Most of the illustrations of 'Earth Stories' were created while sitting in front of some view that intrigued me, or a desert plant or even a rock that caught my attention. Subjects that are part of natural landscape that surrounds me. I draw in a range of mediums, pen, markers, water colors, gouache, acrylic. 

In 2022, when I started dreaming and building my business slowly, one of my drawing was of the mountains beyond the Zin valley,  in the Negev Heights. While drawing I found my self turning again and again to purple, pink hues while drawing the mountains in the distance.

After that drawing every time I hiked or travelled around the desert whether it be in the Ramon crater or while looking at the mountains on the Jordanian side of the Dead sea, the purple and blue hues popped out at me.

One of the first products of 'Earth Stories' was the 'purple mountains' notebook which has a abstract illustration of mountains in the desert.

 

 

My curiosity over came so I went about trying to learn and understand in depth why the mountains seem to have these hues.

After talking with some scientists I learned this is related to a physical effect called Riley scattering.

 

Sunlight rays contain the entire spectrum of colors visible to the human eye. As sunlight reaches the earth atmosphere it is scattered in a process called Rayleigh scattering.

The scattering occurs since the sun light encounters smaller particles in the atmosphere which in turn enhance the scattering of shorter wave lengths from the spectrum of visible light. These shorter waves of light produce shades of blue and a purple.

The sun radiates less purple than blue, so the sky looks blue to us. When we look at the mountains in the desert from a distance, we see them through a thick layer of air, of sky.  The purple hue is perceived at a different intensity by different people and some of us will identify the color of the mountains as purple. This phenomenon increases the farther we are from the mountains and the greater the mass of atmosphere separating us from them is.