While in Brazil

While in Brazil, having not yet traveled beyond Rio I was still  amazed by the size of the trees. I come from UK where the trees are beautiful, they are tiny relative to those in the Americas.  

Even the palm trees I saw along the road sides, boulevards and parks, with trunks solid as rock, stood tall. The mighty leaves high above were out of my notion or comparison, until I saw one fallen dead after a storm.  Its stem was thicker than my arm, the leaf not as a paddle as I thought more like a giant feather;  sections interwoven; dense and robust … I gasped at its beauty and stateliness.

Each day I would attempt to draw the leaves and now I try to do a lino-cut but somehow it doesn’t ‘cut the mustard.’