The colour of fog

Seasonal mists. Woodcut. Colour

Graveyard season, woohoo.

I regret forgetting to see the bats before I went on holiday, because I knew there wouldn’t be many by the time I got back. My brother was outraged by this fact, as if he had been lied to all these years. Everyone knows bats hibernate, but hallowe’en is still bedecked with bat decorations. I don’t mind, I like the buy them at a discount in November.

Having said that, I’ve seen the pips about as late as November, popping out for a snack if it’s warm enough, but even then they stay close to the hibernation roost. I count one pipistrelle near the chestnut trees, and one in the woods. There’s another bat too, high up. I can’t hear it.

The glow of traffic works though a veil of fog and steam from the dung heap. Spooky.

Halloween was satisfyingly foggy. I couldn’t see the ghost of the grey heron haunting the lake shore or cormorants in the dead tree if I wanted to. Even the lights from the mansion are barely visible. It’s nearly a new moon, so it is dark as well. Modern people do not understand darkness, proper darkness where you wait for your eyes to adapt and they just .. don’t. There’s no light to glean. Someone asked once in a Buddhist group why it was traditional for the holidays to be celebrated on full moon nights. There are lots of esoteric reasons modern people put onto meeting at the full moon, but it was mostly so you could see.

The lake is silent except for the bickering of moorhens, because it is not near a winter roost. March seems a long time away. I sit alone enjoying the melancholy for some time, until a single bat flies past. I can hear it this time, but I don’t recognise the sound. That mystery bat again. It’s more intriguing if he says a mystery, I think, and I turn off my bat detector for the last time this year.

Workings

Despite my firmest of resolutions, there has not been much progress this week. My printer died due to haunting, so I was late getting orders out. I don’t know what it’s called when a printer inhales paper, but mine doesn’t do that anymore.  It eats paper and screams. So a lot of energy went into trying to placate it, before wanging it into oblivion and buying another.

Other than lending this tool, giving some basic instructions and a spare sheet of practice ply, I have had no part in this.

Secondly, my son arrived home from school with a box of powercut tools and a sheet of plywood with a complex design drawn on; apparently his teacher decided that the texture of woodcut would work best for this particular piece, so my son has confidently brought it to me so I could teach him this holiday. This might’ve been sensible; from the state of the hangito knife (not good) I don’t think his teacher really knows much about woodcut, but then, neither do I.

Thankfully I know Laura Boswell has so excellent videos which I recommend you look up if you ever fancy having a bash at woodcut, or you happen to find yourself in a position where you need to do an impromptu woodcut demonstration. I am also beyond grateful to my friend Sami Teasdale; years ago she sent me some linocut tools she longer used, which included a hangito tool. I’ve never used it, but have faithfully kept sharp and in good order waiting for just such a GCSE art crisis.

Did it look like this? You’ll never know, because I need a new phone.

The only thing I’ve really managed to do for myself is this tiny watercolour sketch of Swindon in the rain. We went on one of my husband’s ill fated short walks, so found ourselves hours later in the dark and rain, walking next to a patch of fog approximately the size and shape of a small shrub, which seemed like an eldritch threat because fog shouldn’t have a shape, it should be everywhere. Anyway, we survived, and the only bonus was Swindon looked quite nice through the mist and rain and hogweed. I took a picture, but as my phone is still broken (I’ve dropped it a few more times since last week and it hasn’t knocked any sense into it)the picture was a lot more abstract than I remembered and I had to recreate the scene from memory.

Findings

I mentioned in passing at the start of the year, that the best colour car to spot on a long journey with small children is green. It occurs often enough to be satisfying, but not often enough they get bored. None of my family are small children, yet I have now found myself in the world’s longest game of green car. I’m even getting text messages with pictures of green cars; in the modern age, you don’t even have to be on the same journey.

Also, things have changed since my brothers were small and green cars were land rovers, or racing green sports cars or minis. Not only are there more green cars now, there are a lot more shades of green car. It’s causing arguments… when is a car green, and when is it yellow? (grello car is its whole own game now) I’ve seen browny-green cars, grey green, blue green, mint, and in one very unfortunate instance, a colour I can only describe as breastfed newborn with a terrible stomach infection.

It also got me wondering why some colours have names, and others do not. There is turquoise and teal for bluey greens, but there is no common equivalent for yellow greens or browny greens (possibly because they are vile). We don’t have a word for light blue, but light red is pink. Our language shapes our perception in this way; ask anyone what colour the robins breast is- they will say red*, even though we have the word orange now. Historically though, red and orange were the same colour. Red kite, red squirrel, red haired people. The ancient Greeks didn’t have blue; blue might be a shade of green, or black. We think colour is a basic unit of stuff, taught as some of our first words in bright books; we learn to sing a rainbow but as with all words, they are constructs.

I’ve been reading The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, which was a gift. I don’t think I would have bought it for myself. I don’t think I would have thought that the origins of different dyes and shades would be interesting, but they are. The closest colour in the book to grello seems to be lead-tin yellow, a popular pigment around 15th-17th centuries that for some unknown reason, people just forgot about. Forgot how to make it. Didn’t know about it until we had the technology to analyse paint in old artworks. How weird is that?  The actual colour of the pigment varies depending on the temperature it’s heated to, and lead-tin yellow is a mouthful, so the shade will evermore be grello in this house. I might have to click the link in the colour section of this weeks six things to see if that book has a better name.

As ever, this is a free publication, feel free to bung me a small amount to help support it if you have a few bob spare (Substack doesn’t seem to have a tip jar, so I have a link to a site called Ko-fi) and make sure to have some fun this week x

*I mean, unless they are like me, then you’ll get an interesting speech on the naming of colours.