How do you gather your red, while waiting for the autumn in the lightless soil?
When the three a.m. air tells me the summer is near, I think of your bulbs, eavesdropping on the night.
This early summer, we are having sunsets in vivid magenta, frequently enough to surprise, amuse, worry – an earthquake premonition? – many of us over here.
Drawings in the photos – extended, drawn, traced – are for “Spider Lily Red”, the newest series of dyed garments.
me: You kidding.
flower: No, really. This is the look I’m after.
From Top:
Clunky patchy job extending the drawing, of a spider lily petal. For my “Spider Lily Red” series.
Clematis, one of the many crazy-blooming in the yard right about now.
Drying petals and stamens of Clematis, in macro.
“Dada Tote” that I’ve been working on.
Many ways to blossom. I would have never known how this tiny thing looks had I not macro-ed it this afternoon.
This recently-finished pencil drawing is to be a reference for a dye sample/swatch I’m gonna be working on next, that is for the newest of my Dyed Threads series, “Spider Lily Red” project. The line-oriented approach you see here is of me teaching myself a new trick, that I think would best capture the extreme curliness of the spider lily petals.
The said petals start out fairly straight-edged. As the blooming progresses however, they go into this full-on abstract free-form red wavy anarchy that feels more like a perfectly-choreographed theater. Petals themselves are quite tiny but hold within so much passion, that’s how I sense them anyways.
The project is gradually gaining momentum so swing by again when you get a chance.
Thank you for your visit.
Lately, much of my evenings I spend visiting fireflies.
Early summer rice fields, the plants are already at their full-height. They host a small family of the delicate insects come alive each evening as Twilight falls.
In the pitch dark their fluorescent yellow lights draw weightless lines visible only to my mind’s eye.
Flashing on, off, on, off….I stand amidst the invisible web of Organic Elegance and say to myself:
I get it, it’s that Pulse again!!
Just then in distance a Wave breaks one more time, with its most wholesome assertion Sea replies:
it’s our Heartbeat honey, yours and mine.
The Night then trembles, suspended in time.
Photos are of various beach finds and a dye test swatch for my “Spider Lily Red” series.
The last photo is of a new pencil drawing, incomplete, of a petal of the said lily, for the said series, trying something different from how I usually painted with dyes.
Additional note on April 10, 2019:
This post was originally titled as “Bounds melt. Time stands still.”.
For the reason I do not disclose (i.e. not that interesting to you) I removed this post from this site for a while.
I revived this under a new title and with revised text on April 09-10, 2019. The reason being:
The red lily petal dyed on a silk (the photo in the middle) was the first dye test for this project “Spider Lily Red”. I painted in the same way as all the previous Dyed Threads series (example). And it didn’t quite work.
The bottom drawing is what I came up with as the alternative. The rest of photos are the main sources of inspirations. The drawing – of the same petal, had progressed into 2 part series (references: drawing 1, and drawing 2) – are both completed now. I thought it would be kinda neat to show you how it all started.
Actual lilies, spider or otherwise, are long gone, but my study continues on.
Not that I planned it that way, but each spider lily drawings somehow brings out different characters of the blossom.
This is for a dyed piece I’ve been working towards tentatively called Spider Lily Top. For those of you who are here for the first time (welcome!), may I refer you to the previously dyed items here.
I am at the stage where I study the, in this case, quite complex shape of the subject. Until I can sort of ‘CAD’ it in my head. That’s my usual plan that is totally subject to change. Stay tuned.
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