What a difference

These two drawings are much more different than I'd expected. The first one on the left was drawing round an expressive set of lines. The one on the right was from a sketch of a tree, showing patches of foliage.

I'm not sure which I prefer. It's surprising how using the same technique can give such different results.

From now on I'll pen over the original sketch using a light box, so I don't loose the original, having to erase it when I'm done.

And Atreyu and the Luck Dragon are recovering from being poisoned.

Negative spaces

Using a more detailed sketch of a tree I'm scribbling in the negative spaces again. It's good to look back through old sketch books and see what use I can make of something I did months or years ago.
I'm also reading The Neverending Story, as I watched the film with the kids recently and I picked up a copy of the book from a charity shop. I wish the book I have had this cover. Unfortunately it's just a montage of scenes from the film.

Art or illustration?

Here I filled in the negative spaces round a sketch I did last year of a bare tree, then rubbed out the pencil. I tried to keep the background of an even density, and kept the variety in the pencil strokes I was working round. My hubby especially likes this one.

Oak Tree studies I, II and III

Spring Clean

The side-lit leaves look so fresh and cool.

I couldn't find a green dark and dull enough for the rest, so I used two muted purples. I think the light sky is not flat enough, though, and I want to work over the foliage to get more depth, as it's looking flat.

So I'll re-do this one again and show you the results when I'm done.

.... olive trees.

Olive trees

Give me an old olive tree, a pen and paper and maybe a cool drink and I'm happy for a good hour.

.... Oaks......

These were done using a variety of charcoal sticks.

Oak

Out in the corner of my big-sister's garden is a lovely old oak tree. It attracts nuthatches, bluetits, jays, woodpigeons, squirrels, local cats, and last winter a toad hibernated under it.

Mel asked me what is it with me and sketching trees. I love the silhouettes they make. Maybe I need new glasses but when I first see a tree, more often than not I see it as a paper cut out against the sky. Not until I walk around a tree do I get a feeling for the way it fills a three-dimensional space. And when I draw a tree I start at the bottom of the trunk and follow it as it grows up and out. If loose the line, I'll start back down at the bottom again.

This is the first charcoal drawing I did last night, and it's pretty tight compared to the ones I've been drawing this morning. I'm really falling in love with charcoal, and I think it's funky to draw a tree using something made out of a tree.

Quink Ink

I know, more pyracantha studies. But what else am I meant to draw at 7am when I manage to grab 20 minutes while the kids are eating breakfast? And yes, that is a bit of green you can see there. All the way on the drive into work I was thinking about using inks on an impervious surface to depict the back lit leaves. I want to make the branches more opaque, with more texture and modelling. This project has legs.




Then, again grabbing about 20 minutes after work before getting the kids, I did these two colour studies at Doxford Park. I especially like the one on the left, and they work upside down too!

Doxford Park

I have been yearning to work on the trees in ink, but I forgot to bring them so I used watercolour instead. However, I really liked teasing the colours out of what, at first, just looked like dark brown. Again, I've been blind all these years.

Hard Pruned

As I drive around Sunderland I see lots of trees in front gardens which have been cut back within an inch of their lives.

More Trees

Every spare minute when I'm out and about I've been looking at trees. And drawing trees. Here are some.

Doxford Beech Trees

After work I got the chance to do some sketching near my work. I am very happy with these.

Nine Block Pyracantha

Here it is. I want to sharpen up the edges of the blocks so I'll paint over the boarders again later with the white gesso. I've painted these from my first charcoal sketches, and I want to make more drawings from life in charcoal, paying attention to the shapes the branches make as they change direction or have been chopped short.

My first drawings remind me of a child's drawings. I made a lot of assumptions.

Now it's like I've had my eyeballs washed clean and can see how they really look.

But, faulty as it is, I'm glad I've gotten this study out of my system. I feel like I can move on, without having skipped over a step.

Pyracantha!

Thank goodness I got that sorted out. The species of the tree in my garden has been bugging me for weeks now.

The wind is blowing, but leaning against the kitchen back door I have a great view of my pyracantha in the corner of my back garden. Soon it will be covered in blossom, and then the leaves will come out, though there's still a fair covering of dark green leaves high up as it's an evergreen. Even later in the year there'll be masses of small orange berries, which the blackbirds will feast on all winter long.

But for now it's bare and graphic against the wall.

Keep your mind on the driving......

But it's so hard. If I'm in the car with the kids it's actually easier, because I'm making an effort to ignore their antics and drive carefully. But when I'm on my own, especially on the drive to and from work, it's easy for my mind to wander. This is one of the sights I pass on the way into my work each day (in fact this would be the view in my rear-view window on the drive home, as I took this photo on a late December afternoon, but you get the idea, yes?).

This time of year, when driving on a morning I'm heading west with the sun low in the sky behind me. This can cast a gleaming pale yellow light onto the buildings I pass. And if there's a stormy sky in the west, blowing down from the Scottish Boarders, then the gilded houses are set against a dark grey-blue sky. That's when I say a prayer of thanks to God, and start singing 'Then Sings My Soul, or suchlike.

But it's also when I am known to start swearing too. You see, hubby got me a compact digital camera for Christmas, and I have cursed often for not bringing it with me when I see such a glorious sight. When we went to Vienna last year I only took out my other camera once on the whole trip, as it's a digital SLR, and it's very bulky. That's why he thoughtfully bought me a teeny tiny one, for my arty stuff.
So, at last, I've found how to re-charge the battery for it, and how to download from it, and now it's residing in my bag.

So if you're driving behind me on the way into work, and you are familiar with seeing me swerving as I catch sight of a bird, or a nice view, please now keep your distance even more, as I might just slam on the breaks and leap out with my camera in hand. You have been warned.

My tree

It's really starting to bug me, what kind of tree this is. If I remember rightly it's technically a shrub which was planted by the previous owners, and grew tall as there's little light at ground level.

This is an oil board, about A4, which I covered with a thin layer black and red acrylic. When it was dry I squeezed out a load of white acrylic, and smeared it around with a plastic palette knife, then started scraping back to the black to describe the trunk and branches. After a while I added some green, and then some red as a contrast, and mixed all three to make a pale grey/lilac to suggest the floor and the wooden planter.

I hate it as a painting, but I loved it as an exercise. I should really do some more of these to see where they lead.