Archimedes’ Light (version 1)

My goal here was to capture the flame. This image is part of a larger drawing I titled Tree Fish. The blue arch on the left side of this picture is part of what I imagined to be fish wrapped around a fruit hanging from something. I became enamored with the right side of Tree Fish because of the balloon or parachute form whimsically described in the lower portion of this illustration.

I titled this sub-piece as Archimedes’ Light because of the ghost like flame that arises from the crown of the balloon. I was thinking of a buoyant lighthouse that’s traveling through some larger alien structures floating in the air. I chose Archimedes as part of the title because Archimedes discovered the principle of the displacement of objects. For example, when you put a metal bearing into a container of water, its volume and mass displace the water so that it occupies a space that the water would otherwise occupy. There’s an equation for this displacement principle. You can research it further from the last link I provided if you want to.

The small balloon at the bottom of this image displaces the air that surrounds it, and is supported by the air as it buoyantly floats through it. Imagine Archimedes is traveling on this balloon and he has a light that penetrates the density of the atmosphere as he devises a path to take between the larger bodies and structures near by. You can imagine yourself as Archimedes, or you can imagine that you’re traveling with him as you both do research into the fascinating, mysterious, and alien universe that surrounds you.

The minimal, whimsical approach I took in making this piece consisted of alcohol and water based markers applied to paper. I used acetone to cause some bleeding for the alcohol based markings, and I used water to make the water based markings to ripple smoothly across the ambient spaces. The dark blue is water based, and the light blue and reds are alcohol based markers.