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.