2024 52 Card Project: Week 9: Doldrums
Mar. 8th, 2024 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI had a hard time thinking of what this week's collage should be about because, on the surface, nothing much happened. I went to even fewer places than I usually do: I didn't go to Gigi's Cafe on Thursday night. I didn't go to church for Lenten supper on Wednesday or to services on Sunday. I exercised very little.
Frankly, all I wanted to do was to lie on the couch and read. No, 'wanted' is an insufficient term to describe the feeling. It was an overwhelming urge.
I checked my Goodreads stats: as of today, I've read 83 books, 25,000 pages, since January 1.
I mean, I read a lot. I know that. But...that seems like A LOT.
This is the fourth year that I've been doing this collage project, and as I was trying to come up with the subject of the week, out of curiosity, I went back and checked previous years. Interestingly, I seemed to be in a very similar state of mind at this point of the year for the past two years. Torporish. Insular. Inward-looking. Perhaps slightly depressed, and channeling all my attention to reading.
It's helpful to know that I have emerged from it in the past. Doubtless, I will emerge from it again.
It wasn't until I finished the card that I realized that this was another nautically-themed collage. For the fourth week, when talking about grief, I wrote about Shipwreck.
This card is about the doldrums, the term that sailors use for a portion of the sea around the equator where ships can get stuck for weeks at a time. The sea currents and the winds stop, and ships simply drift in the becalmed waters. Sailors have to bear the boredom (and sometimes a slowly growing unease, due to the fear that they might be stuck there so long their water and food supplies will run out).
What I learned doing this collage: I was dissatisfied with my first attempt, because the color of the three elements I used in it (the sea, the book, and the woman) didn't look as if they went together. One was blue, one was yellowish, and one was brown-tinted. I tinkered with the color balance of the book and the women, but I couldn't quite figure out the process of adjusting color through the photo editor on my computer.
But then it occurred to me to identify the colors of the sea image with an online hex picker tool and then use another online tool to adjust the color tints in the other two images to match. I'm pleased with the results.
Image description: Background: a blurred surface of the sea. Foreground: over it floats an open book. In the center of the book, over the spine, a figure of a woman sleeps in clouds, as if emerging from the book. Lower center over the book is another woman, in the same blue tints as the sea, again, lying on her side with her eyes closed, dreaming, cushioned by clouds.
Doldrums
Click here to see the 2024 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.
Frankly, all I wanted to do was to lie on the couch and read. No, 'wanted' is an insufficient term to describe the feeling. It was an overwhelming urge.
I checked my Goodreads stats: as of today, I've read 83 books, 25,000 pages, since January 1.
I mean, I read a lot. I know that. But...that seems like A LOT.
This is the fourth year that I've been doing this collage project, and as I was trying to come up with the subject of the week, out of curiosity, I went back and checked previous years. Interestingly, I seemed to be in a very similar state of mind at this point of the year for the past two years. Torporish. Insular. Inward-looking. Perhaps slightly depressed, and channeling all my attention to reading.
It's helpful to know that I have emerged from it in the past. Doubtless, I will emerge from it again.
It wasn't until I finished the card that I realized that this was another nautically-themed collage. For the fourth week, when talking about grief, I wrote about Shipwreck.
This card is about the doldrums, the term that sailors use for a portion of the sea around the equator where ships can get stuck for weeks at a time. The sea currents and the winds stop, and ships simply drift in the becalmed waters. Sailors have to bear the boredom (and sometimes a slowly growing unease, due to the fear that they might be stuck there so long their water and food supplies will run out).
What I learned doing this collage: I was dissatisfied with my first attempt, because the color of the three elements I used in it (the sea, the book, and the woman) didn't look as if they went together. One was blue, one was yellowish, and one was brown-tinted. I tinkered with the color balance of the book and the women, but I couldn't quite figure out the process of adjusting color through the photo editor on my computer.
But then it occurred to me to identify the colors of the sea image with an online hex picker tool and then use another online tool to adjust the color tints in the other two images to match. I'm pleased with the results.
Image description: Background: a blurred surface of the sea. Foreground: over it floats an open book. In the center of the book, over the spine, a figure of a woman sleeps in clouds, as if emerging from the book. Lower center over the book is another woman, in the same blue tints as the sea, again, lying on her side with her eyes closed, dreaming, cushioned by clouds.
Click here to see the 2024 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 08:30 pm (UTC)K.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 10:22 pm (UTC)I feel I have failed in my torpor, though, since I did not read 83 books.
P.