When I was a little girl my Dad was a keen photographer. In those days it was all captured on black and white film developed at home in a darkroom. He often worked with his friend who was a professional photographer living close by, and one day he was cleaning the developing tank in his friend's studio and spotted ferny crystals which had formed at the base. He took a contact print directly onto the photographic paper and developed it. It was absolutely extraordinary and at the time I thought it was the most enchanting thing I had ever seen, complex and delicate white crystals against black (I also always thought it was a photo of ice on a window until my Dad corrected me years later). Unfortunately the print he made has been lost, but it's still in my mind, and I am constantly looking for a replacement. These crystals come very close.
I have been thinking a lot about how to make them into drawings, here are some examples of my efforts to translate them digitally and by hand on paper. Somehow I really want to get inside those amazing structures. The inverted image top left below is interesting, and below right is one of my Binky illustrations of a wintry cat.