Trees in Bloom: Pears and Cherries That Bear No Fruit

Right before the super hot spell we had in March, I had a chance for a quick sketch of super white pear trees on google campus.

As that hot spell moved all the blooming schedules for this year forward, I found myself painting Japanese Flowering Cherry much earlier than I expected.

Neither this cherry nor this pear bears fruit, which might be a gift or a curse depending on your point of view. But the flowers are amazing, and I was overwhelmed by the complexity of trying to show these trees at their peak in both cases. With the first sketch, my solution was to get far away and see the trees as a part of a much bigger scene, and limit the amount of time I allocated for this sketch. With the flowering cherry trees, I decided to drop the building in the background to enjoy the grays and pinks of the tree against the greens of the shrubbery and grass.