Last week I taught 2 workshops at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology on the Central Oregon coast and we spent time in the forest painting enormous Sitka spruce trees. As the trees mature the lower branches become bare of needles as they receive less light and all that you can see at eye level are massive trunks with countless stiff heavy branches uplifted in a shallow v, a kind of herringbone pattern, but much less delicate, all of them lavishly decorated with bright green mosses. Each of the students came up with remarkable work here; I think the dark enchanted riches of the Sitka spruce forest inspired every one of us.
Here is the new growth of a Sitka spruce, the hue looking surprisingly like a Colorado blue spruce. This branch was draped by a yellow-green lichen, matching the bright new cones.