Deadwood

This is a sketch of a tree in my local park, a tree which I have loved since I was little. I was always fascinated by its hollow form, gnarled shape and dark insides. As a child, I thought of it as being like a little house, the holes in it being like windows. Now I look at it and am amazed that it is in fact alive, alive when twenty years ago it appeared dead. This sketch is of the hollow lower part of the tree. The rest of the tree is still growing upwards, sprouting leaves, still living, a strange contrast with its apparently dead lower half.