Monday
A visit to Martha, the Rock Lady, who gave me another ‘sweety’ – a lovely piece of crumbling silt stone that makes a great ochre pigment
Over the years my collection of these pigments has grown substantially – all containing different amounts of iron oxide.. In 2019 I made a colour chart, which is currently in the Ness summer exhibition The Ness: Its People at Maeshowe Visitor Centre
My plans to use pigments in the next film are shaping up and include trying for some animation of the marks being made.
Back to Structure 8 with the decision to concentrate on people.
First a watercolour of Ray, one of the long term volunteers, working by one of the hearths, plus a drawing of that hearth for context.
Then two more: recording data with GPS
and cleaning the structure in preparation for photography.
Tuesday
My last day on site, and the heat wave in England has finally reached Orkney with a morning of sunshine and temperatures a pleasant 19°. This brought out some very stylish hats.
I continued to concentrate on the people in Structure 8 in both drawings
and watercolour.
Eventually the sky turned dark and the clouds asked to be painted.
And then of course it rained – great big drops followed by thunder..
Tomorrow I will say goodbye to the archaeologists and head back south. It has been all too brief this year but I have a good amount of material to work on in my studio – and there is always next year…
