folded woods in January

I’ve not been able to get to the village hall painting group this month due to a succession of horrible colds in the head and a lingering cough, so once my head cleared a bit I took strips off my lovely roll of cartridge paper and worked on some folded books.

I made myself go to the writing outside sessions despite the feebleness encroaching –

the first one was on the shingle ridge at Cley in a bright sunny gale. I found a nest of marram grass clumps sheltered from the forty mile an hour north westerly wind and was overawed by the brightness of sun and reflection of light in the flooded marsh after a very high tide.

as well as the piece of writing, a piece of stitching resulted, on a strip of old wool blanket, in the same form as the tsunobokuro bags we made in Orkney

it’s still waiting for plant material and a bundling.

winter skies dominate here, particularly on the coast.

coming back to watercolour and paper, after the writing outside session in the wood last week –

looping branches, bark texture, leaf-litter, light, colour, all inspired the large painting, which folded down into a book.

I’m also using them as notebooks out on the walks we do. this one is folded from a strip of the paper underfoot in our improvised studio in Orkney, so all the paint on it is actually contributed by the group.

I’m finding the separate interstices of this type of book really inspiring for making these sorts of notes.

I bought a set of kid’s rubber stamp letters and made text in the book folded from the painting in the first image, words and phrases taken from what I wrote after walking in the woods last week.

you would have to be very clever to make this quite crude alphabet come out looking like properly printed text. I like the way it jumps up and down and some letters are bigger than others. lack of control is good.

today was very misty

it thickened as we walked down to Bale wood, and I just caught this photo as the sun almost came out again. in the etherial light there was a curlew calling, shadowing us as we walked up the green lane, behind the hedge.

4 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.