My Love Hate Relationship with Trees

I despise drawing trees. The branches never look quite right. The leaves are weird. A stand of trees off in the distance isn’t bad. And obviously I have some love for  birch trees, but of course those are close up and you don’t have the branches and leaves to contend with in those pictures. However, as much as I hate drawing and painting trees, I also love them. They’re beautiful and stately and they make a landscape all the better. So...that being said, I have started to try and push myself into figuring out trees.

You know which ones are a lot easier to start with? Pine trees. They have a simplicity and a balance to their branches that makes them a little less frustrating. So this is where I started.

While I worked on trees, I also worked on my watercolor technique. I don’t feel like you can ever mess up watercolor. Not everyone agrees with me but I’ve usually been able to fix any weird mistakes. Your color is too dark? Add water. Not enough color? Add paint. With watercolor and pretty much any painting, it’s all about taking your time.

I really like this one better than my other attempt. It took ages and ages. Sometimes I was only using water on my brush to push the little bit of paint around. I was going for a shadowy look: the forest through the fog. 

Close up you can see how the trees have a center line and then the branches come off of that in a fairly symmetrical way. Not too symmetrical of course. That would be unnatural. And weird. 

So that’s trees. I’m still working on trying other ones. The bare branches of fall and winter deciduous tress are still frustrating but I have a piece inspired by a banyan tree that’s turning out rather nice. 

And watercolor? If you haven’t played with it at all, you really should. Trust me, it’s a very forgiving medium.