black and blue

inside days again this past week so more time to work with and learn about some of my art materials

working with indigo and charcoal, making marks, adding water, drops of ink

the swish of a brush and the scratch of a pencil

working on a large piece of cartridge paper that after a satisfying 30 minutes of trying this and that looked like a complete mess of awful

fun to do but disappointing to look at

the next step was to turn the paper over and rip it up - that wasn't hard to do at all!

surprisingly, when I flipped the remains over, there were a few that pleased me greatly

in isolation, the marks took on a new dimension and what was overlooked before took centre stage

this one intrigued me greatly... that tangle of dark

the one below became a landscape right in front of my eyes... stormy sky, wind-swept plain with a small hill... dark shadows on the land and lightning bolts - bold cracking ones high in the sky and a delicate one, straight down to the earth

sheets of rain

the first one again, turned on it's side

and then this 

making indigo watercolour paint, mulling it for ages and when all I could scrape from the plate was in a watercolour pan, I did one last spin with the muller and then stamped it on a piece of paper

little interesting things that kept me busy for a few days