Three delightfully creepy photos of roots in jars - my avocado pits of course, but these photos remind me of a really creepy museum my art school friends and I used to visit in the later half of the 70s to make drawings of weird curiosities in jars lined up in vitrines. I think of it often, but I'm not sure which museum it was; I remember it being quite close to the art school in Lauriston Place. There were some fairly gruesome things there, which seemed to glow with an unearthly light in the dim halls. I recently tried to discover more about the museum, and I think it may have been the Surgeons' Hall in Nicholson Square - although nowadays it looks so big and bright and posh I can't imagine a bunch of scruffy art students being let in to sketch the exhibits!
I have been planning to make some work based on the beautiful ice patterns which formed on our garden table back in early December, but I've been finding it difficult to find a way of approaching it. The photos I took at the time were too mystifying and I couldn't make out what was going on, so I took the decision to begin with tracing a photo I took that morning on my iPad to get to the bottom of it - an unusual decision for me.
At first I hadn't a clue what I was doing. I hardly ever work with tracings and it felt odd and uncomfortable, but I soon got into it. I do a lot of drawing on iPad for my illustration work, so it shouldn't have been that strange, it was just the different mental set which took a little while to adjust to. As the drawing went along, I soon got into a rhythm and began to recognise patterns.
At this stage I only wanted to draw what I could see, sticking to the facts and not making anything up - truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and I couldn't have invented the forms I discovered.
Working so close up I discovered many of the systems seen in plant growth: branching, feathering, bifurcation and repetition. There are most likely fractals, too, which the phone camera couldn't pick up.
As I worked, I found that what looked like wheat ears at first glance (forming the 'stems') were in fact like spinal columns, along with flowers blooming, crystalline explosions, and heavenly skies in monochrome, together with feathered Paisley patterns.
The next stage is to print the traced drawing - I'm curious to see how an image created in Procreate in my accustomed 2048x2048px format prints anyway - what physical size, how the resolution works, etc. I think I may be able to work from the print on semi-opaque Japanese paper.
At this stage I only wanted to draw what I could see, sticking to the facts and not making anything up - truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and I couldn't have invented the forms I discovered.
Working so close up I discovered many of the systems seen in plant growth: branching, feathering, bifurcation and repetition. There are most likely fractals, too, which the phone camera couldn't pick up.
As I worked, I found that what looked like wheat ears at first glance (forming the 'stems') were in fact like spinal columns, along with flowers blooming, crystalline explosions, and heavenly skies in monochrome, together with feathered Paisley patterns.
The next stage is to print the traced drawing - I'm curious to see how an image created in Procreate in my accustomed 2048x2048px format prints anyway - what physical size, how the resolution works, etc. I think I may be able to work from the print on semi-opaque Japanese paper.
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