I love trees but they have never been my favourite thing to draw due to what has always appeared to me to be un-tackle-able complexity – I was always getting bogged down in finicky details and – dare I say it – not seeing the wood for the trees.

I did a couple of basic line drawings whist out on a walk (see a giant beech tree, above, which towered way above us), trying to keep it simple, before setting off to do some drawings as suggested in the text.

Results were variable, and I have to say that, at first, I couldn’t see the point of starting again each time, and wasn’t quite sure how to do the fourth suggested step about shading in foliage masses, doing side studies of foliage etc to help me..

After doing a few of these I decided to cut to the chase and just do all the steps on one drawing, although I confess I did sometimes miss out the “basic 

shapes” one, and it all started to make a bit more sense…..

I experimented a bit with mark-making to convey the essential nature of the leaves (rounded, spiky, clumped, single, etc) and now feel more comfortable with my basic formula for rendering a rapid sketch of a single tree:

• Look
• Rough measurement, e.g. twice as tall as it’s wide
• Light broken marks of basic overall shape
• Draw in trunk and a few branches that you can see
• Indicate leaf masses, and make shapes of individual leaves clearer at edges
• Quick check for light direction and darks

I say a rapid sketch……but to get a clear view of the hazel tree (above), which was growing at the base of the White Lady waterfall at Lydford Gorge in Devon, I had to sit on rocks just at the base of the waterfall, and was rather rudely asked to move on by a charming European gentleman tourist because I had been there “so long!” and he was waiting to take a photograph of the waterfall. I can’t think how the presence of a local artist in his picture would in any way have detracted from it, but there you are…..