Memory Drawing with a Knife

 I was walking at a nearby park that has two ponds separated by a land bridge.  The sun was setting, and the pond reeds were silhouetted.  There were too many mosquitoes to comfortably stop walking and stand there drawing, so I traced the scene with my eyes and sent it to memory.  I noticed that if I could concentrate on the shapes of the light areas I could cut those away with a carving tool instead of drawing the darks.

When I got home,  instead of drawing what I remembered with a pen, I grabbed a veiner and carved away the lights as I remembered them.  I carved two little blocks and then tried printing them superimposed, slightly off register, overlapping---  Below is the second of the blocks, after some modification,  printed alone. 

I am trying to teach myself how to carve without sketching guide lines or transferring an image to reproduce.  Direct carving takes different kinds of observation than drawing because drawing with a knife pulls out lights instead of putting down darks.  As if it weren't mind-bending enough to work backwards!