today I will compare the different looks of trees throughout the world of classical art over a period of about 600 years. when you look at these trees you have to separate the different elements – the ROOTS, the TRUNK and the CROWN. sometimes parts of the ROOTS are above of the earth and create nice curvy shapes against the usually pretty straight TRUNK. the TRUNK with its BARK can have a smooth or very textured surface. the CROWN is sometimes shown just as a shape or with the FOLIAGE, with all the different leaves on smaller branches. you have to differentiate as well if they are DECIDUOUS TREES ( leafs ), NEEDLE- or PINE-TREES or tropical PALM-TREES. then the SEASONS make a big difference, in shape and color. in winter you only see the tree skeleton in case of the leafy trees with a lot of thinner branches, in summer you have a big mass of foliage. in spring the leafy trees develop blossoms first, very important in japanese and chinese art. autumn adds some bright red, orange and sienna brown colors, spring shows juicy yellows and greens. as you can imagine and see in some of the paintings as well, all that creates already an incredible variety. the early paintings in the western world were done for religious reasons, the figures were more important. that’s why the backgrounds are more the idea of the environment. throughout the medieval times that changes, the worlds becomes more and more realistic. then in more modern years it develops again the other way, portraying and abstracting the idea of nature, this development is similar in all different cultures. the paintings I combined show you how rich our world of art is, how beautiful and very unique the artists from around the world and through times painted what they saw. this time I wanted to concentrate just on TREES, in some future chapters I will do the same with different elements.
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.
Fantastic post Hans.
interesting article=)
hans, this is an incredible and insightful post!
These stunning series are simply fantastic!
Wow, these posts on trees have been incredibly helpful to me, Hans. Thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put into this blog.
thank you so much, these are wonderful and really helpful!
To quote a famous poet, “I think I’ll never see anything as lovely as a tree.”
Great concept for a post and wonderful to see the huge variety of examples you have put together.