GARDEN ART WEEKLY, Birch tree studies
Using graphite pencil, acrylic paint, and paper, create some studies of Alaska birch trees. Alaska has three kinds of tree birch and two kinds of dwarf birch. The tree birches hybridize wherever they meet. The Garden has Betula papyrifera, Paper Birch. There may be Kenai Birch which have a coppery bark. Or hybrids.
Activity #1 Birch Tree Walk and Birch Studies, Graphite Sketches
1. Take a walk at the Garden or in your neighborhood and look at birch tree trunks.
2. Pay attention to the colors, shapes, and textures that you see.
3. Use a pencil and paper to draw the bark close-up (or take photos to use later at home).
4. Start by drawing two vertical lines for the edges or sides of your tree trunk.
5. Draw horizontal, vertical, diagonal lines to add the texture to the bark.
6. You can use dots, brillo or scribbling, hatch marks or crisscrossed lines to make texture.
7. If you use curved horizontal lines, it will make the tree trunk look 3-Dimensional.
8. Take notes of what colors, shapes, and textures you see in the bark on your paper.
9. Draw several thumbnail or very small sketches of the birch bark.
10. If you use a camera, zoom in or crop images to get small, detailed pictures of the bark.
11. The texture you see on lower branches of the birch are called lenticels. These are believed to make these branches taste bad to browsing animals. Lenticella means ‘small window’ in Latin. The second meaning for the word lenticel is “little lens”. Try drawing these little “windows” on your birch study.
Activity #2 Birch Studies, Acrylic Painting
1. Using paint mix the colors you see in the birch bark: whites, greys, light pinks or peaches, yellows, and browns.
2. Some trees may have algae in red-orange, greenish orange.Try mixing red and yellow to get orange, and add blue and yellow to get greenish orange.
3. To mix grey add tiny amounts of black to your white paint.
4. You can also make grey by mixing colors that are oppositeeach other on the color wheel (Example: red/green, orange/blue, or purple/yellow).
5. You can make your own black paint by mixing dark red or crimson, dark blue, and dark green. (Example: Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, Sap Green) This will allow you to make a variety of greys because you can add more or less of one of the three colors to change the warmth or coolness of the black.
6. To mix peach add small amounts of red and yellow to your white paint.
7. To mix pink add small amounts of red to your white paint. When you add white to a color it is called a tint.
8. You can also try mixing grey with your colors to create shadows. When you add grey to a color it is called a tone.
9. Make several small painting studies of the birch tree bark in your sketchbook.
Activity #3 Share your art with the Garden
If you would like to share images of your birch tree painting studies or drawings with us, you can email them to art@alaskabg.org.
