Inspiration - Blossoming Trees

I have been taking a lot of pictures of blossoming trees recently - one of my favourite subjects. I love trees in general, to photograph, to study, to draw, I'm endlessly fascinated. I'm sure I will be writing other posts about trees in the future, but for now the blossoms are just too glorious to resist!



I am planning to do some sketching of this subject in the next few days, and if I produce anything decent I will post some images. I've also been looking at the ways some of the great artist have interpreted blossoming trees and (having searched through my art postcard collection) here are a couple I am really inspired by. First is C.R. Mackintosh's study of a blossoming blackthorn branch. I am a big admirer of his botanical watercolours, and this one is lovely, so simple, just a little stylised and essentially capturing the flowering plant.

Below is the work by Japanese artist Zekkai Chushin (1334 - 1405). Again I love the simplicity and subtleties, unbelievable that this was created over 600 years ago!