Trees and Night Thoughts

This month I took Margrete Lamond’s Find Your Tree Style 5 Day Challenge. It was a wonderful way to loosen up as I head into a busier time of year. Below are a few of my drawings from this challenge. The main thing I learned was, let go of control and good things will happen! Also a reminder that not all trees grow straight up and their curves and leanings can be very expressive.

For my final piece for this challenge I drew a group of trees in ink and dip pen, the medium I love the most, creating slight variations in tone by dipping my pen in water intermittently, a technique I learnt from Sarah Simblet’s book Drawing for the Artist.

My final piece for the 5 day tree drawing challenge

I’ve also been working on a zine which is a collection of short comics with a focus on line work and texture. Making comics is a great way to improve your drawing skills and I got to put to use some of the poetry I wrote last year, which I had kept to myself previously, as the basis of some short stories or observations. I’m allowing the process to be very organic, almost like the zine is growing itself. As a result it’s a weird little anthology but I’m thoroughly enjoying making it. I think it will be a few months before it’s finished but I’m sharing one of the short comics here: Night Thoughts. It’s a double page spread.

Also, I have finally set up my online shop for physical copies of prints. I’m still adding to it, which could be a long process, but if there was particular print you wanted that’s not there just let me know and I can add it in. The shop is here. I also still have my Etsy shop where you can buy downloadable prints and colouring pages, which will be 50% off for the rest of the month.