Painting Trees

Colour, Line and Texture through the Seasons

Sian Dudley, Rob Dudley

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781785006029
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Trees are a magnificent source of inspiration for artists. This book looks more closely at their role in art and how best the artist can capture their essence as the sole subject of a painting, to complete a landscape or to step into an abstract representation. In a unique collaboration, Sian and Rob Dudley combine their skills to offer insights into a range of techniques and styles. There are tips and ideas for finding inspiration, developing your ideas, information gathering, layout, tone and colour within the book. Step-by-step projects demonstrate the techniques in action, from first inspiration through to completion. With practical advice on painting through the seasons to help you to see and paint trees with new appreciation, this book is a joyful and essential guide to creating expressive paintings. A beautiful and essential guide to painting trees creatively with confidence and personal style, it is superbly illustrated with 198 colour illustrations featuring watercolour, oil and pencil technique. Will be of great interest to artists, watercolourists, English countryside enthusiasts, natural history and scientific illustrators, Trees are a magnificent source of inspiration for artists. Sian and Rob Dudley are well-known and respected artists and contribute to the online resource Art Tutor.

Chapter 1

Why paint trees?

Trees have captured the human imagination since the beginning of time. Through the ages, and in all corners of the globe, trees have played a prominent part in the lives of humans. Our relationship with them may have originated from an intuitive understanding of their significance to our physical well-being, dating back to our ancient ancestors. Trees meet our needs in so many different ways that our relationship with them goes beyond the purely physical, touching us at every level of human experience. It is perhaps not surprising that we feel an emotional bond with them and relate to them more closely than with almost any other plant. It is rare to find a person who does not like trees!

It is unsurprising then, that trees feature abundantly in the arts, inspiring poetry, literature, architecture and of course, painting. It is their place, or maybe their participation, in the latter with which we are concerned in this book.

Teasels and Tree, watercolour, 32cm × 43cm (12½in × 17in), Siân Dudley. This painting was inspired by the way that the glowing autumnal light lit both the hedge behind the tree and the teasels in the foreground. As I was focused on the golden colours below, the uppermost branches of the tree seemed to melt into the bright, blue sky.

Trees are so much part of our lives, so natural a choice of subject matter, that asking the question ‘Why do you want to paint trees?’ may seem superfluous. Yet, giving the question some serious thought might lead to some unexpected ideas and reveal exciting sources of inspiration that might otherwise have been lost in the mists of assumption. Having an awareness of why you want to paint trees will enable you to make informed decisions about how you will depict them in your paintings. As you consider this question, you will begin to discover what it is about trees that you personally find inspiring.

‘Accidental’ Inclusion!

It is very common for someone new to painting to begin by painting landscapes and notice, relatively quickly, that it is quite difficult to avoid trees! Faced with this realization, the novice painter recognizes that they have a challenge on their hands. At this stage, the artist is, appropriately, concerned with figurative representation of their subject matter, and the prospect of having to find ways to represent certain aspects of trees (for example, the character of a wooded hillside or a mass of leaves) can seem quite daunting. Do not be daunted! Throughout this book, there are many suggestions that will help you with these artistic problems.

As an artist gains more experience, techniques are learned and a personal style develops, and the inclusion of trees no longer is something forced upon the artist by the landscape in front of them but rather is something that they will seek out. Trees undeniably enhance a landscape, and being able to paint them convincingly and confidently can lead the artist to a point where the trees play a major role in the composition of the artist’s images.

Home Through the Meadow, 29cm × 45cm (11½in × 17¾in), watercolour, Siân Dudley. In this painting, I wanted to capture the feeling of walking home through a summer meadow. The trees were an unavoidable part of the background to the cottage, but they served the useful purpose of providing darker tones against which to paint the light-toned cottage.

The Visual Beauty of Trees

It may be that, from the very beginning of your artistic journey, trees have been a major source of inspiration for you. Are you able to identify what it is that you find inspiring about them?

It may be tempting to state that you simply find them visually beautiful. This of course is indisputable; we all find trees beautiful, and you are more than entitled to your personal preferences. However, are you able to discern which physical characteristics you find especially appealing? Being able to identify why you find a particular tree or stand of trees visually beautiful will help you to make informed artistic decisions about how you paint the subject matter.

Autumnal Trees, watercolour, 29cm × 25cm (11½in × 9¾in), Siân Dudley. I found the light coming through these young trees, clothed in autumnal foliage, beautiful. That was reason enough to paint this scene.

For example, if what you love about a tree is its overall shape, describing the shape in a simple manner may take precedence over the careful depiction of the shape and distribution the tree’s leaves. Think about images that you may have seen of the cypress trees so typical of Tuscany; paintings tend to focus on the trees’ tall, slender shapes and on their position in the landscape, rather than on detailed descriptions of their leaves.

On the other hand, when we think about an apple tree or cherry tree in full blossom, we think about the flowers and their overall colour. This might inspire a painting that depicts just a few branches rather than the whole tree. Van Gogh took this approach when he painted Almond Blossom.

Contemplate the laciness of branches in winter, the autumnal colour of leaves, the texture of a trunk, the rich, dense foliage in summer and the bright, spring greens of newly opened leaves; all of these, and many, many more features of trees, are excellent starting points for paintings. Take time to ponder over what really excites you, and ask yourself how you can bring these qualities out in a painting.

For us, it is the play of light on and through trees that we both find particularly interesting. Strong sunlight accentuates the contrasts in tone of any subject; when it falls on a bare tree in winter, fascinating things happen. It is not always the outer branches that catch the sunlight but sometimes a branch in the middle of the tree, which gives a sense of intrigue due to its unexpectedness. At the same time, the tonal range from highlights on branches to the deep, dark shadows that the branches cast gives a real sense of the depth and shape, and it highlights textures of the bark. Similarly, in summer, a patch of sunlight may slip through an area of foliage, causing a group of leaves to positively glow against the rich, dark greens of an area more densely populated with leaves.

The Big Beech Tree: Winter (detail). The play of light amongst the branches, accentuating the branches’ twisting shapes, inspired the making of this graphite image. The full image can be seen in Chapter 8.

This book is about trees as the inspiration for painting. While we have a genuine interest in trees, and each of us has a favourite species, being able to identify a tree by name, or describe its growth pattern in botanical terms, is of little importance compared with the visual pleasure that the tree provides. Any information about the tree is interesting when developing your ideas of painting it, but care should be taken not to become embroiled in allowing what you know about the physicality of the tree to overly influence your design for your painting.

Focus your attention on what excites you about the tree that you see before you. This will free yourself up to create beautiful expressive paintings, rather than you expending any of your creative energy on things you may have learned from reading about the tree.

The Intangible Qualities of Trees

There are other aspects of trees that might inspire an artist to paint them or to include them in a painting. These qualities are more subjective, intangible qualities.

We describe trees as having strength, grandeur and elegance. We may say that they are ethereal or sinister. Many of the characteristics that we attribute to them could also be applied to ourselves, although, at this level, we are not anthropomorphizing trees but recognizing something about them with which we connect at a deep level. Our use of this type of language recognizes our emotional response to trees, and it is so ensconced in our daily language that we do this subconsciously.

As an artist, it might be useful to take some time to consider this aspect of trees and how it relates to the paintings that you make. Is this something that is important to you, in that recognizing your emotional response to trees is at the root of your inspiration? Or might it influence your work in another way, for example, in considering how your choice of tree might affect the narrative of a painting? If your intent in making the painting is to evoke a particular emotional response in the viewer, having an awareness of your own response to trees would be very useful.

To put some of this into context, consider the oak. The oak is considered to have the qualities of strength and endurance (its size and longevity obviously being the basis for this). It is often described as noble or majestic. It has a presence, an aura, that implies a history.

Imagine a painting of rural England, with a farm field taking centre stage. Placing an oak in the centre of the field immediately adds an element of history to the scene and, hence, depth to the narrative. If the oak is removed, or replaced with a different species, for example, a single apple tree, the painting acquires an entirely different feel and loses its sense of history.

Gainsborough used his understanding of this concept when he painted Mr & Mrs Andrews (c.1750). The featured couple sit under an oak tree, which was intended by Gainsborough to deliberately reflect Englishness, stability, continuity and a sense of successive generations managing the family estates.

TREES AND SYMBOLISM

Through the ages, trees have acquired symbolic meanings. These differ from culture to culture and between different mythologies and religions. Here are just a few…

Aspen: exploring, and spreading your wings

Birch: new beginnings

Cedar: healing, cleansing

Cherry (tree): love, romance and, when in flower, good fortune

Elm (old-growth): intuition, strength

Maple: balance, promise

Oak: stateliness, power and courage

Olive (branch): reconciliation

Palm: peace

Redwood: forever

Wisteria: romance

A Sense of Place

Trees stand tall, solid and strong, rooted in the earth. Unless moved by humans, they remain in that place where each tree’s originating seed germinated, for their entire lives. They become an integral part of the place in which they live, contributing visually to the landscape and biologically to the local ecosystem. Since different species grow in different climates, it is easy to see how, on a global scale, trees can impart a sense of place.

At home in Devon, England, we are used to seeing hawt...