Harbinger

These are interpretations of some false colour images of C2012 S1 Ison, currently speeding it’s way towards the sun at 2 million miles a day, having entered our solar system for the first time.

comet-2-oil-pastel-on-tinted-paper
Seems a bit weird to draw something that is traveling that fast on an A4 sheet with just a few pastel strokes. Comets have been seen and recorded for centuries, sometimes spookily called harbingers of doom. Said to be an icy body that, when passing close to the sun, heats up and loses gases to form the “coma” and tail, sometimes visible without a telescope if bright enough.

With this blue version, adjusting the colour values of the scan resulted in this
cool 3d type effect… Something that might work well on a large scale, I settled for this modest size canvas
for now. Ison may never come back, but it’s just amazing to me that all this stuff is out there, beyond what we could ever hope to hold in our hands.
I once introduced a friend to vegetable gardening, walking in the woods, taking photographs, the pleasures of seeing, not just looking at nature. In her open minded and naive way she used to say “Isn’t nature great!” How right she was.

falsecolour-comet-acryliccomet-oil-pastel-on-tinted-paper

One thought on “Harbinger

  1. The first few remind me of ultrasound scans of a babe on the womb. Ancient ice and rebirth all in one.

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