Artist's Eyes

...So, the point of painting a tree is not to paint a literal, exact image of that tree you are looking at.  If you want to be looking at that tree, go stand in front of it and look at it.  If you want to "have a record" of that tree for you to look at anytime you want, take a photo.  Both of those options are much better ways to look at a tree. 
The point of painting a tree is to express something about that tree that is remarkable to you in some way.  If there is a "secret" to painting, this is it....that it is not the technical ability to put paint on canvas or to mix just the right color that takes years to learn.  Those things, like all technical skills must be learned, absolutely.  But they don't take years to learn.  What takes years and can only be learned through experience is the translation of what your eyes see into that remarkable thing you experience and back into a vision of a painting.  This is what I call having "artist's eyes" and I think it is learned, not something that some small handful of people are born with.
 I do believe that some people are more sensitive to their surroundings.  A beautiful sunset doesn't move all people in the same way; Tchaikovsky's Symphany Pathetique doesn't automatically bring tears to everyone's eyes.  And so there is something magical and perhaps inborn about the connection between seeing something and being emotionally moved by it.  But being able to understand what that something is and then expressing it in a painting is the mark of artist's eyes.  (Or artist's ears, in the case of music; artist's words in the case of literature). 
One of the most exciting moments of my life was the day that, as I looked at the scene I was about to paint, suddenly what I saw was not nature's view, but I saw the painting in my mind's eye.  And the minute I saw it, it seemed to paint itself.  By that day, I already had a couple of hundred of paintings under my belt....really. And the more paintings I put behind me the better my artist's eyes work. 
So, that's the only way I know of to find your artist's eyes.  You must put paintings behind you.  Lots of them.  Not so that you have lot's of paintings to frame or to keep (only some percentage will be good enough to keep anyway).  But you need to paint for the exercise of it.  To find your own artist's eyes.

You Cannot Paint a Tree, So Stop Trying

I started painting landscapes by painting from photos.  I don't think that is the ideal way to learn.  Unfortunately, most people work during the day and take classes at night, when plein air landscape is hard, to say the least.  And believe me, painting from photographs is better than not painting at all!  But learning to paint landscapes from photos has a lot of drawbacks.  First of all, except for professional photographers and a few really avid amatuers, most of us take really lousy photos.  The light is wrong, the sky is too washed out and the shadows are too dark.  The color is also wrong; understandable when you consider the limitations of commercial ink.  And although commercial printers are sooooo much better than they used to be, they are still limited----drastically so when compared to the infinite range of color and hue and light in nature.  Experienced artists can learn to deal with these limitations.  But for beginners, this creates serious problems.

One of the biggest skills one must learn in painting is to see (really see) what is in front of him.  Most beginners will tell you that the California hills are brown in summer.  They are not.  They are yellow and orange and violet and olive and mauve.  But the beginner's eyes haven't yet learned the subtle translation of vibrant color combinations that truly make up what we see.  And film does not capture it.  So new students will pull out a tube of raw umber (probably the ugliest color that ever saw the inside of a tube), mix it with white and call it a dry, grassy hill.  Deep shadows will end up black; sea foam, white.  They can't help it.  And so they work hard to try to mix the exact color of the leaves on the tree, but in the end, it's not nature's tree....it's Kodak's tree.  And speaking of trees, a crisp photo captures every leaf, millions of them, in fact, and makes students want to paint every one of them.  Do not go there, or you will be painting leaves for the rest of your life. 

The fact is, you cannot paint a tree.  I cannot paint a tree.  A tree is not made of paint.  But we can paint an image, an impression, or a representation of a tree.  We can paint a painting of a tree.  Better yet, we can paint OUR painting of the tree.  And to really do that, we have to "see" it with all our senses.  Up close, and personal.  Plein air...from real life....