Reports From Unknown Places

@clever-reports.bsky.social

Reports From Unknown Places About Indescribable Events Digital art & texts by Ninn Salaün @bleu-capsicum.bsky.social Not a bot! @clever_reports is on Twitter, Instagram, and http://mastodon.art Archives: https://www.ninnsalaun.com/all-the-reports

We report: mid-morning, the sun turns from light source to a heat lamp, specifically pointing to the back of our neck. We walk close to the walls, in the slivers of shade that live there, and those are still much cooler in comparison. We sometimes find wind in the wider streets.

Digital painting of some houses tightly packed together on the flank of a hill, with groups of trees in the foreground. The sky above is bright blue, a few fluffy, white clouds scattered there.

We report: we see half a dozen sunrises on the train. The sun emerges from behind the clouds, casting an orange glow across the whole sky, then the clouds swallow it back. Minutes later, another place, the shape of the clouds has changed, but it happens again the exact same way.

Digital painting of a sunrise sky, large swathes of grey clouds spread out  across a pastel blue and orange sky. The clouds are all different shapes, some long and smooth, others tall and bubbling. In the middle of the frame, some clouds are bright red, and bright sunshine is coming through. The horizon is dark, trees and buildings.

We report: we do let our eyes get used to the darkness for half an hour, and we remember to only use red lights. We do it the right way, but the moon is bright behind the trees, the sky is still full of smoke, and so it turns out that the crickets are much louder than the stars.

Digital painting of a night sky, only slightly dark; there is a diffuse purplish glow coming from outside of the frame, which makes the sky a pale grey. There are a few stars, dark tree branches coming from the sides.

We report: the whole sky is rising all at once, all the clouds suddenly competing for height. We did not perceive whatever changed in the atmosphere to make this happen, but the flies are nervous, the dogs are barking, and the birds are flying low. We wonder where the ceiling is.

Digital painting of a close-up of a large, white and grey cloud in the blue sky, bubbling outwards in chaotic patterns.

We report: once a large, single cloud, we have watched the steam get carved out into fine lace. These new clouds are as much about the emptiness they are wrapped around as the steam itself. In time, the bits of clouds keep getting smaller until we cannot point them out anymore.

Digital painting of a bright blue sky half-filled with thin, curly wisps of clouds. They are mostly translucent, save for a few spots where they get denser.

We report: the sun is flattening itself against the horizon as best as it can. The shock of red is hypnotising us, keeping us rooted to the ground while we watch it go down. It grows redder and redder as it sinks into the earth, even when only a few embers remain.


Digital painting of a sunset sky above dark hills: the sun is bright red in a mostly clear, but hazy sky. There is a strip of dark grey around the sun, a few wispy orange clouds just above it, and some pinkish grey clouds further up.

We report right at the end of sunset, almost exactly missing the sun. Rising in its stead in the belt of Venus, the moon slowly goes from pink to orange. As we try to keep up with it, bats fly by our face, always narrowly missing it. The heat of the day is not leaving.

Digital painting of some layers of long, flat clouds in a bright blue sky, smooth in places, jagged in others. They are bright white on top, dark grey underneath. There is a smattering of small altocumulus in the top right corner of the frame.

We report: we start heading into the evening with the clouds, and the light behind the haze is becoming greyer before it can turn blue. Some other day, some other year, this could be rain, but it is not so easy today - even though we cannot help but look for it.

Digital painting of a countryside landscape under an overcast sky: yellow, harvested fields stretched over some hills, with patches of trees scattered around and in between. The horizon is a bit of a blur, the sky is grey, full of clouds.

We report: it is easy, with the clouds laid out like this, to think of the sky as this geological time scale; see this Precambrian altocumulus pushed up by the neighbouring volcanic activity. See the cirrocumulus shale pushed up against the salt dome, unable to ride further.

Digital painting of some layers of long, flat clouds in a bright blue sky, smooth in places, jagged in others. They are bright white on top, dark grey underneath. There is a smattering of small altocumulus in the top right corner of the frame.

We report: we had a busy, fast day, until we sat down here below the sky. Though it is somewhat windy, the clouds seem to be moving at their slowest, and within minutes we found our breathing trying to match the same pace. The sun is quietly setting at the other end of the sky.

Digital painting of a cloudy sunset sky: most of it is covered in grey clouds that have a slight orange tint to them. There is a corner of blue sky; some small clouds are bright orange, starkly detached against the rest of the sky. Some gulls are flying across the frame, their belly tinted the same orange.

We report: we can feel the land breeze blowing against our back, and still no stars. At this point in time, we should be able to see Arcturus, Spica, Capella, or at the very least, Venus. It seems that, unbeknownst to us, some invisible clouds have appeared since sunset.

Digital painting of a dusk sky over the sea. There are lights dotting a strip of land on the horizon; the sky is an opaque dark blue, and the quiet sea is even darker. There are a few rocks in the foreground.

We report: the morning clouds are slowly dissipating, and the light that they were catching is now spilling out onto the ground, puddles of sunshine everywhere. We shall soon pause our cloud-watching session, as our eyes are watering from the brightness.

Digital painting of a partly cloudy sky: the sun is positioned high in the sky, and the clouds beneath it are projecting shadows straight downwards. there are small white clouds around and below the sun, and large ones to the left and further below, grey from their underbelly being in the shade. There is a bit of a bloom to the light.

We report: we cannot find any clouds today, but it is windy enough that we do not feel completely crushed by the weight of the sun. We watch the swallows play some sort of musical chairs game on the phone lines, to the sound of dry ferns swaying in the breeze.

Digital painting of a countryside scene: a group of about twenty swallows are sitting on and flying around phone lines, which are hooked on a concrete pole. The pole stands among green bushes and ferns, some of them turning yellow and brown.

We report: there is a lot of convection going on for the early morning, lifting up the clouds much higher than where we are used to seeing them at this hour. We feel like we missed out on a lot of weather already, which is an unpleasant note on which to start the day.

Digital painting of a sunrise sky, split in two by the clouds. The bottom half is full of dark purple sky, and the top half is a gradient of pastel pink. Some clouds are rising into this top half, with a lot of volume, one of them outlined in the light. There are smaller puffs of blue floating around. The horizon is dark, trees and phone lines running across the frame.

We report after the last train, in the empty station. We punched in the code for a can of iced tea on the vending machine, and it came out lukewarm. We shared it with our expert while the stars rose from the ground, the fields before us unfathomable in the twilight.

Digital painting of a dusk sky, a gradient of dark blue going into dark yellow on the horizon. There are pitch black trees there in the distance, with a few lights lost among them. There are long, dark clouds in the sky, and a couple of stars, too.

We report: with the apparition of asperitas clouds, even the more discrete ones, we still unconsciously expect a big storm, or at least big rain later on. In the end, today, like most of the times we’ve encountered asperitas, they dissolve without much of a fuss.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky above a few roofs and phone lines. The clouds are shades of grey, forming slightly eerie, wavy patterns.

We report: now that the temperatures are closer to the seasonal average, the sky has gotten more familiar to us. It is not so much about specific clouds, but rather the diversity, and the changes, the uncertainty. We realise we are not very fond of the certainty of a clear sky.

Digital painting of a partly cloudy, mixed sky: criss-crossing and swirly cirrus, some fuzzy, light grey clouds; a few, small, jagged white clouds around the top of the frame.

We report: for a while, as we walk down the street, the buildings and trees are too tall to let us get a good look, but the sunset’s glow is everywhere. It is incredibly damp, the amount of humidity barely under the point of saturation; sometimes, we feel a lone raindrop.

Digital painting of a sunset sky above some dark roofs. The clouds are long and soft, barely any hard edges. They are a purplish grey at the top  and bottom of the frame, bright orange in the middle, with wisps of yellow. The thinnest, palest bit of blue sky is showing there.

We report: after the bit of rain that we had yesterday, the night sky is clearer than it had been in some weeks, much less hazy. We leave the constellation names aside, and let ourselves sit there and pretend each moving, blinking satellite in the sky is a shooting star.

Digital painting of a dark grey night sky, full of bright stars. There is some kind of meteorite crossing the sky, and there are dark tree branches all around  the frame.

We report: we wait and wait for the rain, and once we stop waiting and hoping, the rain comes. Immediately, with the sky heavy, and the air saturated with water, we feel lighter. It goes on like this for hours, and even when it stops, the sky remains overcast. We breathe easier.

Digital painting of a rainy countryside landscape: a grey, opaque sky over some yellowish fields separated by long rows of trees. The further parts of the landscape are paler for the volume of rain. There are a few swifts flying.

We report on the horizon: a weak imitation of a squall line is helpfully displaying stages of the lifecycle of cumulonimbus, and in chronological order, too. Our expert finds it a valuable teaching moment, and spends some time pointing out the calvus and capillatus species.

Digital painting of a series of several distant cumulonimbus, all in a line, in order of maturity. The first one is bubbling, developing upwards, and the next ones are all gradually flattening, until starting to dissipate. There are smaller clouds surrounding their base. The sky is otherwise blue, with long cirrus above.

We report: something has gotten in the air - smoke, sand, humidity, the whole lot - and it has captured the sun some hours before dusk. A veil is drawn across the sky. There is a bit of a chill there, or at least, what counts as one these days, a little shiver in the half-light.

Digital painting of a hazy sky: low in the frame, the sun is glowing orange, partly hidden by a long, thin, dark grey cloud. There are swathes of greyish-orange cirrus muddling the sky, a smattering of small, lighter clouds to the left of the sun.

We report: it got very windy during the afternoon, sudden gusts that had us looking up every few minutes. The sound of the rush of air in the dry brush is sharp, and loud, arresting in the way things out of our control can be. We still hear it as we are trying to fall asleep.

Digital painting of a dusk sky, a gradient of blues covered in dark blue clouds. Some are long, some are small, packed together like fish scales. There are black tree silhouettes at the bottom of the frame, all leaning to the side in the wind.

We report: no rain, it barely feels humid, and the mammatus pass over us as though following a large storm we never saw. Over our head, the structures that had created the contours of a map slowly disintegrate. Perhaps we intruded on a rehearsal for something larger.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky filled with, dark, pouch-like cloud formations through which diffuse grey light shows. There are darker, more common clouds in a few spots.

We report: it is early evening, and the sun’s journey through the atmosphere is getting longer and longer. The heat has made us feel sleepy, and we are finding it difficult to care about anything but the movements of the clouds. We are here for hours, in this specific moment.

Digital painting of a partly cloudy sky: there are sharp columns of sunshine played out amongst the clouds, creating bright spots where they are touching them.

We report: threads of light are trailing after the sunset, and the dry air is becoming more breathable. It has felt like noon all day, the intensity of the sun, the narrow, sharp shadows. Our expert, remarkably, manages to feel a little cold when a light breeze shakes the wheat.

Digital painting of a sunset over a countryside path. The path is separating two fields, one on the left where the hay has been cut and rolled into balls, one on the right where the wheat is still growing. There are trees on the horizon. The sky is blue, going on grey from the dusk light; there are glowing, thin, wispy clouds sprawled across the sky, orange and yellow.

We report: only the brightest stars remain - of which, all things considered, there are many. Mirfak, Hamal, Aldebaran and Menkar, most of the Auriga constellation, and of course, Mars and Saturn are visible. For some reason, however, we cannot look away from the moon.

Digital painting of a dusk sky, a touch of yellow on the horizon, going into a dark blue-green toward the top of the frame. There is a bright, thin waning crescent moon over some dark trees, and a few scattered, fuzzy, dark grey clouds.

We report: we are expecting a clear sky throughout the day, but at sea, early morning, the horizon is nowhere to be found. Through the fog, the light is dull as to make the ocean look solid. We lean over to look more closely, but the surface of the water is utterly impenetrable.

Digital painting of a foggy ocean: a thick cover of pale clouds over calm, dark grey waves.

We report: the sky speaks of vanishing patterns, past conditions of humidity and wind shear. They only remain in washed up waves of cirrocumulus. Lately, we find it difficult to interpret the movements of the clouds as we usually would. Signs of change instead induce stillness.

Digital painting of a blue sky filled with small, messy clouds, arranged in  similarly messy, wavy patterns. The clouds are white, with varying degrees of opacity, sometimes with scraggly edges.

We report: summer heather is blooming on the outskirts of the town. In silent streets, a flock of swifts comes and goes in flurries of shrieks. The cirrus are getting thicker, but also more difficult to see as the sun sets. We feel warmth radiating from the asphalt on our ankles.

Digital painting of a sunset scene: the sky is full of pastel colours, lilac in higher parts, going to orange and yellow, with discrete cirrus streaks of pink and orange. There is a house off to the left-hand side of the frame, some phone lines, a lit street lamp, and closer to the foreground, trees, and a field of heather. In dusk light, it is a faded purple colour. There is a group of about twenty swifts flying in the sky.