Lately I’ve been working on learning how to draw better trees. For now I’m focusing on the bare branches of trees in the winter. This is a good time to do that because it is still winter, or maybe early spring. Spring is giving us lots of teasers but still hasn’t made the commitment yet. So this means the trees around me are still showing their bare branches.

First I drew some generic trees, working on getting a network of branches, showing how they keep going from thick to thin. It was good practice, but it will never get me all the way there. A generic tree in my mind’s eye will never compare to the detail of actual trees. To learn that, first of all, and this might seem obvious but I didn’t think of it myself, is to know what tree I’m trying to draw. Different types of trees look different. I need to know what kinds of details I’m trying to show before I can figure out how to show them.

So the first step to art is observation. I took a walk through my neighborhood and looked at the trees around me. I took a few pictures. Drawing, just like translating (I’m a language translator by trade), requires a much deeper knowledge of the subject than simply looking at a picture or reading a text. We have to see the nuances, details, and shades of meaning that are easily glossed over when we simply consume an image or a text. We need to be much more observant when we try to reproduce something instead of simply consuming it.

Trees around here are generally tall and skinny. Some have one trunk at the bottom. Others have many small ones that come together at ground level, almost as if the trunk is many branches gathered together in a bouquet. Some have branches that are offset, and some have two branches grow out from the same point in opposite directions.

Now that I have observed some different trees, I can study my photos and try to reproduce the detail. This will help me see even more and therefore learn and improve. Art is first a way of looking at things. Learning to see these details in what is all around us is the first step. I want to encourage you to look at the world with an artist’s eye sometimes. What do you notice?