Heritage Persian Silk Tree

 

8/7/24 Heritage Persian silk tree, Wallingford neighborhood

Detail

According to Wikipedia, a heritage tree is defined as “a large, individual tree with unique value, which is considered irreplaceable.” Last year when I was learning about all the local trees that were in danger of being lost due to development, I sketched my first heritage tree, a yellowwood in the Wallingford neighborhood.

Last week I sketched another one in Wallingford, a Persian silk tree. In addition to being heritage, it is the city’s widest silk street tree, as documented by Taha Ebrahimi in Street Trees of Seattle. Sadly, the tree was slated to be cut down days after I drew it, not due to development but to injury. A truck accident had broken a major limb, requiring removal of the whole tree. On the day I sketched it, I saw that several sawn limbs were already lying on the ground. The tree was filled with tiny pink blossoms.

After finishing the large portrait, I walked away from the tree in several directions, trying to find an angle that would enable me to capture its full size. As usual, I encountered one of the frustrations of sketching urban trees: When I got back far enough to see all of it, much of it was blocked by other trees or cars.

Much taller than the two-story house behind it, the silk tree has provided shade and beauty to this Wallingford street for decades. Thank you, old silk tree, for your long years of service. (And many thanks to Taha’s Instagram post that alerted me to the tree’s demise in time for me to sketch it.)

Material note: Because I intended to use graphite with Eduardo Bajzek’s method, I chose a Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook for the portrait. Zeta paper is well-suited for graphite – with enough tooth to grab graphite (and colored pencil) easily, yet smooth enough not to show an obvious texture. Since I rarely make such a sketch as a double-page spread, however, I didn’t realize that the center spread of each signature has small dots of glue over the binding thread holes. Applying and especially smudging graphite over these glue dots as well as the exposed thread emphasizes both prominently – in an unattractive way. I noticed the same issue when I used a Hahnemühle sketchbook during Eduardo’s workshop when the page spread I used also happened to be in a signature center. In the Hahnemühle, the strong texture helped to hide the dots (with some additional work). But the Zeta wouldn’t allow this. Very annoying to see those dots and dashes down the center – I’ll have to remember this for future spreads with graphite.

Good-bye and thank you!