Barking

Blue Birchbark, and companion piece Red Birchbark, now at the Found Gallery, Dunbar.

Birch Bark

Red Birchbark, oil on canvas.

Deep Elm Blues

I'm fannying around with a nimby-pimby autumnmisty landscape, in which depth of field, scale and colour are apparently beyond me and I'm getting rapidly more teethgrindingly angry with myself but I will persevere even if it ends up an inch thick. Which would be nice, actually.

So in pursuit of a bit of light and dark, a bit of letting go, a bit of bloody passion in the thing, this morning I broke out the charcoal and the A2 paper and drew a lime tree I took a photograph of yesterday when we were out for a dander by the Whiteadder. I'm coming more and more to like the Whiteadder as a river, it's appealingly small scale and full of lots of many lovely aspects. Anyway: it might be a lime, it might be an elm, but either way it's a tree.

Making Trees From Charcoal

A while ago I was bought some charcoal and a huge sketch pad (A2!) to try and tempt me out of my finickity den made of microscopic pencil strokes. I have a special fondness for the trees on Cannock Chase so I did some studies of the ancient oaks and a solitary conifer there.

Charcoal is such a lovely material to draw with. It was large, expansive, messy and highly enjoyable.