Fullerton Arboretum

Today I went to the Fullerton Arboretum. It was about 30 minutes away, so I'm not likely to frequent it, but it was a very nice wooded area and garden. There is a historic house of some type there that I planned to draw, but I was so taken by the diverse collection of trees that I decided to go out into the wooded area instead.

This drawing took a long time. I had to label the trees in the drawing to keep from getting confused about where the gaps were and where the trunks were. I put numbers on the frontmost trunks, and letters on the next layer back to try to keep them straight.

I am taking a Craftsy class on Travel Sketching, and in one of the lessons, Marc Taro Holmes paints without drawing a sketch by first painting the negative space. I thought to take this technique, but the tree was so complicated I decided to draw it as well. I first painted the gaps between the branches that I did draw.

And then between the four frontmost trunks.

And then I painting the four in.

I took this photo in the morning, when there were a few more shadows than when I got around to painting.

Thanks for looking!