I am sitting here in the sun and looking at a piece of chopped wood and thinking on how to translating inspiration to mark making.
The piece is beautifully adorned with deep lines, like a small animal has travelled in an unknown land. Some of the lines make up a tree with trunk and branches.
Some lines provide a background.
Some lines are on their way, and in my minds eye I see this long stretch of plain, filled with wavering grasses and perhaps a bird calling high above.
We travel, and we make marks along the way. Do they make a coherent picture, some continuity? Who knows?
The lines look a bit like linoprinting, a popular pastime when I was a child. Surface and depth. A print maybe? The contrasts are not so strong, the lines sort of blends into the grey/brown wood.
I see little pebbles of gravel/sand in the horisontal lines, they provide more texture. Could this be illustrated in yarn, a weaving?
On the other side of the piece of chopped wood the bark is still in place. So this is what we look like with our protection armor on. The other side shows a glimpse of the finer lines.
More beautiful pieces have surfaced as I sort the big pile out for winter. I wonder what kind of little animal makes these marks ? I have only seem them in Ash trees, can I find something about this?