Inspiration Avenue:Trees

For this week's Inspiration Avenue challenge, given us by Judy Goddard, we were asked to make a tree, or a forest of trees. A few months ago, I was in a six person round robin, but failed to take a photo of the finished piece, the theme of which was trees, before I mailed it out into the world. Consequently, these photos have never been seen by anyone before except myself and the recipient of the piece, who generously e-mailed me a photo of the completed artwork.

I have often said I can't draw, not even simple shapes, and that was the case as I tried to draw a tree. I attempted one on watercolor paper, but it didn't look like a tree. To correct the mess I made, my friend Dana drew a new tree for me lightly in pencil on a background of watercolor paper covered with vintage sheet music. I then took it home and painted black lines around her pencil marks. The tree was to be (if I recall correctly) around 9" X 12"and it would be folded in the center to be turned into one of six sides of a star book. I watched eagerly as Dana drew the tree, which I asked be placed slightly off center. I took no photos of this step, nor when I drew around her lines in black paint.


I managed to take a single scan right after I applied all the watercolors to the two consecutive pages of vintage sheet music cut to size. At this point it looked like quite the mess.


Next, I applied gesso to the background, added five little birds to the branches, and a few "leaves" that I removed (popped out) from a specific brand of paint chips. During that particular round robin, I made certain I used paint chips in some way at least once in each of the players pieces and these tiny bits that looked like leaves were the perfect addition.

You may need to click on the page to see the final detail: the nest. I cut an irregular circle from the tree and backed the hole with a piece of parchment paper to which I glued a "handmade" nest. The nest was made using bits of sewing thread and bits of dried bamboo. Although it's not that obvious in this photo, the nest sits a bit behind the plane of the tree (remember, this tree image is bent in the center of the page), so you actually have to look inside the tree (hole) to see the nest.

If this is your type of challenge, please go to Inspiration Avenue and join the fun this week.