Welcome to the FLOAT-YOUR-PIGMENT Newsletter #245, Trees 
 

 

  I have been teaching close to 36 years and one thing I have seen many beginners have difficult drawing is trees without leaves. Most beginners will draw a flat tree. The trunk comes out of the ground and all their branches radiate around the trunk like a fan without any branches coming forward of going back. An example of this is shown directly below.

I'm not talking about trees with leaves on them I am talking about trees without any leaves. 
The 1st tree drawing below shows you that the tree is very flat, there are no branches going to the back and none coming to the front that are pointing at you. What the beginner doesn't draw is the tree looking like it is three dimensional. A tree has branches that overlap each other and the branches that are in front should be a darker line and the branches that are in the back should be drawn with a light line giving the illusion that it is going to the back. A beginner will not put enough branches on a tree because of the large number of branches that a tree has and they just get tired of drawing them so they will just quickly flick their pencil across the paper to sketch in lines that don't even connect to the tree.

Take your time when drawing a tree into your scene and also when you go to paint it. If there are a lot of trees in the background then that is where you can simplify then and paint them as a wash. If however the tree is in the foreground and it is important to the scene then take the time and draw it well.

When you go to paint over the lines of the drawing make sure you give the tree the details as you did with the drawing. The one difference when painting the outer tips of the branches is that you can wisp the brush lightly over the ends of the outer branches with a drybrush effect and that will give the impression of small branches together.