Old Man Tree

Taking a break from my white oak, I thought I'd share a pen and ink sketch I made recently of one of my favorite trees on the planet, Old Man Tree.  This tree is growing on an island in Georgian Bay, Ontario, where our dearest friends have a cottage.  We have been visiting their island for ten years now, and every time we go I thrill to the sight of this tree, standing tall and proud on a rocky promontory overlooking the water.  It is gnarled and bent from years of assault from the wind and weather. No telling how old this tree is, for the harsh climate stunts the growth of everything that dares to try and survive on the rocks with minimal soil and no protection. 

I love the stark beauty of this environment.  I love the massive slabs of dramatically striped granite, which could tell the full story of the Canadian Shield, if only I understood the language of geography.  I love the moss and lichen, eking out their existence on the rocks and adding to the drama with their vibrant color.  I love the sound of the water slapping the shore.  And I love Old Man Tree, the quiet sentinel, reminding me to slow down, breathe deeply, and against all adversity, feel safely rooted to the Earth.

Here's a photo to give you a sense of the drama that is Georgian Bay, and a slightly different angle of Old Man Tree, which really shows his lean . . . Enjoy!



How to sharpen the edges

Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret of the trade.  Take a look at this leaf I'm pointing to with the pencil:

I need to make the edge of the leaf look as sharp and clear as I possibly can, so the image will jump off the page.  Can you see a faint dark green line which follows the edges around the bottom of the leaf and ends right where I put my pencil?  I take one of my smallest brushes, a size 00, and paint a really fine line using Chromium Oxide Green.  This pigment is a grayish green, and is one of the most opaque watercolor pigments (really cloudy, in other words).  It will hide a multitude of painting transgressions.  Right after I paint the edge, I try to blend the 'leaf' side of the line in with the adjacent green color.  But the outside edge I leave alone.

Now sit back and view this leaf from more of a distance.  Can you tell a difference in bottom half of the leaf, which I have worked on, and the top half (above the pencil) which I still have yet to do?  Isn't that cool?  And from even more of a distance, as you would normally view the painting, it really is effective.  I don't have the steadiest hand in the world, so my edges tend not to be naturally sharp and crisp.  (Does this say something about my personality?)  So when a teacher of mine shared this secret, it transformed my paintings. 

Oh and yes, I will soon put some legs on my ladybug!

Slowly making progress . . .

I have the start of a busy school year to blame for my lack of blog posts lately.  I am a mom, after all :)  Getting back to business, I am working now on refining all of the details of the painting.  I'm deep into Stage 5, trying to make everything look crisp and clean.  Let me see if I can show you what I mean.  Scroll down to the bottom of my last posting and take a look at those acorns.  See if you can tell what I've done since then:

It is difficult to zoom in close and keep the details with this software, but can you see that with some transparent washes of brown, I've given the acorn fruit more shape? And by going in with dark reddish brown I've made the grooves in the acorn tops more distinct.  The effect is to make them "pop" off the page, and seem very lifelike.

By the way, do you have any idea just how many acorns one white oak tree can produce?  And what happens to all those acorns anyway?  Do the squirrels get every last one?  A study was done not long ago of one mature tree, which produced a whopping 15,000 acorns in one season.  That's enough seeds to start an entire forrest!  But of that number, 83% were eaten by squirrels and other animals; 6% were attacked by insects, weevils and larvae; and nearly all the rest were naturally imperfect.  Less than 1% of that initial number actually sprouted, and of those few survivors, half died as sprouts.  Imagine the energy expended to produce that paltry result!  And yet think of all of the Life that tree sustains and supports in the process: the birds and beasties and bugs and life we can't even see with the naked eye.  The next time you see a sappling, congratulate it for beating the odds!

I'll leave you with a quote, in Latin no less, which sums up my admiration for this mighty tree:
De minimus maxima.
No translation needed.

Quercus alba - stage five

It is true, folks, the devil is in the details.  You can look at my painting now and say, "Wow, pretty good!"  But I'm not after "pretty good."  I want you to look at my painting and say, "Man, that's beautiful!!"  There's only one way to get from 'pretty good' to 'beautiful', and that is the Details.  I've come this far . . . why stop now?  This stage is actually really fun.  I get to pull out more Nifty Studio Tools which I've shown below. 

The first thing is, I need to be able to look very closely and critically at all the edges and make sure they are crisp and clean as a whistle.  To do this, I need my trusty magnifiers.  When I've got these on, I pray nobody comes to the door and I forget to take them off.  They are frightful!  But effective.

Next, to add all the fine details like the puckers on the acorn hats and the legs on my ladybug, I need tee-weeny brushes.  I have size 000 and 0000 to do the job.  It is these details that delight a veiwer when he or she is standing with their nose to the painting and really scrutinizing it.  I always like to give them some nice reward for their careful attention to the details; and my miniscule brushes to the trick.

Finally, I have to deal with the mistakes.  I'll talk more about this later, but thankfully there is a way to have a 'do over' in botanical painting.  It involves the razor blade and a burnisher, and I'll show you how that works shortly.  And now, if you'll excuse me, back to my painting!

Quercus alba - stage four

Now we are getting to my favorite part of the whole process.  The finishing touches.  This stage is called 'Harmony and Interchange'.  Doesn't that just sound pretty?  In nature, there are bridges of color that connect the leaf, stem, flower and berry of the same plant.  What I mean is, you'd never see a pure red berry stuck on a straight brown stem next to a flat green leaf.  If you look closely, you will see tinges of green in that red berry, and the red color somehow carried through the stem and leaf.  It is very subtle, but it is there, and it makes the plant look, well, like it all goes together.  Harmony and interchange -- it is exactly what it sounds like.  You take a light wash of your stem color, for example, and repeat it through the leaf or nut or seed.  If there is a bold seed or flower color, you subtly refer to it in the leaf or stem.  This is to exaggerate the interchange of color, but to the eye, it will make the subject look more natural.  Here in our Quercus alba, I have repeated the apple green of the acorns in the stem and veining of the leaves, for example.  There are touches of reddish brown in the stems and acorns.  There is even a very light wash of the green leaf color over the stem.  The overall effect is very nice -- it looks fresh and bold and alive, just as it would waving in the breeze on a clear summer's day.