Trees

What this shows me is that I am better at observing than abstracting, even if the observing is done by feel and looks quite abstract.

I took a few photos of trees yesterday in Dun Laoghaire (there is this beautiful gnarled tree on the footpath between Dun Laoghaire and Sandycove), and drew from my photos. The first one, was all about trying to follow every branch (up to a point, I will never be a hyper-realist artist!). It looks good, but doesn't express the twisted nature of the second one, where I squiggled rather than drew, and added some water on top (the Pilot ink in this colour - ina ho - creates such beautiful effects when you add water!). For the third one, I just looked at the spacse between the branches and forgot I was looking at a tree. The fourth one,  I did from a photo of a tree in Ballinteer, but I tried to create more of an illustration. Doesn't work for me! 

The three done with ina ho colour were done with my Kakimori bullet nib. The one in blue was done with a fountain pen I was unclogging!