Drawing Tuesday - trees, leaves, grasses

 Self-explanatory topic! Here are a few inspirations. 

William Kentridge's trees are often drawn on book pages

Trees in art history on this blog  (especially John Constable )

Mark Frith's tree drawings (large!), shown at Kew and now online 

Making pen and ink drawings of various trees. At a quick look, there are lots of helpful tips. Also there is mention of white pens. And leaves, and backgrounds.

A video of less than 5 minutes - How to draw a tree with pencil - 

"Trees rarely have curved lines - they are straight lines that change direction". This tree evolves as it goes, rather than being from observation.

Two birds with one stone! - A small project would be to find leaves from several trees you don't know the names of, identify them (free apps are available, eg at https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/how-to-identify-trees/ - or look at a chart online, eg https://www.discoverthewild.co.uk/post/british-tree-leaves-sheet) - and combine them into a drawing or rubbing.

"mixed media trees leaves" here

Work by Blaze Cyan at Eames Gallery here

From Richard - What a lovely day, again! Too hot today to linger over this one.

From Sue K - Couldn’t resist the shadows on the leaves thanks to the blast of sun we’re enjoying. This is Hedychium gardnerarium - no flowers yet!

From Ann - A pen and ink watercolour study last year of Devils Dyke in Sussex and a panoramic view of our regular Ally pally walk in gouache. 

From Sue B - a very quick sketch sitting The Lamb Inn garden in Burford…

From Najlaa - The first tree from my neighbor garden and 2nd one is old Mulberry tree.

From Judith - So delicate, a challenge to get the detail.

From Gill - This is a Mokulito print I did last week. It has a bit of chine colle too. Back on the course today with Margaret C.

From Joyce - Here’s a beautiful gnarled tree at Cowden.

From Janet K - The willow tree again. It's great to see their branches growing out. The trees looked very stark - if sculptural - all winter.

From Mags - I had  grand plans of sitting  on a bench in the Rec which has some magnificant trees  (  Faversham Trees Group  had a labelled trail   for National Tree Week ),  channelling my  inner David Nash .  It was  fabulous  when he  was in residence at Kew and you  could see him working and he gave a wonderful talk to staff. 

 Instead  I had a weeding session in the garden  , mainly dandelions and ragwort,   with some oats and barley that had sprouted  near next doors bird table .  I used  a chromium green Pitt calligraphy pen.

From me - One of the knobbly old plane trees in Finsbury Park. Stripped of its leaves (by the eye of the artist). Inktense pencil and waterbrush.

The black marks have nothing to do with the tree - I'm using empty pages in an old, square sketchbook, and this time had to extend the trunk onto the adjacent page; it looked silly in the [ahem] truncated format.