Out on a limb

Yesterday, a reader wrote in response to my Winslow Homer post, “I find rocks difficult, too, and trees. Trees are my nemesis.” Made me smile because I was drawing a combination of rocks and trees at the time.

I will soon show you a cute parlor trick that will simplify drawing trees. But until then, approach them the same way you do the human body, as a sinuous torso with expressive, outstretched limbs.

Although my trick will simplify getting the overall shapes right, there is no substitute for careful observation. The Russian Peredvizhniki painter Ivan Shishkin, like many of his fellow-countrymen, specialized in trees, and he seemed to draw them as frequently as paint them. That meticulous attention to drawing studies is something he shared with America’s great artist of trees, Andrew Wyeth.

My goal in this sketch was not to perfectly realize a real-world tree, but to devise a pattern of branches for a painting of a tree fallen across a river that has created a logjam. This has been the most difficult sketch to date, since I did two radically different layouts for it and have waffled between them.

 I’ve done eight sketches since the beginning of January, of which six are usable. I have two others completed earlier. On Monday, I will paint again for the first time since my surgery. I can’t wait.