 Welcome to Monet Café, Artistic Friends and Visitors. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I hope you'll enjoy this presentation on drawing and painting trees the Fibonacci way. Hello, and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and today I'm bringing you a special request video. One of my patrons, hi Andrea, had a request for me to slow down a technique I recently did on drawing trees and tree branches with a Pressure technique that I used and I thought this is an excellent opportunity For me to teach on something else that I've been wanting to bring to you guys for a while Has to do with how trees grow and the Fibonacci sequence and if you've never heard of that term before I have another whole video on it where I talk about the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio it's kind of the same thing and Also, too, I'll try to remember to put a little clickable link up at the top so you can refer to that later But I am always fascinated as an artist. I don't want to just paint. I I always say I love to know why things work The way they work. So I I am and I know if you're an artist. We are students of nature I love the way math and science work with art. So that's what I'm going to do today I'm going to share for Andrea the technique of Using pressure to create a more gestural quality for drawing trees and tree branches But I'm also going to share how you can understand more about the growth of trees Which will make your art even better. Oh and also once again I'm wearing one of the love and faith t-shirts and I love this company I love the hopeful messages and I always have a clickable link in the description sections If you see me wearing one of these t-shirts with a 20% off coupon code, so check it out They have all kinds of great t-shirts First I will go ahead and demonstrate the technique that was also in another video of mine on 12 different techniques for pastel painting once again I'll try to put a clickable link there one of them had to do with Pressure and I find that I use this technique often when I want things to look gestural And it just looks so much more artistic. I think so. Let me since we're doing trees Let me just grab kind of a well I'll grab this nice kind of burgundy purplish color in this demonstration. I'm just using my set that I use often It's unison 120 half-stick set. It's a great set for beginners Sorry for my easel shaking and I'm also using just a regular piece of drawing paper But I'm very quickly right here just showing you how We can use these gestural Strokes that vary in pressure and also kind of a twisting motion To change the width of the branches. So once you get the hang of it, it's really Easy, you know, but it's like anything you have to practice it Now join me as I show you some tips on what to do and what not to do In this example, I will describe a bit more about what not to do. We have a tendency with trees to Make things a bit too curvy or rounded So I'm I'm going to talk about the pressure technique and the angular technique kind of at the same time So first let's just uh, and there's a difference between painting and drawing. So I'm first just going to kind of draw a tree with Um, kind of I have to force myself To do it non-pressured Um, because I have such a tendency and to do it curvy because I have a tendency not to do it that way All right. So here we're getting a tree going And I'm kind of whoops. I'm kind of just drawing it in and I'm Trying to purposely create curvy lines. Okay, rather than Angular lines and notice my pressure. That's one of the points of this Is all about the same All right. So this is kind of how we don't want to draw a tree. You get the idea I'm trying really hard To make curvy curvy lines It's tough, you know, it's tough to do it the right way when you haven't done it before And it's kind of tough sometimes to do it the wrong way when you've been doing it the other way I'm not saying my way is right, but it's just a technique. All right So now that's more of a tree kind of drawn in with some curvy lines And we're going to get to the Fibonacci sequence later. I I don't I get kind of close with it, but I'll you'll know more about what I mean by that pretty soon All right. So now for this other tree. Let me give you an example. Let me write here. This one had Pressure consistent pressure Okay, so that's what we don't want to do All right So now for this next one. I'm going to vary the pressure and I'm going to have more angular Strokes so on this one rather than drawing it in this is more of an example of drawing And with pastels a questions often ask us why is pastel painting considered painting when it's Like a dry medium, you know, like pastel pencils or or charcoal or whatever And it really has to do with the coverage and the way that we use the tool So when you use pastels more to cover your surface more Rather than just sketching or drawing your painting So we often use the sides of the pastel. So this is where My technique that I used in my last video of Varying the pressure is going to come in. So notice with this tree I'm not only going to vary the pressure. I'm going to be pushing hard and letting up Pushing hard and letting up. I'm also going to be using angular strokes Rather than Curvy strokes what I had a hard time actually even doing here Okay, but it does it really does make a difference. So I'm going to use the side of the pastel here I'm going to come up kind of like for the base of the tree with a decent pressure. I'm going to kind of angle I'm releasing pressure Angling again And then there's usually always a main part of the tree trunk and then one that kind of branches off and I'm also using um The twisting technique you see how I'm kind of twisting the pastel And I'm releasing pressure And then I'll take one up here like this I'm twisting it to get different widths of the Of the pastel the whole width was right here. So by twisting it. I can vary the different widths Now I want to again get more angular strokes rather than Um rounded strokes. So I got a kitty cat at my feet right now scratching my foot So you can probably see pretty quickly Um the difference in the two also when we get up to the upper branches is when we can really start doing That pressure technique it also works quite well for grasses. I'll do a few grasses. Okay, so notice how I'm kind of angling things And varying my pressure and twisting. All right, so there's definitely a difference of Pressure, let me write that one down real quick. This one's going to be very pressure I'm sorry if my shoulders getting in the way And angular Okay, so I realized this one is wrong Now I'm gonna try to reach around my camera a little bit and show you the same thing kind of works with grasses Let me um, let me Bring it down just a bit here So let's do the wrong example here. I'm just going to get kind of a Well, let me get let me get kind of some darks down. I can't help it. I'm going to get like some dark roots down here I'll do the same thing in both examples This is like um, like the deepest parts of the grasses. Okay Now what what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the wrong technique over here Let me just get a green that you can see pretty good Probably like this one and I see people doing grasses like this. Have you ever seen that before? Really keeping all of the blades of grasses the same pressure And the same width, um, I could have put varying widths up here, but I kind of did that the both I'm going to talk about the Fibonacci sequence in a minute. And um, so it's the same pressure the same width And the same little curvy Curvy motions, you know, and that just is not the way that grass grows So my same technique that I used Over here is going to help with the grasses. So let's watch this technique I'll try to get the same color that I used what I'm going to do is I'm in an awkward position here I'm going to vary the pressure and I'm going to do more angled strokes and maybe some twisting And now I can actually by some twisting I can make kind of some Thicker blades of grasses too. You see that twisting effect there? And you can do the same thing with the trees and you see all of a sudden how that just looks so much more artistic And I'm angling my directions more Skipping it along. There's another technique that you can do too that I like Let me see if I can get a really light one so you can see it's called rolling If you have the advantage, this is all in my last video If you have the advantage of having a round pastel See how I'm varying the pressure. You see how I got lighter pressure back there But if you have a round pastel, you might as well take advantage of Of doing the rolling technique a little bit there. Okay And uh, also too, I find that with grasses I didn't mean to make this about grasses as well. I find people including myself I've gotten better at this. We often spell things out way too much with grasses Let's say in this example down here. We had some grasses down on the ground And the same thing over here again, I'm just giving them some ground to rest upon and In the foreground it's usually darker And the grasses are usually taller in the foreground But let's say that in this one, let me do it where we're going to spell out all these really taller grasses here We've got some grass growing here And now we've got some gradually they're going to get smaller and shorter in the distance a little bit lighter in value And they start changing from horizontal strokes. I'm sorry vertical strokes to horizontal strokes Let me get it kind of a neutral and they'll also get that's another video I have that is uh Five ways to create depth in your artwork things start getting more horizontal and flat in the distance, okay? But my point about the grasses is that often We spell things out too much. We might have a tendency to draw all these little grasses See same pressure really boring boring boring and then um, oh, we know these are smaller So let's make them all smaller because it's in the distance We've got more grasses here all very patterned and and boring So that's way too much information. That's my new phrase. I've been using all the i Don't be a victim of tmi too much information in your artwork. So I'm going to come over on this side I'm going to show you a little bit of the difference I'm going to get a little bit more Let's say we got some uh deep grasses right down in here All right, what we can do is we can just give a hint of some of these grasses here They don't we let's say we got some really we're down in the grass our eye level is down here and we've got some Some grasses growing up like this. You might get a few of them that you see I'm varying the pressure I'm giving a little bit more angular strokes here. All right, so that is definitely not as spelled out right here Now we can go and change up The background here Getting a little further in the distance and we can do the same thing. We can just give maybe some hints of some around the tree Very their direction vary the pressure. Maybe do a little bit of the twisting And but we can do big also you could add some things in here that might not be grasses might be a different plant And then the same thing in the background. I know I'm working again on just uh on paper, but um You can probably get the idea All right now that we've talked a little bit about the technique of drawing trees or grasses or things with more of a varying pressure Perhaps a little bit of a twisting and angular direction and technique Let's talk about how to know where trees split and divide Have you ever done that try to draw a tree and you're like, well, where would this branch be or Where do if you're doing it from imagination? And a lot of times we might be working from a reference photo where we want to add something So it's good to know these rules. And so I find it's a lot easier to understand Drawing trees the Fibonacci way to do it on a piece of ruled paper the first time So I'm going to bring you guys over and I'm going to work it out and show you how Mathematically it works. It's really cool Here are a few examples of some paintings I tried to find some that haven't been put in the clear bags yet where the grasses are Hopefully not overworked or over detailed. This one is really all about value and shape and direction I mean, there's barely any blades of grass. It's mostly very wide strokes in it and it still gives the illusion of grasses This one also has grasses that vary in pressure and direction and shape And you still have the mental Impression of of grasses Also, this one here hardly has a pardon the glare Hardly has any grasses even drawn. They're more just like chunky shapes Once again, still the illusion of grasses same here with this one very little Individual strokes of grasses in this but again still get that more of the suggestive quality that I think many people like and You know, that's kind of my goal too. I like to suggest things rather than spell them out Also, too, this is one that I recently did out in my parents field a plein air painting I'll have a video on this one as well. But notice too, no individual blades of grasses Even I got crazy. This one's about dramatic color. That's what the video will be about But um, you know, I just suggested things and I did still very pressure Sometimes I did twist my pastel a little bit more. So hopefully that helps you a little bit with that But now let's get to that Fibonacci pattern of how trees grow All right a quick little recap on the Fibonacci sequence and again, I encourage you to watch that video It has so much interesting information as to how it came about and a little bit of the history into it, but it is a formula that fairly accurately represents how nature behaves and By nature it's things from the way tree branches grow once which I will demonstrate here the way flower petals grow Um, and it often has to do with a spiral if you've seen the Nautilus shell That's a breakdown mathematically of how the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio Works, it's in everything again. I'm recapping that video. It's so so neat But um, if you just want to know the numbers and that's what we'll need to know for this example The way they work is you you just start with two numbers. That's the best Way to describe how to begin So rather than starting most people start the Fibonacci numbers with one and I always find it's a little confusing It's easier to me if you start with zero. So what are the first two numbers zero and one? Okay, now all we're going to do is add those two numbers together for the next number in the sequence So that's pretty easy, right zero plus one is one The next number in the sequence one plus one is two The next number would be two plus one. Okay, so Uh, you get the idea. We just keep going on and on and on And and it goes on forever. All right, so I'll just I'll go to here. I'll go up to 21 So that's generally how it works. You add the two numbers and you get the next number Well, the way this pattern is reflected in a tree and its growth now. This is a generality. Okay Every tree does not grow exactly this way, but it's a general rule of thumb and it's going to help you understand Just like when I was working with the pastel I didn't focus on it too much because I was talking and teaching But once you learn this you can kind of accurately represent the way the tree grows with its branches So here we go And you may have to do this a couple of times For it to make sense the way I like to think of it. I'm going to zoom in even more We'll start at the bottom here Is we're going to use these numbers. Okay, we're going to start with the we can't do zero, right? So we're going to start with the one and the one that's going to be our trunk of our tree So let's start down here. We're going to have I would draw a square so you could see but we're going to start the trunk It's going to start here. I don't want to start too wide or I'll run off the paper So let's start the trunk right here. We filled in One level. Okay, so we need to do another One All right, so let's do there's the next one. Okay Now we know the next number in the sequence is two So we've got to divide this into two on the third level. Okay, we've got One one and now we got to break this guy up So we're just going to put a little v right here at the bottom of this third level Now also with trees you may have noticed usually there is a primary branch and a secondary branch One is going to be more like the main trunk. So let's make this one more like the main trunk So I'm actually and these don't have to all be straight. I'm going to actually kind of make this one a little thicker Okay, this one's going to be my secondary branch. All right, so we've got one one And one two you see that one trunk one trunk Two branches or two divisions of the trunk. All right zero would be down here All right, so now we're going to take one of these guys We alternate. Okay. One of them is going to what's the next number? The next number is three So let's take this main trunk one and we're going to split it into two So I'm going to do a v a little v. We're splitting it. Okay right here This one's not going to get split into two. Okay, because we're going to end up with three over here So this one will just kind of Bring over a little bit. So now we're taking this one up and we're splitting it into two So now guess what we have on this level one branch two branch three bank branches All right, so the next one is going to have I'm going to have to curve my numbers around here The next one is going to have how many let's look back up here It's going to have five So what we're going to do is we already made this one the long one. Okay, it didn't get a break yet So this one in the next level and by the way This happens differently based on the variety of tree live oak trees. Everybody knows how they go so wide So let's make this branch like more like a live oak branch. Let's bring it. We're going to put our v way out here Okay, that's kind of far So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring this branch over here like that And then I'm going to go like this like that. Okay And this one here now, we've got two trunks again One's going to break into a v and one is not Let's make this one break into a v since it's a live oak tree way over here I probably should have held off on my tree variety descriptions and Done it Just real simply. Okay. So now we broke that one off now this one We are not going to break it into two. Let's just bring this one up like that. Okay So now what do we have on this next level? One two Three four five. Look at that. Isn't that cool? All right, so now let's look again at this one We've got two whenever you have two like a v one's going to go into another v and one is not So let's make this one go into another v Okay, so we're going to bring it up And let this one won't okay. So let's bring this one just kind of Up here like this. All right Now let's this one is um did not get a v before you see that So let's give it a v kind of like right here I'm kind of bending my tree branches probably too much. All right, same thing here this one We got it's got two so we got to choose which one's going to get the v I'll take the outside one again. So we're going to go out here And this one will not get the v. Okay Now once again, let's go back over here. This one has two pick one and give it the v. Let's do this one The split I should say I probably shouldn't call it a v. This one's not going to get it. Okay. We're just going to go up here All right, this one did not get a split. So let's give it a split. Let's bring it over here All right, so we're getting somewhere this one. What's what's happening here? We've got two So what do we have to do? We have to pick one Um, I think I want a tree that's got a big hole in the middle here So I'm going to pick this one to have the v over here And this one not to okay Over here. We've got it didn't have a v at all. So let's give it a v And we're going to just bring it up over here You can bend them, you know, wherever you put the v you might have to bend your your branches to suit that So once again, I'm kind of making more of a live oak tree So let's do one. Oh, I missed a level. I'm trying to get them all to the level before I move on This one. What's happening here? We've got a v. We've got two a split. So we got to pick one to To have the next v and one to not have the next v. So again, let's pick this one out here I'm always putting the v's right at the line too. Just so you know, so this one's going to be reaching out again Notice too, they're all getting smaller and this one's just going to reach up. All right Let's do one more level. Okay. So over here We have One that did not have the v right here. So we got to give a v and bend it to that v All right, here we go This one had a v so we have to pick one branch and draw a v and the other one won't have it or a split This one won't have it. Okay. We'll bring it up here This one right here. It's got a v. We're gonna pick one I'll pick one. I'll do one right here We'll make it have a v And this one will not Uh, this one just has a v because it it doesn't have two. So we just give it a v And again, I'm bending it. You can bend the branches to wherever the split is. This has two. Whoops This one has two. So what do we do? We pick one side or the other to make it go to that split and the other one won't have a split So I'm going to pick this side. I'm going to go to this split And this one I won't even have a split Right here. What do we have? We have two So one of them's going to have a split and one of them won't let's give a little split here And this one won't have a split This one has one We've got to give it a split. You don't have a choice. Okay So if it if it hasn't had a split previously, you just Put the split on the next level. This one has two We got to pick one that has a split and one that doesn't I'm going to do the same thing I've done before And we'll do this now. We're kind of running out of room here. Um But you see how the tree is growing now. I've seen these fibonacci trees done before just growing straight up people just um Do them kind of But I think it's interesting that we can pick and choose Where we make the splits now that you don't want to have to paint that way all the time, right? You you really don't want to have to stop and think But if you practice these and you think about how they work before you know it you kind of start to naturally do it So I'm going to kind of use my side of my pastel a little bit of my it's a wide pastel or long pastel So I don't want to make my tree that wide So what I'm going to lift up on it a little bit and just press on one side. So there's our base We know one side's going to kind of split and we're going to split here. Okay, that's going to be my primary side Okay, then we know from this split. We're going to have Um a v going somewhere and one not. Okay, so we've got one of them going here In a little v and one of them won't this one is the long one. It's going to just do that Okay, then we just we kind of keep going. I'm just going to kind of keep keep doing it from here. Okay, just But then the more you do it the more you realize you can kind of Just get a little creative. Nobody's going to come in and count your Fibonacci branches. Okay But one thing is true is that if a tree isn't somewhat accurate It's going to look your your art will look amateurish. Okay So the more that you do this the better you'll get I hope you found that educational and I hope it will expand your horizons when it comes to drawing and painting trees And once again patrons, this is your homework assignment You can do these Fibonacci trees and also try to do some that are with some pastel or Pencil whatever but do the the pressure technique and give it some gestural quality Currently available in my Etsy shop is my book that I wrote and illustrated called the mountain queen With the holidays quickly approaching I thought it might be neat to offer it as a stocking stuffer gift for a child or grandchild in your life And I call it the eternal love story It's only 2499 in my Etsy shop and it is an autographed copy You can personalize it too when you visit the Etsy shop if you'd like me to mention anyone's name So I just wanted to share that and it might make the perfect Christmas gift I love it when you guys make comments on these videos and let me know if this is what you like So please do that like this video comment Subscribe become a patron if you'd like it really does help this channel and as always happy painting