Sobrante Ridge Trees

   “Wilhelm Grimm wrote…the reason for telling fairy tales was to awaken the thoughts and feelings of the heart.” *

This current series of trees, except for the Fantastic Olive, is from Sobrante Ridge. I plan to do12 trees.  I live near The Sobrante Ridge part of the East Bay Regional Parks in the San Francisco Bay Area. I walk around, and look at the trees from different angles trying to find the one that captures my imagination. I may return at a different time of day or year. I think of it as finding Tolkien’s Ents among the trees. A tree can be nothing but decoration for your house, nothing but complex molecules and processes, or it might be an inspiration to look more carefully at life.

I was drawn to the trees. Trees have always been important to me. I want people to care about trees. I grew up in Rock Island, Illinois near a wooded area. I spent a lot of time with the trees there. Later, I studied Landscape Architecture at Iowa State University.
I drew trees and studied them. When the department turned more toward urban planning, I switched majors to graphic design. I took as many drawing and painting classes as possible.

For this series, I had to start with what I had, with where I was. I had pencils and paper. I had a computer, a graphics tablet, and a scanner. I use Photoshop, and Painter IX.  I had been teaching computer classes for a few years. Those were my tools. As I walked around and found some unique plants and trees, I wanted to capture some of what I saw, and bring it to others.

I usually draw the same tree more than once until I am satisfied that I have captured the character of it. I take some pictures in different light, perhaps a panorama of the area, some details of the ground and surrounding plants for reference. I try to take in as much as I can. My real job then is composition, deciding what to include, and mostly, what to leave out. When I work with pencil and paper, I am reminded that there is far more there than I can possibly put on paper. I have to choose what I will use, and how to represent it in order to tell the story of the tree.

Larry Hatfield
2006

* Quoted from, The Owl, The Raven, And The Dove, by G. Ronald Murphy, S.J. Oxford University Press © 2000