Did you know that dragonflies fly!
So when life finally takes a breath, I am my own woman once more and I do frivolous things.
Yesterday I pootled down to the creek. It delights me. We have had the most beautiful rain. The creek has been up and settled back down to a clear bubbling flow, over the rocks and sand. I took my sketchbook to take in the sights and see what appealed. It felt good to lean lazily against a tree. There was an amazing flutter of dragonflies and Butterflies whizzing above the water. I had a crack at drawing them.
Drawing
Well………………..have you ever tried to draw dragonflies from life? They pause for a tiny moment and then whizz off somewhere else. I ended up with a sketchbook full of dynamic scribble. My eyes could see but my processing speed was much slower than the dragonflies. ‘Which bit goes where – what shape is that? Oh it’s gone’!
It made me feel alive. In his book “Understanding Comics” Scott Mcloud talks about the vocabulary of comics. He goes into and fun and fascinating detail on how we use icons and symbols as a visual language that our brain understands. My pottery has always featured dragonflies and butterflies as no more than an icon. Trying to capture their graceful energetic movement over the creek on a sunny day made me realize how much there is to convey and how inadequate my attempts. But how much fun!
Or photographs?
Today I decided sensibly to try and take some photos to help me with the understanding.
Well………………………………….. have you ever tried to take a photo of a dragonfly flying??? I have thousands of photos of very clear grass with very blurry little spots in front! And 2 or 3 clear but tiny dragon fly photos! The camera was slower than my eyes.
Even this process increased my fascination. One particulary large dragonfly was my target as he consistently flew up and down the same 5 metre track. I had no idea but can tell from the couple of photos I did get that their front and back wings move separately and are off set to each other ??? What was the aim of this consistent loop? Then the sun went behind a cloud and all activity suddenly stilled. What were they doing that made the sun necessary? Facsinating! I sketched some more and will keep trying to capture that energy!
