Tapestries
Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I visited the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, Netherlands. If you ever visit the city and want to check out a museum, make it this one. They always have a wide variety of suprising artwork, things you just don't expect, and one of the expositions we saw really spoke to my imagination.
The exposition displayed a collection of tapestries. Woven art. From far off you might mistake them for paintings. But with these, the colour wasn't added later - it was designed into the fabric itself.
Pyrenean Panorama
One of the first tapestries on display was a piece almost eight meters wide, from the series 'Provinces and Cities of France', called 'The Pyrenees'. It's based on the work of landscape painter Edmond Yarz, who shows a romantic, perfect world, free of any traces of war and industrialisation.
Here is a detail:
Writing Challenge
'The Pyrenees' wasn't my favourite piece of the exposition. It was one of the older ones, with a very classical style. And I usually prefer weird worlds over romantic, perfect ones.
But looking at it made me want to describe landscapes. The tiny guy in blue, in that setting. The artist did a great job describing a world with coloured threads. Makes me want to try it with words. See if I can write something that gives the reader an experience of what it could be like, to be the tiny guy in blue.
The senses
In describing a setting, it's important to provide information for the different senses, giving the reader a feeling of 'really being there'. To use your words to show, not tell.
To challenge myself, and to stretch my creativity in describing a landscape, I'll give a go at writing up this scenery from different angles. Based on the different senses, providing information that only appeals to one sense at a time: visual, auditive, and sensory.
So, here we go!
Summer in the Pyrenees
Visual
His eyes are not on the animals, but on the mountain peaks and their glistening snow. The sun is high, the shadows are at their shortest. He doesn't need to look at the cows to know exactly where they are. The scorching rays of the sun reflect on the patches of white on their backs, like on pieces of a mirror. As long as the animals wander within range, he keeps a steady gaze. Always on the mountains, as if even the sight of snow will bring some relief on this midsummer day.
Auditive
The silence in the valley is heavy. It's the middle of the day, not a bird is singing. Even the buzzing of the bees has quieted down, satisfied as they already are by a morning's work of collecting rich, midsummer pollen. The only sound surrounding him is the familiar, lazy munching of the cows tugging at and slowly chewing the grass. And if he tries, if he really tries, he imagines he can hear the sound of melting snow and dripping ice coming up from the mountain peaks.
Sensory
There is no breeze. The sweat, collecting on his forehead, trickles down into his neck without giving any relief. The cows lazily swoosh their tales, in a minimal effort to keep the flies away. He takes off his shoes, hoping it'll give him some air. But the soil is burning, and the dry, prickly grass itches and stings the soles of his feet. If he could just dangle even the tips of his toes, even for five minutes, in the icy cold water running down from the snowy mountain tops. He would feel so rejuvenated.
Reflecting
That's an exercise I enjoyed! It's challenging to stick to just one sense at a time. Maybe using words like 'scorching' and 'glistening' for a visual description is already cheating a bit. Or maybe 'rich, midsummer pollen' is too sensory to be part of what someone can hear. Usually, combining information for multiple senses will probably increase the quality of a description. But for now, this was great for stretching my imagination.
I also noticed how, even from these different sense perspectives, I could convey a similar description. How the guy in blue, sweltering in the heat, tries to survive the day by thinking of the snow on the mountain tops beyond. Shows just how many options we have in telling our stories.
Want to try?
Interested in pushing the limits of your own writing skills? You could try giving us a description of the Pyrenean Forest from the bear's point of view, and use different sense perspectives to do so. I worked with sight, hearing and sense, but feel free to include taste and smell also!
Tag me, and I'll love to give some feedback on what I think worked well in your descriptions.
Hope you feel inspired to write!