You can stand in front of nature for hours but if you want to really learn to paint...look at paintings. Put yourself in front of the best master works possible but choose carefully. Even the greatest painters made mistakes and you don't want to copy them.
You learn to paint trees by observing how the great masters painted them. Learn their language in paint. See how they treated edges and structure. Look for the simple shapes depicted. Observe how they showed the light coming through foliage, the openings and their design.
Vernon Nye used to tell us, "You're not trying to educate people with what trees look like...trying to get the species right. Just suggest them."
To put it another way, paint how you feel about them. Sounds a little esoteric but in fact that is what we're trying to do with the entire painting.
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