Trees

I love trees. As a youth, I climbed many. From getting my hands thoroughly resined by an easy-to-climb giant fir in a neighbor's yard, to later scaling an elegant maple in my own backyard to read a book or merely peer down upon the world and dream, trees have framed many fond impressions in my mind.But, they're terribly challenging to draw!I recently got the go-ahead to illustrate a logo for a financial group. So many leaves, so little time!The client made a special request for my signature, as you can see.Some years back, I had to create an image for an orange-juice ad campaign. It was quite a to-do, as the end-use was a six-foot high cardboard prop for display in supermarkets. This assignment was a bit of a departure for me--- To cope with the enormity of the situation, I broke out my acrylic paints and brushes, and got to work. Producing the art at one-half of final size was different. After painting in the colors, I "inked" the final details with a combination of black acrylic and Sharpie magic marker.I once produced a raft of tree illustrations, five in all, for another financial company. These illustrations were incredibly detailed, and this work really took a chunk of time to complete. All images were in black-and-white, but I later took the liberty to "colorize" one of them, as you'll see...And now, something a little different: this image was produced for an annual report some years ago, and shows a more graphic approach to the depiction of our beloved fellow-traveler and benefactor, the tree.