Almost there

As you can see I've been back to the woods. This time I was sketching a couple of trees which, somewhere down the line, will make an awesome series of drawings/prints/paintings or maybe all three. They are two grand old oaks, each with a distinct feel. One is larger, the other slightly shorter and more gnarled and they appear to be of similar age. Their trunks are not 10 feet apart so all the way up their branches intertwine without ever touching and together they take on the classic silhouette of one oak. They look like an old married couple and the complexity of their relationship and the doubling-back of branches puts me in the bizarre position of being able to choose which branch belongs to which tree. Indeed that is what I was doing yesterday - working which branch belongs to which tree in reality and mapping out what happens to each main branch when it is out of sight. The plan is that by careful choice of branch ownership, use of colour and control of quality of mark (a softening here, a harshening there) the trees could speak of dancing, flirting, fighting whilst retaining the exact same silhouette across three pictures. It is only an idea, some manipulated photos and some diagrams at the moment as I do not want to get distracted from my current task of painting elements of the Runnymede skyline. The first two paintings are developing better than I hoped and today I start the third.

As to the woods, spring is now in full swing. Some species have proper leaves now, the ferns are unfurling fast and in some parts of the wood there are now big patches of bluebells. We are only a few days from the first sections being at their best while others haven't even got started yet. As the weather continues to heat up (it hit 27º in the boat yesterday afternoon) the Thames is starting its annual process of seducing me - although you probably gathered that from my post on Saturday.