Now that we’ve talked about value let’s talk about color. Green is one of the most difficult colors for artists to manage. So many artists, both beginning and experienced, paint their trees (and other things in nature) too green. Once again this tends to come from our habit of naming things rather than really seeing them. Trees are green (at least in the summer) so we grab a tube of Sap Green, or Viridian, or Chromium Green Oxide, or even Thalo Green, then load up the brush and start painting a gaudy form that looks more like a Bob Ross Chia Pet gone punk than a natural tree.
Figure Painting Techniques for Trees
I painted my first tree at age 12 and continued to paint landscapes for the next few decades. But I have never liked my trees. Eventually, I switched to figurative work although I love plein air painting. I still do not like my trees. I agonize about painting trees. Give me a portrait to paint, no problem. But I lose my confidence when it comes to trees.
I recently read an article by C.J. Trent about blocks faced by all sorts of creative people. Trent wrote that blocks happen for many reasons, including that “you may face an impasse because you need to learn a technique or change your method, or find a new material to realize your vision.” This common sense view aligned with Edgar Payne’s advice: “a painter needs to study, mediate, experiment, and practice interminably.” This past January, I decided to spend a year studying how to paint trees and painting trees. I give myself a “B” for effort and a “C” for results. I still have half the year to go, so I am cautiously optimistic.
For the study part, I gathered all my books on landscaping painting and turned to John Carlson who devoted a whole chapter to painting trees. He says it takes study and time and counsels the student to first understand trees, then to draw them, before attempting to paint them. That works for me.
I have listened to some very thoughtful people speak about painting trees. At a gathering of local artists one evening, an artist remarked that it was easy to draw trees as symbols rather than as living creatures. Only by really seeing them can you draw them so they look real. It reminded me of the difference between stick figures and more realistic figure drawing. Trees are not symmetrical; they should have the same feel of gesture as a figure. A friend mentioned to me that drawing branches should be like drawing fingers on a figure. Carlson instructed artists that a painter can paint her trees anyway she wants and that the less they look like anyone else’s the happier she should be.
For the practice part, I have been drawing trees and painting trees. I have worked on value, color, gesture, and structure. What have I learned?
Brushwork counts. A flick of a brush yields the suggestion of leaves dancing in the wind. Branches need to taper and turn as they snake through the sky, calling for confident brushwork. Trees call for a balance between abstraction and realism; detail and suggestion. And I have learned that Carlson is right. Painting trees is as individual as painting figures.
A friend of mine, Kathy Nolan Hutchins, paints beautiful trees and forests. She exalts in detail and creates a sense of peace and beauty in her work. For example, look at her piece, “Belgium Woods.”
I would recognize her trees anywhere.
In contrast, so many of the early great landscape artists, like Ruisdael, only suggested detail in their trees. Their spare use of color and value gives an illusion of detail and depth. These early artists excelled at creating atmosphere. I can study these painters for hours.
I have read lots of rules about painting trees. I am not much of a rule person so they are fun to read but I am not going to follow them blindly. I think the only “rule” that I follow is to make my own greens instead of using color straight out of the tube. I have painted trees that I like. For instance, I painted our boathouse which is on a beach surrounded by a thick stand of trees. Most of the trees in this picture are just suggested.
Trees are majestic but the landscape paintings I like the best rarely show an entire tree painted in a realistic fashion. Instead, trees create the mood of the painting. So while I think trees need to be painted in a way that shows life and rhyme, I do not want to paint them so realistically that they capture the landscape painting. Instead, to me, trees are magic; in themselves, and in paintings.
References:
Edgar Payne, Composition of Outdoor Painting, 1941.
John Carlson, Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, Dover, 1973.C. J. Trent, ”Breaking through the Block,” Artist’s Magazine, July/August 2019
Keep Your Tree Shapes Interesting
One of my earliest memories involving art was in first grade. Some of us kids were drawing trees. I was drawing my trunks wide at the base with a couple of evenly-placed branches toward the top and making squiggly lines for the leaves that resulted in an umbrella-shaped canopy. Fairly amateurish to be sure, but hey, I was only in first grade. However, I noticed my fellow classmates drawing two straight vertical lines topped off with a near-perfect circle. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I remember looking at their drawings and thinking, “That looks more like a lollipop than a tree.”
One of the biggest struggles people have when learning to draw is letting go of geometric shapes and seeing the abstract shapes of things as they really are. To get through life we put names to things, and when we start drawing we tend to fall back on that mental concept. Since we can name geometric shapes like circles, rectangles, etc., they can have a nasty habit of clouding our vision and showing up in our artwork. A tree becomes a couple of vertical lines with a circle, a grouping of trees becomes an arrangement of mere humps all the same size and shape.
To really draw trees well, we need to do the same thing we do when drawing any other subject, suspend our intellectual naming of objects and just see the shapes for what they are. These shapes are usually fairly abstract with perhaps a hint of the geometric here and there. The best way to do this is to head outdoors with a sketchbook and spend time drawing trees and really focus on their contour and variety of shape.
Trees Have Volume and Form
We’ve all heard the saying, “Can’t see the forest for the trees”, which of course describes one who is lost in the details and cannot see the bigger picture. Besides being a convenient pun, this describes how many beginning and even experienced artists mistakingly approach drawing or painting trees. They get so focused on showing a bunch of leaves or branches and are completely blind to the fact that all those leaves form a big mass of volume and form.
Tree forms (and any form), are shown by light and shadow. Capturing the light and shadow, and hence the volume and form will make your trees look way more realistic than all that detail that you spend hours trying to draw or paint. Of course, you can capture some detail, but it should never be at the cost of light and form.
Remember, trees are not just a two-dimensional outline, they are three-dimensional and will have clumps of leaves that are in front of other clumps. This is also shown by light and shadow. Look for this when you are drawing or painting your next tree.
Don’t Paint Hedges
In nature, trees don’t usually grow by themselves, but rather in groups or clusters. These groupings will result in unique, abstract shapes that may have the same appearance as a single tree from that same group or species. This is because unlike the hedges people plant on the edge of their yards, groupings of trees in nature don’t grow in perfect two-dimensional rows. Rather, they grow all around three-dimensionally.
So when you look at a cluster of trees, you are not just seeing trees that are next to each other, you are seeing trees in front of other trees, partially blocking the trees behind them. This partial blocking of other trees will create unique patterns. So a grouping of spruce trees will not just be a bunch of thin, triangular shapes, but suggestings of triangular shapes mixed with other abstract shapes. Once again the best thing to do is study and sketch tree groupings from life or even from a good photo.
