Fertile Mind - Ink

This idea for this illustration of vines growing from the eye socket of a deer skull came to me while I was looking at reference photos of dead trees. Even when broken and decaying, trees look beautiful and are home to many species long after then have died. I wanted to try and express this concept with a skull, and chose a white tail deer as my subject. 

The illustration was drawn by hand with pen and ink, then scanned at high resolution, and the piece is represented here as a print on museum quality paper.