These two drawings are both on full imperial (57 x 76cm) sheets of heavyweight watercolour paper, It’s handmade paper – as you can tell from the lovely deckled edge visible in my photograph of Mandrake – and somewhat rougher in texture than my usual choice. The roughness causes pen nibs to skip, breaking the line unexpectedly. It also adds an extra bit of randomness to any drips and dribbles running down the page. I drew these pictures on a sloped drawing board, so the drips and dribbles were forthcoming when I started to add “loose” ink (by which I mean not constrained by a pen). I rather like them, so I encouraged them. I used a syringe (with a blunt needle, bought to refill ink cartridges) to squirt and splatter ink at the page; this is a technique I have used before on k. With the right amount of ink (not much) in the barrel of the syringe, it gives a relatively controlled spray of small droplets. There is also some dry media here: coloured pencil, oil pastel and wax pastel. Again, the paper texture affects how these go on, but they can also be worked in to the paper to create areas of solid colour.
Both of these trees are at Bradgate Park near Leicester. They are close together and are growing on and through outcrops of the volcanic rock that defines the area of Charnwood. My orginal title for Mandrake (the first of the two) was “Vulcan’s Oak” and Twist and Shout was “Vulcan’s Other Oak” for a bit and then “Multifacet” (because of the many faces that can be seen in the tree). Mandrake was renamed because of the prominent root that resembles a human figure – the herbaceous plant famously has a thick, branched root that also resembles a human figure.
Framed size: 70 x 90 cm, price £1,350.
