word play

another quiet week...

I took the luxury of spending four days in the studio, working on some calligraphy ideas from a course I took a while back

trying all sorts of interesting techniques and ideas, taking photographs as I went

this one illumined one of those "happy accidents" that occur every now and again where two sections, done days apart, seem to come together to make a scene reminiscent of trees, a field and lines of grass

intrigued, I decided to have a play with the idea a bit...

thinking of a winter night by the river,  and wanting something not completely pictorial I settled on an upright slash of blue for the river, intersected with a full silver moon

a bank of trees on the right, using the words from the "Spell of the Yukon" beginning with:

"the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming

and the stars tumbled out neck and crop"

and continuing on from there 

as this was a "working out the ideas" piece I chose a fairly heavyweight cartridge paper but it buckled under the silver leaf sizing

other observations:

the band of the river is too wide for the size of the moon

I'd like the moon to have more interest - more texture perhaps and a crater or two

a bit of tweaking here and there with spacing and shape of the trees...

the ground needs to change

even with all that I'm very pleased and think there's good potential with this

so pleased in fact,  it spurred me on to try something else; a line of blue again, darker, and this time with the writing on top of it

I like it very much though I haven't settled on what to do with the rest of the space

and so the work on the large sheet progresses though I do want to try things that are little more involved

 it's all a bit out of my comfort zone so lots of trials and writing practice are happening, 

along with being on the lookout for any other interesting combinations or juxtapositions that happen on the page as I go

they do make for a nice side-step into further investigations

take care,

Jillayne