Project: Drawing trees

Exercises: Sketching an individual tree and Larger study of an individual tree  

The tree I chose in St Andrews Park I believe to be some kind of maple, judging by the shape of the leaves. I tried to indicate this by drawing the leaves in a jaggedy way. It's quite a spindly tree so probably quite young, the foliage is busy and thick in some areas and then very sparce in others. I used a hatching technique to indicate the mass of foliage, darkening it in denser areas and lightening in the more naked areas. Where shadows fell on the leaves and trunk I again used hatching to distinguish it from the areas where light fell, which I left more or less blank.

I think I did reasonably well to show the kind of tree it is, but the drawing as a whole is lacking something. I only really hinted at what was going on in the background so sadly the tree has no real sense of belonging! It was a difficult exercise, mainly I think because deciding what was important to select or simplify was hard when being bombarded with so much information an individual tree can hold.

Exercise: Study of several trees

There were at least three types of tree in this view, but I couldn't tell you what they all are! One of them was definitely some kind of fir and I tried to indicate this by drawing drooping boughs - the branches heavily laden and often pointing towards the ground because of this. The tree next to this one was thick with foliage, but had a fine and light coloured leaf. And the tree to the right of my view was not hugely disimilar but had a slightly darker leaf and there were gaps where you could see branches pointing almost straight up to the sky. I used hatching in various tones to indicate the more dense or lighter masses of foliage. I used a putty rubber to show where sunlight fell on patches of leaves, and drew quite clearly the huge shadows of the trees themselves stretching across the grass. As it was such a bright day there were areas of the scene that were very dark in shadow (for example the trunks of the trees) and other areas that were almost hazy in their brightness, like where the sun fell on the grass. I kept the details in the background quite simple - the fence for example was quite a way away and was difficult to see very clearly. I used a very limited palette to give a vague idea of the colours involved but didn't want to go over my pencil drawing too much at the risk of spoiling it.