This drawing revisits one of the specific subjects that got me started on this extended study of trees and their roots in ink. The beech woodland on the side of Danebury Hill partly occupies the outer rampart of an iron age hill fort, and , as is typical of beech on steeply curved slopes, the roots of the trees are quite fabulous.
In 2018 I painted Embankment in oils with a palette knife, and I wasn’t satisfied that I had captured the facsinating intricacy of the roots. I decided that a pen might be a better tool to describe that than the broad sweep of a palette knife was, and early in 2019 I made a slightly awkward drawing that deliberately followed the original painting’s lines, filling in detail from the same photograph that I had worked on initially.
The current drawing returns to the same set of trees. This time I lowered the viewpoint (by crouching to take the photograph) and made it portrait rather than landscape. I didn’t complicate the drawing by trying to match it to any other work. I think that it is truer to the place and to the atmosphere.
Indian ink on kaolin-coated board, 16 x 12 “
Framed, black tray.
