Oak Tree Drawing

I have just finished a new large scale, A1 sized drawing. I am finally ‘feeling’ my drawing juices flow and I am really excited to be getting back to practical making and desperate to start experimenting with different ideas - of which I have a long list waiting.

Within Me, Beneath Me, All Around Me. 2025.

The summing up of the degree work (as I mentioned in my previous blog post) coincides with a couple of drawing exhibitions that I am keen to enter, so this was the main driving force to create this A1 size drawing. Walking in my local forest and other rural areas are a really big point of inspiration and I find I lack a lot of motivation and inspiration when I don’t get a chance to do this. More recently I have been able to do a daily walk and this is a good opportunity for the creative juices to flow. I came across a beautiful, old oak tree which was standing amongst holly trees. The textures and quirks of the tree really sung out to me. It was a moment in time that caught me stopping to capture its beauty.

A couple of weeks prior to making this particular drawing, I was desperate to simply ‘make a drawing’ of the tree - I really wanted to record it visually and through the physicality of drawing. In front of the telly one night, I got out my sketchbook and made a sketch of the tree. I wanted to capture the movement, the textures and lines of the bark and quirky shape of the tree. I really enjoyed simply drawing and I was quite pleased with the sketch I had made. So on from this, I decided that I was going to make a larger drawing to make its significance known and I was desperate to re-create the wonderfulness of it! Hence, the creation of this final A1 drawing.

I need to think of a title for the piece. I started to write down some words about what comes to mind when I look at the drawing and it reminded me of a workshop I did with my university about writing about your work in a ‘free’ way. The exercise we did was to look at the work we made, and imagine us being the work and to then write whatever came to mind.
At the time of the university workshop, I wrote about a piece I had made focusing on soil - at the time I was working on a collaborative project called ‘ArtScietnific’ and was interested in microbes and soil, roots etc (something that I am still very much interested and the Soil exhibition re-surfaced some ideas to return to later).

This was the piece I made:

This was the piece of writing I made about it during the workshop:

I Am it.

Tingles of vibrations

Thuds of confinement

Pieces and pieces and pieces of me

Flowing and moving

Pulled and stretched

Limbs and life push through me

But maybe i’m wrong

Is it the other way round

Is that a space or space?

For how do I connect and make things better?

What is my purpose in life?

Is there more than meets the eye or am I simply forgotten?

I thought I could try the same process to help me with a title for this oak tree drawing. The piece of writing is a completely ‘free’ mode of writing without any rules, just simply write what comes to mind, through imagining you are the piece of work or the subject of the drawing i.e. the tree. Here is my piece of writing for the oak tree.

All gnarly and old

With twists and lumps and patterns unfold

Bits are broken

Snapped clean off

A moment in time forever captured in my branches

Twists and turns create the textures of my story

Twists and turns longly reaching for empty space

My purpose is not for beauty

But why not take a moment to look

There is life within me, beneath me and all around me

Maybe the title could be this last line: ‘Within Me, Beneath Me, All Around Me’

This title seems to work quite well on a personal level. A metaphor in terms of me being the tree and currently my own personal circumstances… The drawing is a testament to a moment of my own history and my current present moment.

I feel like this is a really good exercise to ‘get to know your work’ and view it with some depth and not just a drawing that you’ve created. I really like this approach to understanding my own work and perhaps reasons, I didn't realise, to why I made it.

N.B - I have decided to keep this blog going as a point of reflection and to keep me accountable on my continuing artistic journey but also my personal and art related thoughts. I had to keep an online blog for my degree and I found it really useful as a reference point and also something to keep updating and recognise my journey and how I can develop my work. My art work and my own personal experiences, particularly of the world around me, cannot be viewed as separate and I think continuing this blog is a good way to keep a record and remind me of my reason why I make work.

Naming Art Work

Exploring printing and getting back into drawing