The intention, eventually, is to begin work on a series of prints of the ‘notable’ and ‘characterful’ trees of Markstakes Common. There are 34 (less three dead) on the official list of ‘notable trees’ and as many more ‘possible notable’ (PosNots) and trees of character of my own choosing in the other: younger fallen trees, peculiar twisted companions, a strip of upright bark with a new stem growing from it and many hornbeam from the ‘candelabra’ to the tree I’ve dubbed the ‘Arthur Rackham’.
I’m Remus not Romulus. I lay out my stall with multiple sketches and some ink drawings done of all the ‘notables’ and a handful of the ‘characters’ drawn up to. The journey continues with the concept board or photo gallery of tree. I’m figuring out how to tell its story, and to fit it all in on a single sheet of paper. Here lies the challenge – a woodland tree is like a broken spider’s web with distant tendrils at the end of branches reaching out in any opportunist direction, not least directly upwards.
The veteran hornbeam, if you are going to see just one tree in Markstakes Common is the ‘must see’ tree. You get to it via four others (1,2,3 and 6).
Am I procrastinating to feel the need to go out today to make what might be the seventh and eighth drawings? I’d argue yes. I now have a far clearer understanding of my aim and its limitations. I drew hornbeam 5 then from the north looking south with the wood boundary and fields to the west.
I still left bits off – those twigs at the outer reaches of those longest limbs just go on forever!
I did a circuit around the woods while the rain came down. I notice broken bits of branch – mostly oak. It comes down helter-skelter through the canopy in such a way that it is sometimes tricky to understand which tree it came from. I pay a visit to many of the ‘notables’ including ancient oak (tree 13). Being winter I can come to it from the south-east through a track in the now flattened dead bracken and brambles. I disturb a deer. It strikes me that this oak has put out huge exploratory lower branches which eventually escape the main trees historic giant brocoli like canopy and then begins to grow skywards. I’ve not see any self-propagate in this way even where entire heavy stems lay across the ground.
Other things for an unwritten field journal made up of a few dozen photos will keep for another time: a PosNot silver birch, slime mould in an ancient beech where I see signs of a split between two major stems …
And back to hornbeam 5 approached directly from the east, so looking west with a new view and a chance that with this view the ‘outlier’ branches can be included.
I take multiple photographs to provide detail – the job of distinguishing this tree from the others entangled around it I achieve with pencil and paper. This drawn with a fat piece of graphite.
I think it will be a black and white print from Japanese Lino. I will then try some with a mask, others painted and yet others using chin collée to provide colour. I have the tree in all seasons, in snow in winter, with verdant spring growth and with a dense summer canopy.
At this point, my third attempt at getting the entire tree into frame I was going to give in. Then I remembered I had a summer version of this where I had been unable to see the ends of branches for the leaves.
This still fails to get the tree’s height into the top of the canopy.
Leave a Reply