Exercise 3 - Study of several trees

The trouble with drawing from a car is you are severely limited in possible viewpoints. I started at the park.

This is group of trees with some ivy clad trees behind them. I wasn't excited by the view and people kept parking in front of me so I couldn't see properly so I moved the car.

Better but still a bit dull.

The darker twisty tree is some sort of willow and I wrecked this drawing by using coloured pencil to represent the trailing branches but I do think it has potential so I did second simplified drawing on site.

This has lost all the energy of the first drawing and is almost a cartoon so I went home with my drawings and a couple of photos and tried a redraw on green sugar paper.

I went a bit mad with the white conte so I rubbed it out and redrew the background trees on the right.

I think this is a bit better. The day was grey and overcast so I'm guilty inventing the shadows. Has this got enough detail or enough content? I'm loathed to draw further into it as I think it will kill the drawing.

Reviewing what I've done I think I may have given up on this first picture too early.

I tried experimenting with wax cut from a candle which I used to draw the tree shapes then I used Aquatone crayons to add the background colour of the ivy clad trees (top drawing) The colour representation isn't very accurate but I'm quite pleased with the original.

In the interests of completeness in the bottom drawing I redrew the scene using just Aquatone 

This is my best version I think. I have slightly adjusted the brightness and contrast with Photoshop but only to make it look more like the original.

In this exercise I got a bit overwhelmed by all the trees together, I think I would find it easier if they had some leaves. In the earlier drawings I tried using different tone to denote different trees but with the mass of branches but to be honest I wasn't really sure which branch belonged to which tree. Scribbling worked well to indicate the ivy the last 2 drawings but I didn't manage much sense of light here, it was better in the charcoal drawing where I imagined the shadows and used heavier charcoal for them. I avoided drawing every branch and twig but may have started oversimplifying at the end. I found it hard to decide what to put in the background. Usually I don't do backgrounds but I'm aware that can make pictures float in space and a well chosen background can anchor the picture.

I like detail and accuracy and focussing in on something rather than trying to do an overview. While I haven't got the patience to do lots of details I was happier with the pen and ink drawing of the single tree where I could see what was tree and try and represent it with lines.