How To Depict A Tree

How to depict a tree. How to depict a person, a house, or the Sun. How to colour-in the sky. Basic skills for children, or adults for that matter, taught via a serial of modest books. H5N1 projection real much of its era: for piece it’s quite possible to imagine like books beingness produced now, the approach to teaching inventiveness inside rules – the classical amongst the modern – is something I recognise from the pedagogical fashions of my childhood.

How to depict a tree was the star of the show, in addition to is withal inward print, also inward English. It isn’t thus much an instructional mass equally the even out of how trees are drawn yesteryear nature. The inspiration is this drawing yesteryear Leonardo Da Vinci, on the proportional increment of tree branches (from his Treatise on Painting).

Leonardo’s theory held that ‘all the branches of a tree at every phase of its superlative when seat together are equal inward thickness to the trunk’. The book’s writer – my love Bruno Munari – uses this sentiment for a collage do towards the terminate of How to depict a tree, but translates otherwise the drawing equally the next recipe/mantra repeated throughout the text, inward big impress in addition to modest print, upside in addition to sidewise in addition to down:

Every branch is thinner than the branch that precedes it.

That is the moral of the even out of how to depict a tree.

I’ll larn dorsum to the book. But for the purposes of this postal service I revisited the others inward the series, near 3 decades on from when I get-go encountered them. And flora them inferior to that get-go title. How to depict a house (by Roberto Lanterio) is only a catalogue of the unlike shapes that dwellings accept inward unlike cultures. You won’t know how to depict them whatever ameliorate than earlier y'all picked upwardly the book. How to depict a person (by Rinaldo Donzelli) is similarly lacking inward invention. How much ameliorate it mightiness get got been had it borrowed Munari’s ain approach – from an seek inward his seminal collection L’arte come upwardly mestiere – to drawing faces out of flora pattern elements in addition to shapes. Fellow children of the Lego generation could actually get got done something with this.

However I gain holler upwardly beingness struck yesteryear the book’s fundamental fold-out pages, which vividly illustrate how real-life faces aren’t symmetrical, in addition to equally good that they are to a greater extent than interesting that way.

Not this

Nor this

But this

I never owned a re-create of How to depict the sun, but from what I tin transportation away assemble from the cyberspace it contained or thus other of Munari’s onetime ideas– namely that ‘the sunset is only a dawn seen from behind’ – in addition to equally good employed or thus other favourite technique of his, which consist inward highlighting a visual chemical ingredient yesteryear concealing it behind something else, or pointing to its absence.

Munari’s stated intent inward writing or overseeing these books was to help readers avoid the clichés typical of childhood drawings. Trees, people, houses, skies, the Sun: for each of these basic elements of our early on fine art at that topographic point is a stereotype nosotros tin transportation away instantly moving-picture demo inward our heads, in addition to easily repeat fifty-fifty equally adults. Munari’s method is to strip downward these socially acquired conventions, in addition to instruct how to hold off at the basis equally artists – that is to say, to capture the essence of a subject, its visual signature, thus equally to endure able to reproduce it on the page.

Back to the trees, then, whose task is to grow in addition to branch out.

Every branch is thinner than the branch that precedes it, in addition to this is near all y'all demand to know.

The increment of our basic tree is shaped in addition to constrained yesteryear its environment. For instance, yesteryear the wind.

And naturally unlike kinds of trees branch out inward their ain peculiar ways.

By observing an oak leaf, nosotros detect that their veining reproduces the pattern of how a tree grows. Take out the outline of the leaf, in addition to nosotros are dorsum to drawing trees.

Some adults, ponders Munari, volition resist these teachings. They volition say ‘I can’t draw’. But of course of written report you, can, he taunts them. You tin transportation away depict the letters of the alphabet, for i thing. You tin transportation away depict them big in addition to small, uppercase in addition to lowercase, inward wavy lines or at correct angles, can’t you. Yes, yes, yes. Well then, he continues, if y'all tin transportation away depict a uppercase Y y'all tin transportation away depict a tree. There are no excuses.

How to depict a tree is less a practical lesson than an extended meditation, the even out of how (and why) i mightiness depict a tree. Above all, it presumes of immature children in addition to principal schoolhouse teachers a willingness to engage inward philosophical enquiry. For that fact lonely it deserves to endure reprinted in addition to read in addition to kept around, at to the lowest degree for equally long equally at that topographic point are withal people in addition to trees.

Bruno Munari, Disegnare un albero. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1978. (Available inward English linguistic communication equally Drawing a Tree.)