I promised a while back to tell you about Bruno Munari's Drawing a Tree. Well, today it kicked off the drawing part of "Religion of Trees," something I know many students were anxious about. The exercise, inspired by an observation of da Vinci's known as "Leonardo's Law," helps children (of all ages!) craft fun and surprising trees by attending 
to only one thing: the branch that follows is always slenderer than the one before it. Focusing on trees which split into two at each branching (others are possible), Munari shows what a huge range of tree types can be generated this through simple iteration. Through thick and thin and curvy and wavy, The pattern is always the same. 
to only one thing: the branch that follows is always slenderer than the one before it. Focusing on trees which split into two at each branching (others are possible), Munari shows what a huge range of tree types can be generated this through simple iteration. Through thick and thin and curvy and wavy, The pattern is always the same. 
This growth pattern is so simple that anyone can draw it, he writes. Let's draw it then, even though we know that it's a pattern and that it will be difficult to find such a perfectly drawn tree in nature. To grow so exactly, a tree would have to live in a place where there was no wind and with the sun always high in the sky, with the rain always the same and with constant nourishment from the ground all the time. There would have to be no lightning flashes nor even any sharp changes in temperature, no snow or frost, never too hot or dry... 
But after sharing all manner of trees in this pattern, he brings us back to reality with some hurt and wounded trees ... though here too, he insists, you can still see the pattern - and so can the tree. New branches still shoot out, though, as though nothing has happened.
But after sharing all manner of trees in this pattern, he brings us back to reality with some hurt and wounded trees ... though here too, he insists, you can still see the pattern - and so can the tree. New branches still shoot out, though, as though nothing has happened.
I think the exercise went well, and followed nicely from a discussion of the problems with idealized and generalized images of trees. (We were reading about the origins of "tree diagrams" in medieval books, none of which had much of anything to do with the way trees actually look or grow - like this illustration from an 1552 Corpus Iuris Civilis, in Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees [2014], 33.) Munari's is a drawing which, while simplified, doesn't abstract too much from the varieties and realities of tree growth. Let's see if the student start drawing in their little MUJI notebooks on their own!