Photoshoot: Rainbow Bracelet

The rainbow bracelet was designed as a simple introduction to peyote stitch pattern and can be found free in this blog post. It was intended to show support for our keyworkers during this time of lockdown and difficulty around the world. It's easy to focus on the NHS, but they were not alone in their efforts.


My husband works at our local hospital and I have included a badge he wears on his uniform. These were distributed as part of the Rainbow Badges Initiative which aims to promote inclusion with a focus on LGBT+ community. The programme was begun by the Evelina London Children's Hospital and has been adopted by many hospitals across the country.


The set of elephants was purchased at the Japanese Garden in St Mawgan. We went a couple of years back on a really hot day and it was such a cool and peaceful treat to wander around. I adored the shop and this set of elephants was one thing we brought. It was a dull day when I took this photo and they are not catching the light as normal. They are made from recycled aluminium and then enamelled by a fair trade company called Namaste in India. They are sold individually but I wanted a herd, because elephants belong together, well, the lady elephants and young do. They live together on a shelf, traveling together.


The little glass dish was I think from Ikea and is full of skittles whose slogan is taste the rainbow. It's a cheat but we don't have many rainbow coloured things. I also love sugar way too much. Skittles did a limited edition a while back where they made white skittles in white packs for pride. I would have brought some but there was no way! I am allergic to orange and I pick out all the orange sweets and give them to other people. If I can not tell which ones are orange, that gets a little tricky!

The lack of rainbow items is why I made a rainbow out of lego. Lego is great and I really enjoy playing with it. I have a basic classic set and a bunch of minifigures. Growing up we had a whole tub of lego and my Mum kept it for any children that visit to play with. It's amazing what you can create with basic blocks and a bit of time. Olafur Eliasson created a magnificent city for the In Real Life exhibition at the Tate Modern I went to. You could then go and work on the city and change it. There was a huge queue to do this and people were not getting bored and leaving very quickly! We watched from above... It was amazing what people were doing! It would have been great to see how it actually changed over time.

 

The three little dishes were brought in the old town of Lisbon. We had been to the Castle (Castelo de Sao Jorge) and walked back down the hill through Alfama, popping in a few shops with a visit to Lisbon Cathedral and the Miradouro de Santa Luzia. We have a dish and a bowl as well and I hope to expand our set of these lovely pieces as I adore their bright colours. None of the bowls are the same size but with this style, I think they look great, all mis-matched. They are just so cheerful. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the shop. I have tried looking on street view but we were wondering a little aimlessly.


The card was brought for me by my husband and I love it very much. I think he got it from Tesco but looking online for Rainbow Sheep card, it looks like it can be brought on Amazon and from Hallmark. It's such a great image. I really like sheep, they are pretty cool, and wool is a great material to work with. They do have an image of following the crowd though but this image makes the point that you can be a glorious individual while still being part of a group. Being true to yourself is so important, but it does not mean you have to stand alone.

Such great themes from these things for the rainbow!

And you thought you knew about rainbows?

The more I read about rainbows, the more there seems to be to learn. I know I have seen rainbows with secondary rainbows but beyond that, I had not really paid attention or realised how much more there was. Next time I see a rainbow I am going to hope I am not driving and that I can have a good look for all of these things...

Here is some more information about rainbows!

The primary rainbow is often the brightest one that you can see. The area inside the rainbow will be lighter and the area outside will be darker, because of the way in which the water in the atmosphere directs the sunlight.

It's not uncommon to see a fainter second rainbow when conditions are particularly good and the rainbow appears bright. The second rainbow will actually have it's colours in reverse to the primary rainbow and will be broader than the primary rainbow. In between the two rainbows it may be possible to see a dark band, called Alexander's Band, which is an area of unlit sky.

It would be possible to have a third or fourth rainbow but these would be dimmer and broader and very hard to see outside of the lab. If they are visible, they will be seen looking towards the sun rather than away from it. When there is a rainbow, the sun may also have an extra glow to it. This is easiest to see when the sun is already close to the horizon and red or orange.

Sometimes there are additional bands of light within a rainbow called supernumary rainbows. They are green pink and purple fringes, most visible at the top of the bow. If they are visible on a secondary rainbow, they will be on the outside.

If a rainbow forms over water, it is also possible for a reflection rainbow to form. This is where sunlight reflected off the water also creates a rainbow and they often appear to be at quite odd angles compared to the other rainbows formed from the non-reflected light.

You can also get reflected rainbows where they appear as a reflection in water beneath the rainbow, but the water has to be extremely flat!

You can also get a twinned rainbow where the primary rainbow appears to split in to two. This is definitely not supernumary bows as they have rainbow colours. They are pretty rare and you can see some pictures here.

I have collected some photos on pinterest!

Relative Rainbows

One very hot day, my husband and I made plans to go to the beach early to swim. As we got to the coast we realised there was fog hugging the coastline. We decided to go and swim any way. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. The fog was thick but only created a thin layer above the sea. This meant we were bathed in sunlight and blue sky from above but visibility was very low. Across the water, the foghorn called and we could see car headlights on the nearby headland. The water was crystal clear with barely a ripple of waves. We could see tiny fish and even a tiny bright purple jellyfish. We also discovered the fog bow.

We had no idea it was even a possibility but light can produce the same bow shape in fog. The only difference is the bow is completely white, earning it another name, the white rainbow. Apparently they actually do have colours but they are very weak because the water droplets are so tiny. At sea, fog bows were also known as sea-dogs and when seen from above from aircraft they are called cloud bows.

The more I started to read about rainbows, the more I realised that there ae actually a few variations to the rainbow...

When the light of the moon is particularly strong, it can form a moonbow in the same way as the sun forms a rainbow. They are much fainter and harder to see than rainbows, so sometimes appear white as the eye can not pick out the colours. In order to see a moonbow, the sky needs to be very dark and the moon very bright and low in the sky. Water droplets need to be present in the air in the same way as with a rainbow.

If a rainbow occurs at sunset or sunrise, it may appear more red coloured and is known as a redbow. This is because when the sun is at a low angle in the sky it has further to travel through the atmosphere and the blue and green wavelengths of light are more easily scattered, leaving the red and yellow wavelengths.

It is also possible for rainbows to form from water droplets in other situations, such as from dew, sea spray. Dewbows are small, white and always seen as circular. Sea spray bows look very similar to rainbows but have a slightly smaller radius than a rainbow. Sometimes the spray is actually caused by whales or dolphins!

I have not seen a moonbow, redbow or dewbow myself but I have seen bits of rainbow in sea spray, just not from the blowhole of a whale or dolphin. Going to keep looking! I have collected together some pictured on pinterest though....

Creating Rainbows

It's hard to experience a rainbow up close.  The viewer is an important part of the creation of a rainbow.  The rainbow itself is port of the positional relationship between the viewer, the sun and rain, as you move, so the rainbow moves too.  There is no reaching the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, ever.  We can gain glimpses of the rainbow though, we just can not walk through those giant sky arches of colour.  

Waterfalls make rainbows and you can recreate the splitting of light in to the spectrum using a prism, or glass cut at the right angles.   Many people place cut glass crystals in their windows to bring little rainbows in to a room (I need this in my life).  Bevelled edges to a pane of glass can have the same effect.  My hairdressers have bevelled edges to their mirrors and I love the little rainbows that appear round the room in the right light.  On a smaller scale, I have a few pieces of jewellery I have made using Swarovski crystals that throw off multicoloured sparkles on sunny days as I drive.  

You can get closer to experiencing a rainbow though...  I was lucky enough to visit Olafur Eliasson's exhibition, "In Real Life" at the Tate Modern in London last year.  It's not often I go to London, but my husband was determined to finish the Ride London and I went to the exhibition in the morning, before watching him finish the ride in the afternoon.  He was a new artist to me but reading about him, he immediately appealed as he very much takes science and nature and brings them in to the art world.

Part of the exhibition was Rainbow Assembly where a fine mist and projected light allows you to experience a rainbow.  It was beautiful and ephemeral.  Also...  wet...  There were not very many adults playing in it.  I of course went in and it was beautiful.  Also... very hard to photograph!  Luckily this article features many exquisite photos and a lovely video.  There is also a VR experience available via the app Acute Art X but I couldn't get it to work as I don't think my internet is fast enough, also, I don't have a VR Headset.  If you manage to use this, I would love to know what you think!  

How much of experiencing a rainbow is about the colour of it all rather than the wet experience?Another rainbow installation by Olafur Eliasson is situated ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark where he won an opportunity to revitalise the roof space of the museum.  The result is a stunning landmark that I would love to experience in person but the photos in this beautiful article go some way to conveying the experience.  The viewer is able to enter a ring on top of the roof with glass sides and walk round, experiencing a 360 degree view of the city.  Each panel of glass though, is a different colour of the spectrum, giving the installation it's name, Your Rainbow.

Light is an important part of a rainbow, after all, the colours are light, divided up into the different colours of light according to their wavelength.  The way I always thought of it, it's like white light is made of a whole bunch of strings, all different colours, and those strings are in the shape of waves, moving through space.  Waves like how a snake moves.  They travel through air just fine, but glass is a little bit like water to them, it gives a little resistance, slows them down.  If they go back out of glass into air, but they hit the glass at an angle, it gives a little drag on the last part of them to leave the glass, throwing their straight path off just a tiny fraction.  The wavelength for each colour varies the wavelength is what effects how long they are affected by the drag of the glass, so some turn more than others and this results in the splitting of the light into the spectrum.  

The same effect happens when light goes into the glass from the air, its like the wave hits treacle on one side first and that slide slows a little, turning slightly.  The prism has sides at different angles and the effect is applied to the light twice, spreading the light out twice, emphasizing the effect.  There are so many water droplets in the air when a rainbow forms, and each one acts like a tiny prism.  This graphic on pinterest illustrates it really well.

I am not the only one to see the different colours as strings. Gabriel Dawe is an artist who uses string in his Plexus installations, many of which feature a spectrum of rainbow colours.  They often give the illusion of colour dispersing, as the density of threads decreases.  In galleries, they are often displayed to catch the light in a provocative way.  I just want to touch them...  I also like his relics series, where he takes the left over threads and places them in plexiglass boxes.  You can even buy some left over threads in a glass pendant and they are very beautiful.  I have a jar which is part full of bits of thread and I love how it looks.  My pieces are much shorter though and the effect is very different.  It adds a different dimension to the rainbow, texture.  

Texture takes us further from the rainbow though, because rainbows don't have texture.  Light illuminates texture.  We see texture by the way in which light bounces off a surface but light itself has no texture.  Glass and water are great for conveying a rainbow, because light can travel through them and texture does not need to be included as they can be completely smooth.  You can create a rainbow in water with sugar and water soluble food colouring.  Carrying layering the colours without mixing creates a coloured column, although the colours will slowly blend.  

Many glass artists have created more permanent rainbows on all scales from tiny beads to giant windows and other installations.  Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral has a Lantern Tower set with a rainbow of stained glass.  I visited the cathedral many years ago and the memory of that amazing window has stayed with me.  If you get the chance, go and have a look because photos can not truly capture it, because you can only see one section at a time.

Rainbow Church by Tokujin Yoshioka was inspired by the windows at the Chapelle du Rosaire and creates rainbows when light passes through a huge window made up of prisms.  Kimsooja brought rainbows into her Rainbow Rooms by adding a film to the windows.  More recently, I have seen a rainbow film being advertised online, but I have no idea how good it is, or whether I want to see rainbows more than I want to see outside.  The idea of a space full of rainbows is so inspiring that its on my list of things to have if I win the lottery, a white room full of rainbows.

Of course, it is possible to create rainbows with light... Yvette Mattern created Global Rainbow using different colour lasers.  The rainbow is such a popular motif that any light show can feature rainbow coloured lights and rainbow neon lights are easy to find online and cheap to buy. Fountains, bridges and buildings all over the world have sported rainbow lights.  In a supermarket car park in Bude, there is a plastic tunnel to shelter customers from the frequent weather.  Last Christmas, the tunnel was covered in LED lights and became Bude's number one tourist hot spot with people traveling hundreds of miles to visit.

Only one artist has created a rainbow using fireworks though. Cai Guo-Qiang's Transient Rainbow was an event that took place in 2002 in New York.  It was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art to commemorate the temporary move of the museum to Queens.  The linked article includes videos from different viewpoints and it must have been an amazing event to witness.

For all our success at creating rainbows, we have not managed to create one quite like a natural rainbow, arching across a stormy sky.  That would require a light source with the strength and coverage as our sun and a massive amount of water droplets in the air.  Nature is awe inspiring....

Rainbows

The rainbow has long been a much loved phenomenon and symbol, a colourful expression of hope and peace.  They are created when light passes through water droplets as the light is actually made up of all the colours. I always find it fascinating that you mix all the colours of paint together and you get a dirgey dark colour, but you mix all the colours of light together...  and you get natural light.  Kind of.  Our natural light has its own spectrum of colours, every star has its own signature, as does our own sun.  We have evolved to see by the light our sun emits, all those colours contained in a sunbeam.

So when you have the sun behind you and some rain in from of you, you have a chance of seeing a rainbow.  It's one of my most favourite things.  Given the showery nature of Cornwall, it's not uncommon to have blazing sunlight behind and a black sky in front and I always think the very dark clouds give the best background for a rainbow.  There are so many inspiring images of rainbows, both in nature, the lab, art, crafts and more.  It's easy to be inspire looking at rainbows.  I have collected some of my favourite images together on pinterest.

My Mum loved rainbows and when she made a quilt for her and my Dad's bed, it was a large log cabin design that moved through all the colours of the rainbow.  I will take photos of it and post them, at some point, lockdown makes it impossible to travel to see my Dad.  The rainbow has become such an important symbol of hope and appreciation in these times.  Walk down any street and you will see them in the windows of people's homes.  I know in many people's minds they have become linked to appreciation of the NHS but they represent a huge appreciation for all keyworkers in these difficult times.

My own family is very much linked to the NHS.  My husband used to work for the South West Ambulance Service Trust, on the front line before he moved to a post at the Royal Cornwall Hospital.  My Mum was a Nurse all her working life, apart from a few years in the middle when she had us and ran the local playgroup.  Its important that after this is all done, that we continue to appreciate all the key workers and what they do for us, sometimes in very difficult circumstances.

I wanted to write a post showing how to do peyote stitch and it's the next project on my beading board.  I decided to do a rainbow because everybody loves rainbows and it was important to me that I show my appreciation to all those people who have worked, and continue to work, so very hard to look after us.  Once I have finished my rainbow, I will post the pattern and how to guide on here, so that we can all wear our rainbows with pride.

The photo above shows the beads I am going to use for this project.  I loved creating a bead rainbow, sat outside in my garden, but it did take a while to sort the beads again after!  My local bead shop is GJ Beads and the beads I am using are available online.  They are transparent matte delica size 11 beads and they have a lovely frosted appearance.  You could use any beads though, as long as they are the same size and a variety of finishes would add to the project.  You could even include more or less colours in your bracelet, which would alter the width.

The beads I am using are:

Light red DB745 

Orange DB744

Yellow DB743
Lime DB1266
Light blue DB747
Violet DB785
Purple DB783