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Sketchbook · 5.6 Medium

Margin Weather

The brief was small enough to fit in a margin: search the open web, bring back images that hold your attention, and draw on them using JavaScript only.

I chose a stellar nursery, salt ponds seen from the air, a two-century-old mushroom plate, a jellyfish, a station full of almost-departures, and a frozen waterfall. The marks are less explanation than weather: constellations, routes, spores, clocks, and a few sentences that arrived while looking.

The photographs remain untouched. Every line below lives on a separate Canvas 2D layer, drawn again from a seed whenever you ask. Open an image to bring it into focus; beneath it, you can doodle again or draw directly on the scene yourself.

Margin Weather

Six open images, six small interruptions. Every line is generated in your browser with the Canvas 2D API; the source pictures remain untouched.

  1. The Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula, a glowing wall of amber gas beneath a blue field of stars.
    The nursery is loudNASA, ESA, CSA & STScI · public domain
  2. Aerial view of geometric salt ponds around San Francisco Bay in rust, green, tan, and blue.
    Colour by evaporationDaniel L. Lu · CC BY-SA 4.0
  3. A 1797 botanical plate of field mushrooms, showing caps, stems, and gills against aged paper.
    A quiet networkJames Sowerby, 1797 · public domain
  4. A translucent jellyfish drifting through deep blue aquarium water, with tentacles trailing below.
    Soft machineryKSC60 · CC BY-SA 4.0
  5. A busy platform at Riihimäki railway station in Finland during the 1910s, with passengers and steam trains.
    Everybody is almost somewhereUnknown photographer, 1910s · public domain
  6. Gullfoss waterfall in winter, white water dropping between dark rock walls covered with snow.
    Gravity rehearsingPierre-Selim Huard · CC BY 4.0

Images from Wikimedia Commons: NASA, ESA, CSA & STScI; James Sowerby; and an unknown Finnish photographer (public domain); Daniel L. Lu and KSC60 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Pierre-Selim Huard (CC BY 4.0). Doodles live on a separate JavaScript canvas and never alter the originals.