A piece of beautiful blue sky framed by some beech trees caught my attention, made me stop and do a gouache sketch. I really enjoy the beginning of these sketches when everything is a possibility and the colours can be dropped and splashed around.

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This is a quiet forest path, people rarely walk here. The birds were very active on this morning. Young woodpeckers made such a noise that I had to choose another place. I regret that I was not able to catch the vivid contrasts of light and shadows in and under the canopy of the trees.

The sky was covered by moving clouds and the light changed constantly and so did the sunlit areas and shadows… not too bad an excuse isn’t it?

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I have documented only one intermediate state,which shows the chaotic background foliage before the image was structured by the vertical trunks.

The forest surprises and inspires me each time I go out. Usually before I do anything with my sketchbook in the woods I sit down to make some notes about what is around to see,smell and hear.

That helps to make the “connection” to nature, to relax and to get ready for sketching. Today I was given a special gift : a doe with fawn passed by without noticing me. The wind was coming from the right direction and so the game did not recognise me. I had the opportunity to hide behind a big beech trunk and watch. The very young fawn was so fragile and the mother so caring. Again and again she would stop and come back to make sure that the young offspring would follow closely.

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The ink drawing above was done with a bristle brush No16 and diluted india ink. The paper of my sketchbook is not the best for ink drawings as it tends to bleed unfortunately. By squinting I tried to narrow down the many tonalities to a few. The intention was to set up a coherent image by noting dark areas at the right place in characteristic form.

The structure of the drawing was established by the bigger trunks in light and the foreground in contrast to the darker areas with many layers of overlapping foliage and distant trunks. As soon as this grid was clear I could add brush strokes all over the sheet. Typically the leaves and trunks look almost black against the sky and I tried to represent that “effect” in the sketch.

What seemed difficult in the beginning turned out to become a relaxed fun exercise. Very soon the simple marks started to “make sense” and at the end I was wondering whether I should have stopped at one of the intermediate states already and should have continued with light color layers on top of the ink drawing. That exercise is reserved for the next visit to the woods. When I checked with photoshop elements I found out that the drawing has more than 8 different tonalities, I would guess that there are about 10 different tonalities.

This is a study of a typical forest in the so-called Stromberg area near Maulbronn. Oak and beech trees are the most common trees here. There are some pines trees and only a few areas with spruce and Douglas fir.

The images do not need much commentary I think, it is obvious how the sketch developed from back- to foreground. For the structures on the tree trunks I use a kind of “dry brush” technique, I remove excess water with an old cloth before painting or drawing with the brush.

The bristle brushes are ideal to draw trunks and branches. I do not press the brush on the paper. The effect is better when the brushes are gently pulled with a light touch from the base to the top of a trunk.
As the gouache color is sufficiently opaque, it was easy to add the trunks in the foreground by overpainting the background. I prefer this method very much instead of putting the background or spots of sky later in between. The background,especially the sky, looks more natural when they are painted first.

During May I have spent a few evenings with some charcoal studies that will be published on Artgraphica.net.

Gavin Banns the owner of that site had contacted me kindly asking for permission to use some of my tree drawing material published on Squidoo. He probably asked at the very right moment as I had plans to do again more charcoal drawings and studies for some charcoal tutorials. So instead of publishing same content a second time I suggested to do a tutorial on pine tree drawing with charcoal.

The material is ready, it includes some short video to demonstrate some “tricks” as appetizer for those who did not try to draw with charcoal yet. charcoal is the fastest and most versatile drawing medium I know.

I will give notice as soon as the tutorial is published, in the meantime I commend to have a look at the many tutorial that are available on Artgraphica.net. It is a source for high quality drawing and painting tutorials in my opinion.

There are not many conifer forest around here. Therefore a spruce tree forest of a few acres offers a somewhat exotic atmosphere in comparison to the oak and beech trees. On my last visit I had done a quick ink study of trunks and spent some more time with photographs of the intriguing light and shadow effects that are typical for spruce tree forest, which usually tolerate no undergrowth. I decided to come back again for a more detailed sketch and to take a break from the masses of green foliage.

The image above shows the background sketch and the foreground. Then I added the spruce tree trunks from back- to foreground by using bristle brushes in various width. The spruce trunks in light were added at last in a mix of a bit red ochre and titanium white by Schmincke. In wet condition the white can look transparent or a bit greyish, but as soon as it dries the white pigment gets stronger and stronger and covers the under painting very well.

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How to draw a tree by Edition Handdruck | Make Your Own Book

The little pamphlet on Blurb has grown a bit and comprises now 80 pages instead of the 72 pages in the previous one. The price is unchanged as I stayed within the 80 page limit. The text was edited and extended and in total improved I hope. The chapter on tree trunks is longer also a chapter on drawing foliage was added with some of the latest step by step drawings.

I also added three two page spreads of charcoal drawings which are printed nicely. The paper in my copy is a nice cream white which I like much better than the cold white paper that came in the old version. However I do not know whether Blurb will use same materials in all printing facilities. The coloured front and back covers have been printed very well too.

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Recently I found the water soluble linocut colours by Schmincke in the local art supply store. I could not resist to buy a basic set of magenta,yellow,blue,ochre,sepia and black. The colors are 4 times as expensive as the Schmincke academy gouache. The colors I selected have a minimum of 4 stars for light fastness out of 5 stars maximum possible (black).

Testing the colors in a plein air landscape study I learned that only very little colour is needed. The 35 ml tubes will be enough until end of this year. As white I used the titan white gouache by Schmincke. The small painting is on a 24X30 cm VANG multi purpose paper at 300 gsm for acrylic,water-color and gouache. I did not pre-stretch the paper, but fixed it with adhesive tape on a plywood sheet. The color was applied in layers. The paper was flooded with water 2 times without much rolling. The colors are vibrant, but will dry to matte appearance. I got the impression that these colors tend to look flat on first use and that it is necessary to work in thin layers to obtain some depth and life. Compared with the simple Caran d’Ache gouache colors the highly pigmented linocut color make a big difference.

The many spring greens already merge into the more or less uniform,saturated and dull summer green. The images above show how the latest sketch developed. The advantage of gouache is that it is opaque and it is possible to paint in layers. Especially for depicting foliage this property can be very helpful as it is possible to put in dark or light any time you want. Also in this case I started with the background and worked from there to the foreground.

By squinting I try to discern areas of dark and light tonality. Then I try to discern 2 tonalities in each of those areas so I would have two lighter and two darker tonalities. In the end I would add two final tonalities lightest lights and darkest darks. As a result the sketch should have about 6 different tonalities,which is not very skilful the least, but for someone like me with a limited graphic mind quite pleasing.

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I removed the color information in a photo editing program and separated different grey values. Indeed the version with 6 values was the best. A final hint on composition: I was not too happy that I added the bare tree trunk on the very left. The comparison with a manipulated version gave final prove that the trunk is superficial. The big trunk was placed with purpose aside from the image center to open the center for the viewer’s eye to wander to the horizon.

There are some books one has to have. The tree of codes by Jonathan Safran Foer is one of those for me. Cover graphics and title got my attention immediately. There can be some sort of magic in books, especially in art and artists books, they can spark off ideas or close missing connections.
Visual Editions seem to be an amazing bookmaking company.

The barcode like tree trunk ink drawing is the first of a series that shall go into an artists book to be published on blurb later this year. Drawing or painting in the forest is confusing in a way (so many things and details) and liberating at the same time as there is no composition, no picture unless you force it. It is easy to let the picture go and grasp the abstract graphics instead.