We spent a week in Tromsø at the end of October and were blessed with lots of cold clear weather. The days were short, the sun was always very low and so we saw lots of colours that you never get here in South Africa. This lone birch was standing by a part frozen lake with icy mountains beyond. It had lost all of its leaves and the mix of blues, grey, white, black and brown was exquisite.
It inspired me to start working with mirroring and multiple layering to try and evoke the colour palette I was seeing. I did a lot of this work using Adobe Photoshop Mix – a new process for me to learn – and I’m really pleased with the results. Nordic Noir 1 illustrates how I started with the one image and then produced ever more complex symmetrical overlays. The contrasting blues, peaty browns and grey really catch the Arctic light and landscape.
The second panel takes one underlying geometrical theme from Nordic Noir 1 and produces a wonderfully rich variety of colour combinations. I’ve never worked with this range of colours before and I can’t wait to print these images.
Sun Downer Blogs 
Leave a Reply