Spruced up to pine fir decidous trees

I had a painter seminar on Saturday that concentrated on painting trees. There were so many techniques demonstrated, and I only got to try out a couple. needless to say, my head was spinning  by the end of the day!   One thing I remember is that  fir branches grow down and spruce branches grow pointing up.

I am including a picture of the aspen leaves I am working on for my regular class, even though it is not finished. Taking pictures of paintings half done is a good way to remind me what has to done in between the finished product.  I seem to be good a remembering  the first couple of steps, and the last step, but the in between stuff kind of gets muddled. I still have to negative (and positive) paint in the stems and the paint the sky (gouache).

Saturday ,I just started this exercise, when we had to move on to a different technique (painting aspens with a butter knife), but I am including it because I could not  help, but think how much it looked like the Rorshach Inkblots.