TIM BAKER

I have mentioned a few times that I’ve been exploring other parts of Richmond Park than my usual haunts. Here are the first fruits of that labour – paintings and drawings of Spanker’s Hill and Treebox Wood (which I call the Dinosaur Wood because of the ancient fallen trees and general ‘out of time’ feeling of the place). Spanker’s Hill is rumoured to be named after a racehorse but how it got that name is really lost to the mists of time, but the wood was first planted in 1819.

You might have seen quite a few of these over at my Instagram over the last few months – this is a two part post. This just focuses on the work done or around Spanker’s Hill.

You can see a view of the brow of Spanker’s Hill in the drawing above from late March. There aren’t many views of hills like that, a ridgeline view in Richmond Park – most hills are totally covered with trees. There is a convenient log halfway up the hill, so I drew that there! I was on my way to see the trees shown on the right of the drawing – more of those in a bit.

On the other side of Spanker’s Hill is Treebox Wood, a weirdly quiet place, a bit like Mirkwood but the trees aren’t as twisty and it’s more open. A lot of trees have fallen here and been left, and as it gets quite muddy – there is a small pond here – it tends to be bypassed by the many people walking their dogs or jogging along the main path by the kite flying fields (I don’t know if they have a proper name, but the official map has a kite symbol there).

As I drew and painted ‘Dinosaur Forest’ at dusk, I was being watched by a raven sitting on a tree stump – it watched me for hours. That’s how gothic this place is!

It didn’t caw ‘Nevermore’ thankfully.

On the edge of the Treebox Wood looking towards the kite fields, is this view of an ancient tree that seems to be shedding it’s bark and had lots of twisty holes. It was being used by all sorts of nesting birds, including Jackdaws at the top (I would assume since they feed on the ground they’d nest there, but no) and a tiny finch or tit was nesting under the lower fallen off bark at the bottom.

Here is the pond in the centre of Treebox Wood. It’s rather covered in green algae, and rather full of insects, but then again I saw a massive dragonfly swooping for munchies there, and there are ducks, some rather insistent geese, and the usual squirrels. While I was there I heard what sounded like a tree falling over, the cracks and the crash.

Not sure where that was, I didn’t hear any woodspersons or chainsaws, so maybe stupid people climbing on rotten trees?

The title of the next piece is a recent one and shows my current ambivalence to my usual landscapes, and is also a joke on the pointy tree roots. It’s exactly what I was thinking when I was drawing it: What’s The Point? It’s a little further on from the ‘teapot tree’ on Spanker’s Hill. I like the use of the water to define the background trees, and it’s not a bad drawing but….I’ve been here before.

I have posted this inktense painting of the deer as part of the Ink review. This is before they got chased off by stupid ‘glocals’ (I just made that word up for local grockles – yes it is possible to be a tourist in your own backyard. These were dumb locals bearing cameraphones who think that ever advancing on wildlife will mean they don’t run away! Always a problem if you try and paint any wildlife in Richmond Park.)

Interestingly there are two Y-Tree drawings and one painting, one in Richmond here with the usual inquisitive yet wary jackdaw, and another I drew in Bushy Park. Maybe the Bushy one will appear in a future roundup.

Talking of jackdaws, here is one who flew up and posed while I was drawing the other side of this tree on Spanker’s Hill – the one that looks like it’s doing a sort of dance. I’m a little tea pot…

A paint stick piece, I think it was done after this post was first written. The name comes from the omens around jackdaws, crows, any of the corvidae family of birds. They can be seen as a bad omen, but I think jackdaws are cute as they waddle around. They don’t make lots of noise like that nosy raven might, or rooks or crows – and aren’t so bold as to beg. But like all corvids they are smart and curious.

You see this post was started in the middle of May…then somehow I totally forgot about it or abandoned it! That apathy has been rather sadly common with my landscape work, I’ve been not totally sure about my landscape work since around May and it’s been a struggl,e although I’ve kept working. This is why you got a lot of the portrait sessions posted and not so much landscapes, which I am going back and rectifying now because it looks very portrait heavy.

Hence accidentally finding this post when I started to post the very same images again!

I am proud of the Spanker’s Hill tree watercolours though, like the reverse view of the same tree above (yes three views of the same tree, I was rather obsessed!), I think they work, but a lot of the reason I switched away is subsequent attempts at watercolour haven’t been as good…so I’ve been focusing on working with other media. That will become more evident in the second part of this post.