73 cm (w) x 55 cm (h), charcoal on paper.
Date produced: 2006
This was drawn completely on-site, directly from the subject. I wanted to produce a very detailed study of the tree’s forms from one particular angle, which shows several characteristic sections of the tree.
I have used overcast lighting, to show the forms without misleading patches of bright sunlight. With some sections of the drawing, I have needed to wait for overcast light to be sure of the final tonal relationships that I’ve used. The meshes drawn over the forms are extremely important for the accurate expression of the forms and orientation of the surfaces.
I worked almost exclusively on just this one drawing over September, October and November 2005. The closer I looked at the subject, the more I wanted to try to capture the rich variety of detail enjoyed. However, the time and energy being taken for this one drawing had become quite stressful and frustrating. Most of this drawing has been done using sharply-pointed charcoal pencils, required for the fine development work of this drawing. Unfortunately, I had found that a lot of time was required for just keeping the points of the charcoal pencils sharp, plus I went through about 5 pencil sharpeners in doing so.
One could argue that the energy and time spent on this one drawing is extravagant, and that I’d be better served putting that time into producing more drawings of a simpler nature. That may have been a better course of action - I can remember that I wanted to try to keep developing this drawing to a satisfactory level of finish. I believe that the ‘finish’ achievable in such a charcoal drawing is an important aspect of the artwork, and that I was hoping to learning things that may help any future charcoal drawings.
This drawing had been taking a lot of time to develop, because:
1) I had been enjoying trying to capture the subtleties within the forms and surfaces experienced - the finer the level of detail desired, the greater the amount of work required;
2) It took considerable time to develop the finished ‘felt’ lines used to express the cross-sectional shapes and surface orientation of the various forms, along with the tonal rendering - these lines, to be highly successful, required a lot of concentration and considerable precision (even with very calm weather conditions);
3) The media had been difficult to manage - the paper was good for pastel work (even allowing a fair amount of re-working), but seemed to have too much ‘tooth’ for the level of finish I was hoping to achieve with charcoal. Also, the charcoal pencils produced different types of marks on this paper to those made using natural charcoal, and have been blunting the pencil sharpeners quite quickly; 4) The weather has been generally very windy and wet, making it difficult to get fine control or continuity.
Even though this drawing was not finished, it clearly shows that subtle forms can be expressed well using a combination of carefully observed tones with an overlay of grids and/or repeated ‘felt’ cross-sectional lines. I am very happy with the results I achieved to this stage.
Unfortunately, this drawing and many more from this project, were subsequently damaged in 2007 by rain water that dripped from a ceiling in our rented house at Linden Park, after the rain water drains had become blocked. This drawing was in a pile of drawings from this project, just sitting on a table, in a small store room away from all other activity in the house. All of the drawings were extremely fragile, and the dripping water really did some terrible damage.
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