14 September 2021

Drawing Tuesday - cosmos

The main meaning of "cosmos" is, well, the universe and everything that's in it. Which is hard to draw, or even summarise, in a couple of hours.

There's also the flower cosmos - sort of the quintessential flower - some petals, usually pink or red shades, also white; and then the yellow bit in the middle (pistils, stamens) -   with rather fine, feathery leaves.

Back to the universe - here's a proper definition of cosmos:
  1. the universe seen as a well-ordered whole.
    "he sat staring deep into the void, reminding himself of man's place in the cosmos" 
    • a system of thought.
      plural nouncosmoses
      "the new gender-free intellectual cosmos"

I like the astronomical aspects...happened on a Gresham Lecture by Carolin Crawford and got hooked. Out there, in the vastness of space ... it's not empty, there's an atom in roughly  every cubic metre. Stars are dying and being born. Metals are being made by atoms combining. Whew. 

Back on Earth, photographers are busy pointing their cameras up into the night sky and coming up with fantastic photos, such as this super-long exposure, which shows the star trails -


Here are some cosmic objects, described and pictured - 

The cosmic system has been shown in many and various diagrams, like this one  of the Big Bang -


Of course we could be imagining the whole thing! 



If so, we've been doing that for hundreds of years -



From Jo This is a strictly-from-memory one of me and my father in the 60's standing behind the man pressing buttons and moving the big dish outside the window at Jodrell Bank where they picked up radio signals from the cosmos. Crayon and felt-tips.



From Janet K - Not the cosmos but  a summery September morning in Clissold Park with Margaret, Jo and Sue.



From Sue K - Here’s my sketch done in Clissold park - not on a ‘Cosmos‘ theme - more looking long & hard at an old tree. It was a very hot day so, armed with sunhat & found a shady place to settle at.



From Carol - I started to think about cosmos in terms of how things exist in it, in space and time. My garden swing was full of dynamic movement and squeals of fun at the weekend, now in a state of stillness and quiet in the cosmos.



From Gill - A monoprint of how I imagine Cosmos to be.



From me - "Cosmos" relevance of this tree drawn in Clissold Park, such as it is, comes via that quote from Blake -
To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour.

The black marks are from an earlier use of this square sketchbook - on some pages they become part of the drawing - I ignore them and when revisiting the page  I might add marks to help incorporate them, or else use white acrylic to mute the black marks a bit.


 

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