Impressionist Tree Painting

Before The Sketch

The first couple of classes we looked at two specific impressionist painters; Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. Claude Monet possesed this skill that made everything seem real, but yet you knew it wasn't. Vincent Van Gogh was famous for the way his strokes were painted. They varied from straight small lines to long wavy lines. They were so famous because they were original. Claude Monet's paintings were painted from a far distance and he made it look like everything was getting furthur and futher away by painting everything smaller and smaller.

Claude Monet

Vincent Van Gogh

Tree Sketch

First, I had to go outside and pick a tree. I decided on a very big tree. The tree was too big so I decided on a very curvy and detailed branch. The first sketch I did was very messy, so I drew a new one on a blank piece of paper. First, I did a faint outline then I shaded it in with sharpie marker. When I was done with that, I got a bigger piece of paper and drew on that. I had to shade it in. Then I got some aqua colored paint and painted the background. I painted in to thick so I had to use water and spread out the paint. I painted the background with short rough strokes since I like to play texture. Then, I played around with some different colors, trying to get brown. Personally, I hate the color brown so I settled down with a dark murky colored green. Then, with the help of Ms.Bammi, I choose 3 types of greens for my leaves; a light yellow green, a dark grayish green and then a normal strong green. For my leaves, I did small quick strokes since my leaves were small, and there were lots of them. During this painting activity I learned how to make lots of colors (like slimy green, light green, dark green, flourescent green etc) by mixing up just a couple basic colors and also how your lines affect the feeling of a painting.

During this project whenever I drew a line that wasn't straight or precise, I thought about my cousin, Tanti, who is an architect. I thought about how precise she had to be and if she was just 1 millimeter off she had to redo her whole project. I wouldn't do anything different with my painting because, if I didn't do anything wrong I wouldn't have anything to improve or learn from. What I took away from this lesson was how many emotions you can create with just 3 basic colors.

I thought this painting was very hard for me since I draw more abstract or manga instead of real life paintings. I don't really think I observed more things but when I looked hard and long at something I sometimes noticed things I haven't noticed before. I like to draw flowers from now on because I love drawing nature things ever since I started the tree impressionist. I was very proud of my final result even though I could've added some more leaves.