one – you can still make out the vague shapes but it is blurry enough to look like something else entirely.

This one just looks like a little picture within the one frame

And how about this through the red? 

This one looks very surreal!

This looks like the washing machine:)