Giant Sequoia

 

8/13/24 Giant sequoia, Green Lake neighborhood

Still two blocks from the address I was seeking, I looked up and spotted it: a 120-year-old giant sequoia. Although my knowledge bank of trees is miniscule, even I can identify the symmetrical, conical shape and distinctive fluffy-ish needle clusters (how’s that for arboreally technical?) of this type of conifer. With a 63-inch-diameter trunk, this healthy redwood near Green Lake is in danger of being cut down to build a driveway, according to the developer’s plans.

The Last 6000, the community advocacy group I learned about last year when I reported on Luma, brought the sequoia to my attention. According to the organization, architects have determined that a design change could save the tree while still providing parking for the development. “Designing around the tree will provide much lifesaving shade as well as every other benefit trees provide for clean air and habitat for wildlife. The Last 6000 hopes that the architect/developers, could apply more creativity to the project and change the designs footprint to include the tree.” Public events are planned to raise awareness and advocacy to save the sequoia.

Technical notes: I experimented with an interesting combo of media: For the sequoia, I used a Viarco ArtGraf water-soluble graphite pencil. For the nearby trees, car and utility pole, I used a non-soluble Blackwing graphite pencil, which I smudged liberally to take the attention away from them. Then I used my spritzer to activate the ArtGraf, increasing the contrast and also enhancing the texture. Since the other elements were non-soluble, I didn’t have to worry about inadvertently activating those parts. (In reality, all the trees were about the same value, but I took the liberty of lightening and blurring the secondary ones to make the sequoia more visible. My use of gray markers taught me that trick.)

I wrote this haiku above the clouds so that I could crop it out if I wanted to.
Sometimes my mediocre penmanship can wreck a page, and I didn't want
that to happen if the haiku turned out sloppy (like the crooked location line at the
bottom of the sketch! Arrrgh.).

Finally, I tried a technique I use often for backgrounds in pet portraits (such as the two shown in this post). For the portraits, I usually use the tinned version of ArtGraf, but I assumed the pencil would behave the same way, and it did. I wet the paper liberally in the sky area, then “licked” the ArtGraf point with a waterbrush to apply subtle gray clouds. The effect I got wasn’t quite as good as I get with tinned ArtGraf, but I blame the paper: I chose a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook because I wanted a landscape format, but the paper isn’t sized as well as others I’ve since become accustomed to for wet-in-wet work. Overall, though, I’m pleased with these results, and I think the media combo is a good choice for trees.