I wanted to move away from the quiet, still qualities of a traditional landscape and focus entirely on energy. Nature is rarely static. It is constantly growing, decaying, and shifting. This piece was a deliberate experiment in capturing that hidden, frenetic activity—making a forest look as though it is writhing and moving right in front of you.
Technically, this required a dense orchestration of different tools and medium behaviors on smooth hot press paper. I built the surface using a heavy blend of Faber-Castell Pitt pens, Staedtler pigment pens, acrylic pens, and Sakura gel pens.
The process was rhythmic and intense. I used the fine precision of the Staedtler pens to create an intricate web of overlapping, high-contrast lines for the undergrowth and the tree trunks. The fine, colorful lines slashing through the foliage were accomplished with Sakura gel pens, giving those bright accents a sharp, clean edge. Instead of blending colors smoothly, I relied on rapid dashes and tight clusters of stippling with the acrylic and Pitt pens. By placing contrasting tones directly side-by-side—the electric greens against the deep purples and warm ochres—the canopy begins to optically vibrate.
It is a chaotic way to build a landscape, but letting the marks layer over one another without correcting the friction gives the piece its pulse. It records the grit and the constant motion of the woods rather than a sanitized portrait of them.
