SKETCHING TREES

I've just started a new project to draw the trees in my garden, starting with my silver birches.

One morning this week the sun was shining through the raindrops on the delicately hanging twigs in the front garden, making them look like fairy lights

.I crumpled some pastel paper and used Derwent drawing pencils to make the sketch then added the raindrops with a watersoluble pencil dipped in water.

The bark of these beautiful trees is full of unexpected colour and I really enjoyed drawing this using some Graphitint pencils that I had forgotten about for years.

The Great Hurricane of October 15th 1987

25 years ago today we awoke to a scene of utter devastation after a terrifying night listening to the wind and the crashing of the trees.  We lived on the edge of St Leonards forest in West Sussex in England, surrounded by lovely woodland with hills and valleys with lakes and the forest where we walked as often as we could.  Most of the trees in our garden and the copse outside were laying on the ground and our lane to the outside world was blocked by many trees. It took us and our neighbours 2 days to clear a way through and we had no power for a week but we pulled together nd our little community was strengthened by the experience.

When we were finally able to get out and see the rest of our area we were saddened to see how many trees had been lost in that single night, apparently 15 million trees fell!  Only 18 people lost their lives, the toll could have been much higher if the storm had happened during the day.