Purple Cairn

Purple-cairn, originally uploaded by escher1.

Back to Heysham Head again today. Some of my previous day's scuplture was still there - the sticks had gone but the frame, although partly buried, remained. I had decided to build a cairn of fading colours and decreasing sized pebbles. It took a surprising amount of effort and also nearly took the longest time of anything I have made. To find enough of the same colour and size for each layer took ages, but was good exercise! I noticed that there were some rocks with a split colour between red/pink purple and yellow/white so I intended to fade from deep purple at the bottom to red and pink then use the split pebbles to fade into white. This took a lot of fiddling about, disassembling, reassembling, selection of different rocks and the discarding of many. I also worked hard on the shape of it to get it to look well formed and symmetrical. Once I had the split colour pebbles in place I then worked on the forming the top. This was even more difficult as the little pebbles just kept falling off again and again. More working on the shape and finally it was finished. I was 75% happy with it. It looked good from only one angle and didn't look right in the others. The split colour pebbles just didn't look quite right and in hindsight a straight demarcation between purple and white would have looked better, or indeed different coloured rocks with more colour changes. Unfortunately the most photogenic angle had the power station behind and the best angle was low down so it looms behind in the finished photo. It was a dull day so the colours do not come out well in the photo, I am quite disappointed with the result. The cairn did look good from a distance though and the fade looked quite striking. Next time I might try two or three cairns of the same colour. Maybe purple, a red one and pink one. I will definitely try another design again.