Backlit Branches

I did this quick 3.5 x 5 inch watercolor a few days ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What interested me was the area where the trees are in front of the shadow side of the building.

The sunlight is coming toward us from the right side. The end of the building is in shadow. This sets up a perfect backdrop for showing the light gray mass of branches catching the morning sunshine. The stripes of rooftiles can just be discerned through the branches.

As often happens in plein air studies, the amount of detail in the scene is almost infinitely complex. You can’t possibly capture every tiny branch and detail, especially at this scale, so the challenge becomes how best to suggest more than you actually define.

I splayed out the tip of the watercolor brush and drybrushed around the light branches, and also drybrushed the branches that were darker than the sky. After everything was dry, I scratched out a few more branches with the tip of a folding knife.


It’s interesting (and a little embarrassing) to compare the photo after the fact. The drawing errors in scale and perspective become obvious right away. I missed a lot of color that was going on in the shadow. But I’m surprised that the photo seems to have completely missed the quality I liked best about the scene—the backlit bare branches.