You’re bad at drawing trees!

Greeting Arthlete!

Some trees Adam drew, our next workshop is all about drawing trees on the 4th of February 11.30am ET

What we’re probably good at is drawing a cartoon or icon of a tree.

A lot of the time that’s the same icon we learned to draw in school. And maybe we got better and better at drawing that icon. As a result, we got worse and worse at actually seeing trees.

At least I did.

I’m 44, and only recently did I notice that trees were bigger than houses, that you could fit multiple houses inside the volume of a tree. To really draw trees not only do we have to pay attention to them, we have to forget or unlearn the ways we’re used to drawing trees.

And here’s the good news, by really looking, we are actually learning to embrace and take in the patterns of nature. I feel the designs of trees show us so much about how nature works.

I think we should look at trees every chance we get.

The trees here were drawn from my window, and one of those trees was cut down just a few days ago. I once took my girl on a walk and we saw a tree with a big ‘X’ drawn on it with a spray can.

The kid was 3 at the time. She asked about the ‘X’ and when she learned it meant a 10 story high tree would be cut down, she wailed uncontrollably.

I’m glad I made an image of a tree that has since been cut down.

I guess what I’m saying is look at trees, really observe them, and draw them while you can!

Adam for Art Gym

And, if you missed it, here’s yesterday’s post about what we think about when we think about drawing trees.