Caution: contains gruesomeness

I headed out along the riverbank yesterday. Now that the set of skyline paintings are all over bar the shouting, I'm immersing myself in the river to get ready for a change of palette, aesthetic and texture. I'm not literally immersing myself; I'm a lousy swimmer and the current is too strong. Whilst I was just wandering then stopping then wandering again, just getting the feel of the riverbank and clarifying how I want to treat it, something grim but compelling caught my eye. Its at the bottom of this post so if you don't like spiders, don't scroll down past the swan.

Anyway, an interlude to protect the squeamish. I'm thinking in terms of a relatively abstract approach, majoring on texture and reflection. You might mention Monet, but I'd prefer it if you didn't as I'm coming from a very different place and working towards a very different purpose. I've been wondering about a focal point and whether I need one or not (for crying out loud, this part of the Thames has no waterlilies!) Every time I settled down to study a promising part of the riverbank, one particular Mallard  would swim upstream and start messing about by the far bank where I was looking. Every time I moved upstream, so did he. Sometimes you have to give in and accept your subject is trying to tell you something, so I will shortly make sketches with and without a duck providing a focal point.

Next up, one of the local swans, your final warning.

Ok, here we have what appears at first glance to be some perfectly normal clusters of blossom. Look closer...

This is what you find... talk about camouflage. It even has a marking on its back to look like the stamen and pollen. Theres no web to speak of, so I wonder if it just lurks in the middle of the flower head and waits for a bee to land on it. The bee had no damage but wasn't moving so the spider must have injected it with something. Imagine it in human terms: you're in the supermarket - you think you're picking up a bag of pasta but actually...