SOLVED. YA Coming of Age novel. Girl in Art class is assigned Trees as her topic, hates it but still tries. Makes friends with a girl obsessed with her weight. Read around 2007-2010. [s]

[Shel]

A girl in middle or highschool (possibly a new school for her, I can't remember) who was very into art excited to start the class. The art teacher randomly assigned a focus for all their projects that year and hers was tree; she was not happy with it. She tried different types of trees and art medium to complete these tree art pieces she was not impressed in doing but determined to do right. She made friends with a girl who was fairly obsessed with her weight. There was one part where she went over to the friend's house and she hopped on either a treadmill or elliptical until she burned 100 calories. Read at some point in middleschool or early highschool which would have been 2007-2010.

[Rosepetalsinwinter]

Sounds familiar. Can you tell me anything else about the plot?

[Shel]

I've been trying to remember, but I can't come up with any more of the plotline. I remember her handing in a basic sketch of a tree at first and her teacher - I'm 90% sure was male - telling her to keep trying. So she would over the year progressively try more detail in leaves, colour, tried painting, did an evergreen / spruce to change from the typical deciduous trees, etc. In the end she 'got' the assignment but I can't remember for the life of me how she did it. I wanted to re-read to remember all these things, hence the search!

[Paige]

Speak
The girl on the treadmill is Heather.

[Shel]

Heather sounds right to me, yes! Thank you, Paige

[Paige]

Yay! Glad I could help.