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Inspired by Jonathan Drori’s wonderful books Around the World in 80 Trees and Around the World Plants, we’re going to travel around the globe by region and sketch interesting, weird, iconic, or beautiful trees and tree-like plants.

Part 10: Viewer Favorites

What you’ll need: a multi-media sketchbook or an accordion style booklet (see below), pen and / or pencil for our base drawings, and then watercolor or colored pencil to quickly bring them to life.

TIP: I used a strip of heavy watercolor paper folded into four squares to create an “accordion” booklet to record my trees (8 total, 4 on each side).

Prepwork: Create a map of the world so you can sketch location points for each species (North America, Pacific, Australia Europe).

Length: 2 hours

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Downloads and Resources

Books and References:

Plants of the World, hosted by Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, is an amazing resource. The hardbound book of the same name is a treasure, and I use it extensively in my research for this series.

Colors and brush I use:

I favor a simple primary “triad” plus two extra colors: Manganese Blue (“cyan”), Quinacridone Rose (“magenta”), Aureolin Yellow (“yellow”), and Burnt Sienna and Indanthrone Blue, all Daniel Smith.

I use an Isabey Squirrel Mop Travel Brush.