Tree Bark Studies

I took some photos of interesting tree bark today for a stitching project:

Beech Tree

The beech tree in our garden in its full flush of autumn beauty. After the huge storm we had in 1987, while we were clearing and logging all the fallen pine trees in the garden, we found a tiny beech shoot just by the side of the log pile we were making. We were very careful not to disturb it or cover it with logs and this is what we got for our care.

Actually, I think this is out of focus - that or my glasses are dirty :-)

Branches

stamps

I've been playing around making my own stamps. The bullrush at the top and the goose were both cut on lino and the trees were cut on a soft, rubber material. I was really pleased with the goose but the shading was pure serendipity - it should have come out as a solid colour but for some reason the acrylic paint I used decided to do its own thing and make it look like a proper goose! The trees came out better than I thought they would as there was some quite fine cutting involved but the softer material was much easier to cut than the lino. I suspect it won't have such a long life as the lino though.

I'm beginning to think about trying to make a proper lino cutting on a block that I can make several prints from - say for Christmas cards. I think I need to practice for a while first on the small stuff and at the moment I have two fingers that I've cut quite deeply so I need to try to avoid that. What we suffer for our art!!

I'm getting excited about this which is a bad sign!

bark

I saw this incredible example of bark whilst out walking the dogs today. I had intended to convert the picture to black and white but it just didn't work, so here it is in colour.

TEXTURE STUDIES - BARK

I saw this incredible birch bark one day while out with my dogs but didn't have my camera. The next time I went on that walk I took my point-and-shoot camera and took these two photos. That was a mistake. The picture is nowhere near crisp enough and doesn't show the wonderful red colours running deep in the bark grooves. Still, the tree's going nowhere so next time I'll take my beloved Canon.