I have finally bitten the bullet and started sketching in earnest and with more confidence. A little late in the day perhaps but if like me, you were discouraged from drawing at school and told you had no talent for it, then that sticks with you. Now that I’m approaching seventy, I have had a good talk to myself and decided that it’s high time to put the criticism from all those years ago behind me! Although photography is a great way to capture an image, actually standing in front of a tree with a pad and pencil does make you look closer. (The penny has finally dropped.)
Looking closely at the forms of the birches and the textures of their bark, I am drawn to two features: the sectional quality of the bark and the dark masses of circular resinous forms on the bark.
Sectional quality of birch bark in nature
Artists Interpretations of this Sectional Quality
Jenny Beavan Robin Welch Ani Kasten Naja Utzon Popov
My Own Interpretation of this Sectional Quality
The second fascinating feature of the silver birch bark is the presence of naturally occurring forms or callouses, masses of circular forms. I need to experiment further in order to do justice to the unique quality of these forms and to incorporate them in my tree forms in the future.
Some time ago I hand-built a sculptural piece based on an interesting sample of harvested birch bark which featured one such callous feature. At the time I was playing around with layering the clay.
Before bisque firing, I applied iron oxide to the “bark” and copper oxide to the “callous”. I applied a metallic grey glaze which I had used previously with good results, yet the results on this piece were disappointing and the texture was obscured to a large extent by the glaze.
Lesson learnt test, test, TEST!!
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