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| 1/16/14 Diamine Black Onyx ink, Kuretake Bimoji brush pen, Zig marker, Fabriano Studio hot press 140 lb. paper |
Though not the most colorful, winter is the most informative time to closely observe and sketch trees.
When they’re fully in leaf, I guess I take them for granted. I drive by this
huge willow near Green Lake regularly, but it never caught my attention last
summer when it was green. Today, its thin, weeping limbs black and striking against
the thick, white sky, it was impossible to ignore.
Although the sky was steely, it wasn’t intolerably cold out,
so after sketching the willow, I drove around to the other side of the lake and
sketched my favorite maples. Last year I didn’t get around to sketching them in
their winter dress (or lack thereof) until early March, yet they still had noticeable clusters of brown leaves
then. This year, a couple of good storms in late fall blew them bare, and they’re
as naked as they’ll ever be.
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| 1/16/14 Platinum Carbon ink, Kuretake brush pen, gel pen, watercolor, Fabriano Studio hot press |
(Technical note: The sketch of maples was my first trial of
a wet-on-wet application using Fabriano Studio hot press, the latest 140-pound paper I’ve been trying. The paper
behaved predictably, so I can’t complain about the sizing. But I miss the sky’s
grainy texture that I get when I do this with cold press paper. I’ll probably
switch back to Canson XL cold press,
at least when I use watercolor. I sure like using Fabriano hot press with fountain pens, markers and gel pens,
though.)
Both sketches are great and you depicted the bare tree shapes so well. I love the droopy look to the thin limbs in the one of the willow tree. The washy look to the sky and the foliage in the second one makes it look foggy and wintry. Nice!!
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