Wow! This beautiful, colourful photo takes my breath away. To finally see inside my rock experiments via the microscope, this close up, is just amazing! And there is so much to take in.
The revelation of natural crystal structures under polarised light shows a multitude of intricate, intertwined shapes and colours. And, incredibly, these change when the specimen slide is moved. As light filters through the translucent rock section, it refracts and reflects to show varying colours according to mineral content. It reminds me very much of the kaleidoscope I had as a child and is just as mesmerising too!
This is a whole new world for me to investigate. As I begin to understand the visible changes I’ve made to the rock’s natural state, I will experiment further and continue to follow wherever it leads me next. This long photo is from a different part of my section and shows the incredible variations in just one slide.
For now I’m getting excited about exploring ideas and today I’ve started with painting. Working quickly with larger brushes on a small scale, I’m just trying to be impactful with shape and colour, not detail. Many works will result for quite some time to come I feel, it will be a long while before I exhaust the countless possibilities!
From studies like these come paintings, so building a collection of them to develop and draw ideas from is extremely worthwhile. Some may not be taken any further, however the act of making them is both valuable to me and rewarding.
These last two photos (below) are from some of my thicker specimens, just magnified not polarised. Still hugely interesting, even ‘space like’ in appearance adding yet another interesting dimension!
