Plum in the Pink

3/30/21 Bryant neighborhood

Last summer I went through a short stage when I was obsessed with finding the right shade of nearly-black red to capture the foliage of ornamental plum trees. (I eventually found it – Caran d’Ache Dark Plum, of course!) When I started sketching them, I didn’t even know what these trees were, but friends on social media quickly helped me identify them, and that’s how I learned that they also have tiny pink blossoms in spring.

Studying them so closely then helped me get better acquainted with their branching structure as well as their foliage. Now the same plums (also called thundercloud plums) are bursting with pink blossoms that might be mistaken for cherry (which are usually a paler pink), but I can tell them apart because of the way their branches grow.

I spotted this one in the Bryant neighborhood. Although I was nervous that the ArtGraf water-soluble carbon pencil would be too dark and heavy as a shading color for delicate pink, I used it sparingly, and I like the result.