Drawing trees and plants.

SquirtEryna · Post by **SquirtEryna** » Sun May 22, 2005 9:34 am

I'm not sure if this has been asked before. Well basically I just want to know how others would draw trees. Any tips or useful techniques? Because most of my trees end up like burnt twigs with a bunch of leaves stuck to it.

AsterAzul · Post by **AsterAzul** » Sun May 22, 2005 10:09 am

There's a lot of different advice on the topic. I have a whole book about how to draw trees. My technique is not to try to draw the individual lines and such, you just sort of sketch out the shape and try to impress the idea of foliage. The branches are another story.

I usually bring a sketchpad when I go hiking, and I take a shot at drawing different foliage there.

War · Post by **War** » Sun May 22, 2005 2:40 pm

With trees draw the outline and shadow of the leaves. Try to avoid drawing more than a few individual leaves.

These are some quicky doodles of deciduous trees. As you can see I've mostly just drawn the outline of the foliage, and added shadow towards the bottom. I've also not drawn it as one body of foliage, but more like several clumps, with individual shadows for each clump. This is to show how the leaves are clumped around branches, and you don't get a uniform foliage (unless you're into topiary) because the branches grow out at random.

Jesusabdullah · Post by **Jesusabdullah** » Sun May 22, 2005 3:13 pm

What if they're thin trees? Like, the foliage is never thick enough to block out what's behind it? I can't really find an excellent example, but the birch trees around here are pretty sparse in the way of leafy growth. Is this normal (making these just good cartoon representations of trees), or are most trees heavier than mine? I don't get out much, so I wouldn't know.

JeremyW · Post by **JeremyW** » Sun May 22, 2005 3:24 pm

AsterAzul wrote:There's a lot of different advice on the topic. I have a whole book about how to draw trees. My technique is not to try to draw the individual lines and such, you just sort of sketch out the shape and try to impress the idea of foliage. The branches are another story.

I usually bring a sketchpad when I go hiking, and I take a shot at drawing different foliage there.

What's the title of the book?

SquirtEryna · Post by **SquirtEryna** » Sun May 22, 2005 10:11 pm

Thanks for the advice!

I'll be working on my tree drawing skills and hopefully in time I'll write decent trees. I was also wondering about drawing trees in winter, meaning snow covered trees etc. Do I apply the same method?

AsterAzul · Post by **AsterAzul** » Sun May 22, 2005 10:21 pm

I'll check the book title next time I go home. It's my dad's book; he's sort of a closet naturalist. It's a really old book, it's basically just full of tree pictures with discussions on how they grow, how to draw leaves, etc. My favorite part is in the back where they have pictures of fantasy trees.
But, yeah, I'll find out what the title is and post it. It's really neat.

Thirdworldvillian · Post by **Thirdworldvillian** » Mon May 23, 2005 5:52 pm

Bill waterson draws really great trees in Calvin and Hobbes

flip through one of his collections in a book store and you will find many a lovely tree for reference : )

AsterAzul · Post by **AsterAzul** » Sun May 29, 2005 3:17 pm

Bah! The book is out of print and I can't find my old copy!

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Sun May 29, 2005 11:29 pm

Get an architectural tree stamp.

AsterAzul · Post by **AsterAzul** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:40 pm

Aha! My searches have at last borne fruit! In a dusty corner of my father's attic, I found a copy of How To Draw Trees by Henry C. Pitz, the revised, enlarged edition of Drawing Trees!

I do not think it's in print anymore, but you can get it on Amazon for 15 bucks.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:17 am

Depends how realistic you're going for. I like to make mine look realistic enough while still retaining cartoony elements, but I rarely do any more than the outline in the background shaded various degrees of grey. Most often trees and bush are in the backgrounds of my settings, so it suits the style to be simple enough to give the impression, although I do put a bit of detail into the outline so you can see individual leaves around the edges.

Greybrother · Post by **Greybrother** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 11:46 pm

A useful technique for doing large trees is just to get messy with it. You can draw and shade the trunk with just a bunch of jagged lines following the contours of your tree. It makes a nice rough bark effect. the idea is to imply, rather than to literally draw the actual object anyway when you're doing backgrounds, and doing organic background in a rough, messy way provides an intresting contrast to the neat, archetectural lines of manufactured background material as well. Well, if you have a neat, clean style, this might not work, of course.