Working with ink: three renditions of a narrow place

This relates to my post yesterday, regarding a drawing of birch trees.

This is the finished inking of a closed in, tangled forest scene I drew last week— album art for a client. This was drawn with pale graphite, then outlined and hatched ten thousand ways to Sunday with a Micron .01mm pen, and finally some washes (a gentle blend of India  ink and water).

This piece was very much inspired by an illustration from Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson. The final art for the record sleeve is below, as it looks with color layered in digitally.

And below is the drawing prior to the background hatchings and ink washes. I quite like it as a snowbound clearing, but the purpose of this image (for the record) is to underpin a feeling of being lost, and in a dark, narrow place.