freaky tree

This morning I just made a few tweaks to yesterday’s tree sketch to see what might happen.

Edit: I’ve been thinking a lot about drawing trees lately. One kind I like is the really detailed gnarled ones you see in picture by Northern European Renaissance artist such as Albrecht Dürer or 19th-century illustrators such as Arthur Rackham and their contemporary successors such as Bagram Ibatoulline. The other kind of tree I like is much more flat and stylised, such as the 17th century manuscript paintings at the Ramayana exhibition at the British Library. I’ve recently seen some stylish trees and brambles by David Roberts (can’t find a website), Alaskan artist Rie Muñoz, and Tim Burton‘s curlicue trees are always fantastic. I’m off to the bookshelf to look for a few more, but I’m wondering, do any of you have a favourite artist who draws really interesting trees?

Have a look, Garen Ewing is doing some fabulous drawings in Garen’s A-Z of Comic Strip Characters. I think his latest, Tank Girl, is the best one yet!

And I have absolutely no idea if this is going to be good, but one of my favourite things I saw in the cinema in high school was the Chinese film Raise the Red Lantern, directed by Zhang Yumou and starring Gong Li; the Royal Opera House are hosting a ballet version of it by the National Ballet of China. Details here.