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Nature’s Last Stand

A continuation of my experiment with a very narrow palette of colours.

My friend Tim Baker posted this photo on Facebook recently:

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Alongside it he wrote: I pass by this tree many times during the week. I finally snapped a pic. About 40 feet to it’s left the sprawl of residential development is looming. To me it represents nature’s last stand. It’s all but given up; it refuses to fall. So sad to see so much of our beautiful land disappearing.

His photograph got me thinking – and I sketched a response to it which you can see here, mounted and unmounted:

Mounted

Unmounted

I drew this using a black Staedtler fineliner and some Faber Castell Polychromos pencils. Three shades of grey, and a blue. I sneaked in a tiny hint of yellow ink too – just to give the picture a point of contrast. The mounted sketch is on its way to Tim, I’m grateful to him for the inspiration.

Silver Birch

A group of us took a country walk through parts of Sussex recently. We started and ended in Fernhurst and walked for around nine miles up and around Blackdown and The Temple of The Wind. We encountered all kinds of scenery, lots of woodland, and some spectacular views up on Blackdown.

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After we returned home I took my new set of pencils and made a sketch of some silver birch trees. I learned from my previous sketch and deliberately made the picture much less busy. I also framed the picture differently within the A4 page – longer and thinner than the previous desert landscape sketch.

Silver Birch Trees in Spring

The finished image is quite pale (I’ve struggled to take a decent photograph) and I like it. The composition works well in the shape and size of the frame and I think I’ve managed to stop before making the drawing too full – I hope there’s still some room for your imagination. This drawing has been given to a friend.

Silver Birch Trees in Spring

Desert Landscape

My friend Mark Catchlove recently gave me a set of Faber Castell Polychromos pencils, what a kind gift. They are a lovely, muted set of colours, greys and browns with a couple of blues and greens, and I’ve been experimenting with them to see how I respond to having fewer colours to choose from. Here’s my first attempt.

Desert Landscape

I’ve tried to fit too much stuff in here, it looks too busy for my liking. Maybe dropping the top line of the frame further down the page and losing some sky would have looked better? This sketch is on an A4 sheet of water colour paper with a rough surface, the next attempt will be on smooth cartridge paper.