I painted this pine which I have long admired last October. Scot's pines are  less common here than in the Cairngorms which were my old stamping ground . I love their contorted limbs and the contrast between the evergreen needles and gorgeous reddish brown bark.They seem to be long suffering trees growing in bleak inhospitable places ( here clinging perilously to the side of a gorge) surviving against all odds the lack of soil, the ravages of the weather and of grazing deer.Their stories are writ large in the anguished twists of their branches. Some in the Cairngorms are extremely old providing a link back to the great Caledonian forest of the past. Of course some Scot's Pines do grow straight and tall in more clement  lowland settings but these have far less appeal to me than their mountainside cousins.
Mixed media in a Strathmore toned paper sketchbook.Painted 20th October 2013