Juncos' Sinkhole
In this drawing, the center panel was actually completed first. At the time I was working on it, I had no idea that there would be two more panels - I avoided sketching a composition on purpose. Starting from a single point (the diagonal limb above the fallen tree), I expanded outward, using existing marks to determine where the next should be. This working method helped me to draw perceptually - looking up, down, left, and right, while cobbling all these visual experiences into one drawing. After I finished the center panel, I felt like the drawing needed to expand left. I connected some of the main branches from the center panel to the new one, but after that the center panel was left in the studio and not brought out again. The rest of the process was the same: expand outward from the marks I had made at the paper's edge. When the left panel was realized, I hung it beside the first and knew it needed to expand right. Sitting on a flat bank in the sinkhole, I was looking across at the tree's broken base, up at the branching trunk and down and to the right as one branch stretched toward and then past me. I wanted the drawing to capture that. The value change that the tree makes as it crosses panels was not planned; the left and center panels remained in the studio while I worked on the third, so the shift didn't make itself apparent until I hung them together on the wall. It was a happy discovery. I would never have planned such a stark transition, nor chosen to call attention to a panel's seams, but the change in light and mark gave it a sense of passing time and changing light, weather, and mood. I left it as it was. The title came from a group of birds (juncos) that lived nearby. They'd come flying down the sinkhole like little dark gray fighter jets, see me, and scatter in a twittering blur of evasive maneuvering. This happened several times over the course of the drawing; after the initial scare, they'd perch under the hanging roots and keep me company for five to ten minutes, then move on.