You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘pattern’ category.
Treasures found pressed between the pages of an old sketchbook…
digital doodling pressed petal patterns…
(they remind me of these cyanotypes)
As September slides into October, heralding the rapid advance of autumn, here’s a quick round-up of the colours of my Dutch summer…
being away at peak seedling planting time meant no vegetable growing adventures for me this year, but my mini rock garden, and the allium bulbs I planted in the autumn last year, put on a very good show!
august mid-morning moon | laser 3.14‘s perceptive brand of street poetry
gira loves this beautiful blue shweshwe duvet cover (made by my super-talented mum)… i suspect it might be because he knows how good he looks on it :)
soft pink early morning views from the studio
leiden is rocking the pink too!
lotus @ hortus botanicus, leiden
gingko | venation
~ and you don’t get greens like those above, without a bit of the below ~
lush
flying things
street art in leiden | stained glass window designed by willem bogtman, haarlem, 1920’s (as seen at the ‘living in the amsterdam school: designs for the interior 1910-1930‘ exhibition at amsterdam’s stedelijk museum)
everyone loves the sun(flower)
rainbow cherry toms, ready for slow-roasting
blue-eyed visitor at my studio window | radiant brickwork, amsterdam
brick gables, haarlem | beautiful berries (buds? anyone know what this fascinating plant is?)
to the beach!
kite-flying | fallow deer grazing on the verdant dune grasses at zandvoort
grey is a colour too
au revoir summer!
~~~~ down to the water’s edge ~~~~
buffels bay, cape point, june 2016
We’ve been having a late-summer mini-heatwave here in Haarlem… so I’m cooling-off by revisiting some pics from a winter’s walk on my favourite beach. Buffels Bay, at the southern edge of Africa, is a very special place and I always try to make a pilgrimage to it when I’m ‘in the neighbourhood’. It’s also always a rich source of colour and pattern inspiration. These photos were taken on a moody, wild winter’s day (a great kind of day for a beach visit, imho!) in early June this year, but you can also see the bay – in all its brilliant blue glory – on a bright spring day here > …
graceful gull & cuttlefish bone
gelatinous, calcified(?), luminous
the blues
rugged rock pools | vibrant, variegated colonies
scanning the horizon
more than one way to get where you’re going…
sinuous kelp
life on mars
looking north towards the paulsberg, die boer and judas peaks
~~~~
looking south-southeast towards cape point, situated on the southerly edge of africa and sometime meeting place of the atlantic and indian oceans *
* Africa’s southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, ±150 kilometres east-southeast of Cape Point. The Indian and Atlantic oceans meet at the point where the warm Agulhas current meets the cold Benguela current – a point that apparently fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point
golden crown & bark of a quivertree
… these are a few of my favourite things.
And there was much opportunity for the gathering of these favourite things on our recent roadtrip across Namibia.
folded, rippled, wrinkled (fish river canyon, african elephant)
elephant petroglyph | subtle mineral colours, dolerite columns
purples, russets
fine forms, more mineral hues
black & white, circles & stripes
bone dry, desaturated
earthy harmonies, rounded rhythms
bright brandberg hills… and a mystery paint spillage in the desert
perfectly patterned, eminently engravable | ancient petroglyphs
desert car wreck… adorned
a decaying structure’s textures & patterns (goageb ghost town)
lines (looking up: hot air balloon cables,
looking down: wildlife highways & byways)
namib desert sands: infinitely intriguing colours, forms…
textures…
… and patterns
pleasing points (rondavel thatch, starling silhouette)
all these elements coalesce in the simplicity of a dead tree at dusk
a giraffe enjoys a mopane leaf snack
The road signs in Namibia will alert you to the possibility of wild animals crossing…
.. a lot!
And one should indeed take care…
… travelling “dead slow” when called upon to do so.
Hurrying your journey, as with many things in life, is ill-advised…
ground squirrels sharing a secret
… you might miss something hidden, something magical.
well camouflaged
[female steenbok | red-crested korhaan]
the strutting of stuff
[ostrich]
a proud kudu with his elegant harem
a southern pale chanting goshawk on the lookout for a tasty morsel | sociable weavers gather nesting material
red hartebeest chillin’ | black-faced impala playing
family time
[giraffes | blue wildebeest}
solo time
[burchell’s zebra (and a distant springbok) | blue wildebeest]
sweetwater, the stuff of life
[burchell’s zebra | springbok]
dassie sentry, keeping watch over the youngsters
(it’s hard to believe that the dassie’s closest living relative is the elephant!)
african elephants and a black-backed jackal in the golden hour
more warnings: warthogs and kudu crossing
Wishing y’all a wild weekend!
