Wednesday 1 May 2019

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

When I first learned that this was our theme I initially felt a bit despairing as nothing came immediately to mind except Paul Newman on his bicycle and the song in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, but luckily we have a whole quarter and I started to really enjoy thinking about it.

Once I'd got Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head out of my head it quickly got replaced with Chopin's Raindrop prelude, which is a beautiful piece of music evoking the kind of lovely, peaceful, heavy, but gentle rain you sometimes get (except where I live, where as more often than not it is accompanied by a high wind and coming at you horizontally).

I thought of rain falling on greenery, on a still dark day, and so eventually I settled on the idea of rain falling on a pond and its surrounding plant life.  Since the raindrops also had to be falling on someone's head I added a frog, who is making the most of the wet.  The pond is surrounded with marsh marigolds, water forget-me-nots and rushes. The rain drops are creating rings on the shiny dark surface of the water and there are fish below.


I used a new-to-me technique to create the water, and place the fish below the surface, by sewing a piece of gauze over them.  You can see more photos and read further details on my blog.






14 comments:

  1. I love this piece. It's vey dimensional with the different layers and especially the shadow under the leaves and rings in the water. I also think you've captured a most beautiful sense of animation in your frog and fish. Your frog really looks as if he might leap at any moment and your fish really seem to be swimming about :)

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  2. What a lovely peek into the corner of a watery world. I pulled gauze from my stash to do something similar on my piece and now, seeing yours, I wish I had :)

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    1. That would have been over egging the pudding! :-)

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  3. Beautiful. Very peaceful and makes me want to go listing to Chopin now!

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  4. Catherine, this piece glows with the wonder of life. I love he larger shapes and lack of detail which enhances a sense of the movement. Just lovely.
    Smiles, Maureen

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  5. I love the ripples in the water. It is so easy to place myself in this little world. That there are only a few drops tells me that it isn't raining very hard, that I could gladly be outside sitting by this pond edge, peacefully watching the fish and the frog.

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  6. You created a calm peaceful moment, maybe at the end of a shower. The details in the leaf veins, the flowers and the frog’s eye make it a stand out. A lovely interpretation.

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  7. Your stitches give such definition and dimension. I’m very interested in finding about the water technique.

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