to ink . . . or not

Yesterday I drew both of these trees from photos I had snapped while camping a few weeks ago. The woodpecker holes were oddly lined up on the tree located on a terraced bit of land leading down to the fishing dock. The cypress tree had quite an impressive set of “knees”; it was down at the lake’s edge next to our campsite. Grasses next to the water were flattened, probably by the younger alligators wallowing there.

I was planning on adding watercolor today, but Bill saw these and said he liked it as ink drawings — or possibly just add a bit of color to the background but leave the trees ink-only. Now I’m not sure what to do . . .

UPDATE: I decided to strengthen some of the ink lines of the two trees in these sketches and not add any watercolor.

BTW, these were sketched with a Duke 209 fude nib fountain pen filled with Noodler’s Lexington Gray ink.