Tweets Illustrated: Beech Leaves in Mid-March

William Van Doren, ballpoint pen on no. 10 envelope.

Tweets Illustrated: When Beech Leaves Fall

William Van Doren, pencil on scratch pad.

Sunset, Monday, 15 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Out today in the world it was clay and gray, brown leaf and dark needle, the curled beech papers along with a scattering of little blackjack oaks the last old foliage about ready to drop, and the woods as open as they’ll ever be. Every year there must be a moment when beechy parchments fall and new greens shoot, but that’s a secret ceremony I’ve never managed to witness.

Sunset, Sunday, 24 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Rain showers and very dark at sunset.

Earlier, from inside the woods: The sky cleared, just a while, in the south and east away from the sun. There’s a blue peculiar to this kind of moment – radiant but distant and not quite real, as if waiting in some other realm to be introduced into the world – as if ‘blue’ has just been invented. Obviously I don’t really know what adjectives describe it. Blurred roses of white cloud floated up in it, remnants of rain.

In the woods, the only leaves remaining against the sky were beech, leaves that hang on til March, pale brown to nearly white, curled dry. I didn’t want to dig out pen and paper (my usual portable note pad – a check carbon folded up in my back jeans pocket). So I kept walking and wrote in new blue ink on old beech paper.

Update on Monday, January 25, 2010 at 04:36PM by BVD

This image is available as a fine art print, here.