Tree School - Freely Working from Photos

Olive Trees & Paint
May 2008
Pigment Wash, Charcoal & Pastel
On Diane Townsend Paper
21.5" x 14"
Casey Klahn

I hope you are aware of the troubles of working from photos. They include getting permissions from the photographer, incorrect perspectives that are inherent to photos and color and value issues. A good rule of thumb is to work from photos of places that you have been, yourself. This olive tree image originates from Italy, and I have a deep connection with the landscape there. I am currently working from some photos that I took of coastal Washington State, where I had recent plein air sessions and where I grew up.


I used reductive treatments where I rubbed away the pigment in the trunks with a kneaded eraser.


All this being said, the response that you have to your photos may be a great point of departure for your masterpiece. When I began this olive tree series, I had a picture in my mind of how the master, Wolf Kahn, treated olive groves in Italy. I had a feeling for the oldness and the primary nature of these much-painted trees. I wanted my treatment to be new, but still somehow related to the classic look of olive trees. I wanted the emotion.

Olive Trees and Paint is as much about the tools I used in the painting as it is about back light and ragged branches. The Townsend sanded paper; the under wash of pigment and water; the over-sized electric green Sennelier pastel stick and gestural elements are forces that I brought to bear. Composing on-the-fly, with intuitive placement of the elements, was a focus of mine in this image. The use of black charcoal established a strong and gestural pattern to the branches and trunks. I used reductive treatments where I rubbed away the pigment in the trunks with a kneaded eraser. The triad of violet against green and reddish umber provides life to the color composition.

Remember how you freely re-arrange the elements in front of you when you are painting from nature? The same applies to using photos for reference material in composing new works.

Three Things - Tree School

Maples with Blue
8.1" x 6.5"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

One thing I glean from this image is the necessity to compose the whole picture when featuring trees. Direction, the rule of threes, and (believe it or not) a controlled palette are three important lessons.



Direction.

Dianne Mize wrote about this recently, and I want to use this image as an example of directional strokes. The big, scumbled strokes are unified. In other words, there aren't a bunch of big marks, plus small, finicky lines, plus whatever. This image uses the same types of strokes. The directionality is strong, with a diagonal steeply rising to the right. A strong violet horizontal provides a counter pose, and electric greens give an entrance for the eye at a shallower diagonal in the foreground.

The Rule of Threes.

New blogger (and my High School classmate) Garth, wrote a post about the power of three. Maybe there is a mystic numerological reason for favoring threes, who knows? I employ a "rule of threes" in composition as a means of simplicity and yet there is still a depth of idea to three spaces.

This image is composed with sky, trees and ground. How basic can you get? Also, notice three basic colors, ultramarine or violet, green and yellow.

Controlled Palette

Two primaries and their intervening secondary limit this palette to, essentially, one side of the color wheel. That limitation provides power and unity to the color composition. The viewer is less apt to be confused looking for the whys and wherefores of a broad palette.

As a colorist, I choose to present full intensity colors as much as possible, and yet I want to keep nature recognizable. This image keeps the viewer grounded by utilizing local colors, yet they are "amped" to maximum intensity and contrasted against the olive green trunks. The value scale is spread from darks to middling values to not-too-lights.

The venerable maple tree is as evocative an image in America as any of nature's offerings. I tried to keep that in mind when I executed this green maple. I wrote more about this image in Deciduous Trees Expanded.

Tree School - Why Green?

Winter
10.5" x 7.5"
Soft Pastel
Casey Klahn

Color is the starting point that I choose for my tree renderings. If you are ever to arrive at a coherent color scheme, you must resist making those trees green! Typically the local color of trees, green will key the color composition for you. If you wish green as a major element in your image, then use it. If not, then do a color study of your composition first to determine what color you will be making your trees.

The local color of trees is usually green, but if you think about it, there are other local colors of trees. Brown, orange, silver, gray and black are present. Trace or hints of red and blue are very evident to me in trees. Cast colors include violet and blue. When we view our trees in this manner, any color becomes part of the natural palette associated with trees.

Remember that color has much more value than associations with objects. Some assign emotional value to color, but I also think of it's plastic qualities. The red trees in this winter scene counter-pose the cool trend of a winter scene, and push them forward and cause vibration when compared to the ultramarine background.

Don't become a victim of the tyranny of green.

Tree Admiration

After Wolf Kahn, #1

9.5" x 6"
Pastel on Paper
Casey Klahn

Learn from other artists whose renderings of trees you love


Learn from other artists whose renderings of trees you love. Mark me down as a Wolf Kahn follower. His forests of trees are gesture rich, and pure blocks of color are woven into the whole. I did the drawing posted here directly from a WK as a study to try to "get" more of what his methods are.




Evening Pines, by Deborah Paris, gives a similar treatment of trees at a forest's edge. Atmosphere prevails, and I have a feeling that I am standing among the liquid air of 100 degree Georgia humidity at dusk. Her Tonalist style involves a limited palette and a narrow range of values. I can't help but feel completely present in these woods when I am looking at Evening Pines.

Albert Handell's Woods Interior expresses the abstract qualities of just tree trunks. His tree trunks have more texture with less apparent effort than almost any artist I know of.

All of the artists I've mentioned here take a very different approach to trees, and your tree style will become a signature of your own work.

See also:

Michael Chelsey Johnson
Jennifer Phillips
Tracy Helgeson
Susan Ogilvie
Marla Baggetta
Marla's new blog.

Abstract Organic Shapes

Blue Trees in the Middle Distance
7 - 3/8ths" x 5.75"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

Consider the words of this blog title, "abstract organic shapes." For a sound and enjoyable study of shape, see Diane Mize's post, And Then There is Shape. An organic shape is one with a random pattern or irregular edges - just the opposite of geometric shapes. Abstract means non-specific or simplified. A non-tree tree, if you will. More of a shape than a technical study of leaves, foliage, branches and trunks.

Think twice before you include trunks, branches or leaves


If you want foliage, then make your tree as formless as possible.Irregular, and abstract. Think twice before you include trunks, branches or leaves. A better direction to go instead is to ask yourself how this shape will effect your overall composition. Back all of the way out of the picture plane, and make a value and shape sketch. How big will the tree or trees be? Will they form a unified mass? What will the relationship of these trees be to the other elements in my painting?

Consider the image posted today, Blue Trees in the Middle Distance.

Since we are building a landscape here, albeit an abstracted one, we have chosen to model the form of our trees. Keep it simple, with roughly three values only. As with strict realism, we have opted to not go very broad with our value range. An almost black violet, a dark middle ultramarine and a middle violet do everything we need them to do to represent two trees on a slope. We keep the diagonal strokes all parallel, which heightens the gestural effect of our marks.

An unrelenting melancholy


Anchor the trees to the ground with well placed shadows, and a dark line where we interface with the ground. Higher key colors in front of and behind our trees help with modeling. Atmospheric effects of the ridge, sky and clouds push them back, and limiting the palette help with unity. Again, we keep our gestural effect with our marks - they don't conflict.

An almost unrelenting melancholy pours down the picture plane, brought about by the blue and the clouds. A critique was written about this painting, here.

Tree School

Tree Study in Turquoise
@ 6" x 5"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

The title "Tree School" sounds like it belongs at an arborist's convention, or maybe a logging camp. But, I want to offer my artist's take on rendering trees with pastel.


Trees can be an awful distraction in a painting. Especially if they are present but not the subject, and if they take up too much of your effort.

We all enjoy graphite drawings in detail of a beautiful tree. Great texture, perfect modeling, and wonderful presence are what please us. But, that is the tree drawing where the tree is center stage; the star of the show. What about when the landscape is about things other than how the trees look? What do you do then?

Additionally, you can face a problem when the trees are the main content, but not the subject. I mean by that the painting where a color composition is the subject of the painting, or maybe something like the motion of one's eye through the woods. Trees have a built-in drama to them, and I propose that too much detail can distract from the message.

Return here to attend my short course on trees in pastel, and I leave you with this hint: don't begin with green.