![af_1.JPEG](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmUs62VCpbyeYXDiVS3xFsXn7hCEw4xCERBKSZwhBustXp)

I could never draw a tree. I used to try, and even though I have an amazingly detailed ink drawing of a squirrel, a tree just *never became a tree*. 

The difference is, the tree I tried to draw from memory, whereas the squirrel I made from a photograph, each hair and line and detail for me to look back to again and again and again. 

But *trees*? I saw these every day. So I though I didn't need to *look*, or I don't know if I explicitly thought that, I just know I never bothered to walk to a tree and *look* and *then* draw it. 

I might also have focused on leaves and final shapes more than thinking about what are the basics of the tree. A stem, all the side branches, making more side branches, refining themselves, more and more and more...

I looked at this picture just now and understood why I never was able to draw a tree. Look at the way these branches are laid out over the picture, and how there's no 'perfection', just patterns that are imperfect, some branches thicker, others thin, some broken, others grown longer then the expected 'pattern' might have predicted. 

Because of all the coincidences, nature, human intervention, this tree became what it is. In my mind I only hold a 'summary' of a tree. I should sit in front of this tree and try to draw it. *I would die and still not be finished.*

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#### *A freewrite based on a picture. As always, pictures posted on steemit.com/@soyrosa are taken by myself. Another picture from this day and at almost the same location [can be seen here](https://busy.org/@soyrosa/photo-its-cold-outside-ons6qgvw).*