Tree Sketch

For the second sketch of Hunt 618

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1475894

I chose tree. Trees are not the easiest thing to draw.  Each one has a personality.  I spent quite a while studying them back in 2006.  You can review my process here on my blog. 

https://jocastilloartblog.blogspot.com/search?q=tree+study

Over the years it has become easier to draw and paint trees.  Like anything you paint it is all about light, value and negative spaces.  Negative space is the space around the drawing.  The open spaces between the trunks and limbs and leaves.  Tree holes.

In colored paintings where the sky shows through the leaves you paint it just a tad darker than the sky as you are looking through a tunnel of sorts.

Number 2 tree - a Yaupon and cedar that we see through the guest room window.  We don't look out that way much as the room isn't used often.  Drawn with the Pilot Ink Pen that I thought didn't work any more.  It does if you hold it at just the right spot.  I almost threw it away.  Whew.

Yaupon is a type of holly and grows all over the place.  It is very flammable and part of the problem in the big fire of 2011.  It is growing up at the bottom of these trees and should be trimmed again.  Yaupon is pretty and delicate looking.  The female plants have red berries.   This tree is a male I guess, no berries.  We took out the rest when we cleaned the yard.  The cedar trees are not native to the area and soak up all the water.    That is about all the trees left in our yard.  There was an oak and another big Yaupon by the driveway.  The guys that cleaned the brush out took them too.  I wasn't very happy to loose the oak especially.

If you click on 'trees' at the bottom of my blog in Labels.  You will see many paintings and sketches of trees when I remembered to label them.  They might give you some ideas.