✏️ TREE 580: Drawing trees

Today is a very special unexpected guest post from Pete Bangs. I came across this post Wednesday evening and knew I needed to share it with you. It’s about drawing trees but it’s also about being like a TREE, which is a thing we do around here.

Pete is an experienced artist who writes about making art and staying mentally healthy. And his posts are bite-sized bundles of usefulness. I’m a fan! Please have a look at his site and maybe join me in subscribing.

—Jeff

I like drawing trees. Trees are wonderful to draw because they are rule breakers. For every rule you hear about drawing trees you will eventually see a tree that makes a mockery of it.

When I was in secondary school our English teacher set us the task of doing a ten minute talk on something we loved. There was a girl who was an amazing artist and she gave a talk on drawing. The one thing I remember from it was her saying the widest part of a tree was the trunk and trees never get wider as you go up them. Outside the classroom window was an enormous elm that grew wider at the point the trunk split into four branches.

Later I read that branches always bent up towards the light. Except when they didn't. For a similar reason there also always tend to be more branches on one side of the trunk then the other. Except when there aren't.

Trees are rule breakers and so are endlessly fascinating.

I think part of why I like trees is there is rhyme and reason to why they are how they are, but unlike people, or cars or dogs or airplanes, their basic rules require real looking.

Anyway. Go pick up a pencil and draw something people.

Pete

Qveen Herby = v v fun. —Jeff

Skyler will be back with a FIELD GUIDE post in two weeks.

We are having some trouble with archive posts that we have unlocked re-locking again automatically. We are in contact with Substack about the issue. I hope it will be solved soon.

Grow slowly
Jeff