Doodled a whole page of wonky trees today after a convo with my old neighbor

I always drew trees as just a brown stick with a green circle on top... never thought twice about it. My neighbor saw me sketching on my porch and said 'look at the branches, they don't all go the same way, they reach out different like arms.' I sat there for a minute staring at the oak in his yard and realized he was right. So I spent 20 minutes just drawing individual branches twisting off in different directions, some dead ones too. Made the whole thing look way more alive somehow. Anyone else ever get a simple comment that totally changed how you doodle one thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles2791mo ago

Started drawing branches like actual veins after a tree guy pointed it out one time.

nora_walker571mo ago

My neighbor Betty was an actual botanist and she told me the same thing about how trees and veins are basically the same system just different materials. She used to point out how the big branches split the same way arteries do into smaller and smaller ones until they're tiny little lines. It changed how I look at everything now, even the cracks in the sidewalk remind me of something else. But now I can't unsee it with old oak trees especially, the way the bark twists around looks like skin almost.