How to Draw an Old Oak Tree: Narrated Step by Step

Hi, Tom here, with this week's Circle Line Art School drawing, One Way to Draw an Old Oak Tree, we can start this drawing by drawing the base of a tree trunk, a thick wide tree trunk base, which has several lines going upwards and then some lines for the roots going into the ground, once we have the basic shape of the base of the trunk of the oak tree, then we can draw some indications of some textural marks for the bark of the tree and in this drawing, as we go along, we can add the tonal values, light and dark, for this drawing I'm just using a 4B pencil, any dark soft pencil would work well for this type of drawing, so the darkest areas which are just below the roots of the tree, I've shaded those in already dark and now I'll do a mid-tone using the side of the pencil and then some dark tones as well, because a tree, an oak tree, the bark of an oak tree will have lots of different tonal values, but none of the areas of the oak tree would probably be as bright as the paper that we're drawing on, so everything will be shaded to some extent, so we can do that as we go along, so we're sort of finishing the drawing as we're starting it, so now we have the base of an old oak tree, the next step is to continue some of these lines further up, in inventive ways, to make the branches of this old oak tree, which is based on the angel oak tree in South Carolina, in the USA, to make the branches interesting shapes, they need to sort of balance out together, to be in balance and they also need to hopefully show some indication of weight and strength to them, once you've got some of the branches from the base of the tree trunk, then we can add some smaller details to these branches and then to add the texture, the indication of texture, going along the form of the tree and some shading as well, and the shading, we can join that up to the shading that we already did at the beginning of the drawing, to the base of the tree trunk, so we can sort of match the shading that's needed to happen next, with the shading that we've already finished at the earlier stage of the drawing, for this tree we don't need very much details, we don't need to show very much in the way of details, we're more giving an indication of details, but doing that as we go along, working out where any sort of tree stumps might have been cut off or fallen off and making those as sort of shapes within the tree, and trying to emphasize the structure of the tree, so it looks solid, knowing that the darkest areas of the tree need to be thought through and articulated in a way that makes sense, and then the textural marks, I'm drawing them quite dark, because we're putting a tone on top, shading on top of the textural marks and if the textural marks are nice and dark, then they'll still show up even with quite dark shading on top of them, so you have that sort of layered look to the tree, which I think will be useful as we go along, with a drawing like this, I try not to make it too dark too quickly, so although I want this to be a dark tree against a light background, I know that I can make it darker later on, I can make the tree look darker later on, which is preferable to make it look too dark too early, so I think that's always good advice really when shading, is to shade slightly lighter than you think that you want, knowing that you can make it darker later on, but because this is a dark tree, I'm pretty confident that I want quite dark shading, but if I need to change it, I think I'll want it even darker, it's just easier making shading darker than it is to make it lighter, so it's a sort of step-by-step approach, although I'm trying to add the shading quite quickly to the drawing, I want it to sort of blend in with the earlier stage of shading, so you might want to just slow down and make sure that the shading that you are adding is linking with the shading that you already have, then we can extend the branches yet again and they start to fork out, to divide in a sort of fork-like way, with a v-shape in the extension of the tree trunks in some respects, I think with this tree, because it's a very large, very old oak tree, the branches will go in all sorts of different directions, but I want to give this sense of it being an old tree, so it will have a sort of integrity to the lines, that they'll look like they have some meaning to them, that they're not totally random, there's a sort of, they have a force, a sense of force to them, a sense of strength and age to the quality of the lines, if you're drawing it's always a good idea to find some images of trees or to look at an actual tree or sketch from an actual tree that you're drawing in front of you, and then again we can just add the texture, but this isn't actual texture, it's just the illusion of texture, because it's just a flat drawing, but we're giving that illusion of texture just by adding a few lines, going in the direction of the branches and then looking at the tonal range, the shading and thinking which bits would be the darkest bits of the tree, and even at this stage I think you can see that the various branches on the tree trunk, although they're dark, they change in value of tonal range, so they're not a flat even tonal range, it changes from dark to slightly lighter to dark, to even darker, so it's that sort of changing which parts of the tree branches are dark, sometimes it's on the top, sometimes it's underneath, sometimes it's where the branches join, sometimes it's other areas, so that gives a sort of interest to the tonal ranges that we're drawing, but it also gives some integrity to the form and the complexity of a tree which is very, very old and sort of gnarled shapes which go in several different directions, so the main thing I'm thinking when drawing is how it relates, how the one area that I'm drawing relates to the other areas that I've already drawn and trying to link them together, but also thinking about where the drawing is going to go next, how far I'm going to extend these branches, I think the branches are going to extend all the way to the edge of the paper, so the tree will eventually fill the whole shape of the drawing and then as I'm working on this, I'm also thinking of the shapes in between the branches, so you have the shapes of the branches of the tree, they're the positive shapes, the shapes of the actual subjects of the drawing, but then you also have the negative shapes of the tree, which are the shapes in between the branches and even at this early stage I think you can start to see how the shapes between the branches are just as important as the shapes of the branches and try and have some balance between the positive shapes of the branches and the negative shapes of the background areas in between the branches, so this branch here is going all the way, almost to the ground, but then just going up a little bit and then this branch is getting thinner as it proceeds away from the main trunk of the tree, as branches do, but because it's an old oak tree they don't get thinner in a uniform sense, they sort of change and alter all the time, so I think an old tree quite often has shapes which are quite unusual and surprising, when you go in one direction and suddenly turn into another direction and that's one of the interesting things when drawing a tree, which is old, is looking at the basic shapes first and trying to simplify what we see, because although a tree is a very complicated shape, I'm not looking at everything that I want to draw in the tree, I'm just trying to do the basic shapes first, knowing that there are details and complexities that I might want to add later on, or I might decide to leave them out, so as with all drawing, basic shapes first, but with this particular drawing, as I'm drawing the basic shapes around the tree, by extending the area of the tree as a line drawing, then before I'm finishing those shapes, I'm going to go back into the tonal range, so that we have a finished drawing, so that we're finishing the drawing as we go along, so now I've extended all the branches to some extent and I can add some of the marks and indications of textures to the drawing yet again, I need less at this stage, because the areas in which I'm working are smaller and thinner, and I think maybe the branches need to be darker in some areas, as they become smaller, but that's sort of up to you, what you want for your drawing, so at this stage really you need to look at your drawing and see if there's anything that jumps out, that you need to think that you might want to correct, or any branches that you think, where are they going to go next, how can I make that work better than it already does, and again with any tonal range, any shading, other areas of shading which are leaving a bit too bright, remember trees are generally dark shapes against the light, trees are generally, when we see them, dark shapes against the light background, so that's what I'm drawing here, a dark shape, so look at your drawing and see if you've left any areas too light and consider giving them a little bit of a shaded tone on top, to pull the drawing together, so it becomes one dark shape in front of us, but within that dark shape it has many different tonal ranges, it's tempting as well in a drawing like this to start off with quite a lot of discipline and then as it develops to get a little bit looser and more confident in a way, but also less precise, so in my view I think it's best to try and consider what you want to capture in the drawing first, the old gnarled oak tree and the tonal, interesting tonal ranges within it, the negative shapes and the positive shapes, these are all things I want to capture and then the drawing technique, whatever drawing technique you choose, I think it's best if it's consistent throughout the drawing, so the way that I started the tonal range in this drawing, I might vary it a little bit as the branches get smaller and thinner, but basically I want to keep to the same style of drawing throughout the whole tree, because I want the drawing to work not just in one or two areas, but the whole drawing to work and for the whole drawing to work all together you need to, I think, look at all parts of the drawing, so clearly you can only draw one part of the drawing at any one time, you're always looking at one thing, but even this little branch here that I'm doing, I'm trying to think how that relates to all the other branches and the negative shapes and positive shapes and in that way we can try and make a drawing which has some unity to it, because a tree is a very complicated, complex shape, particularly a tree like this, but it still has a unity to it, so we don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like lots of different trees, I want it to be one tree, and there's an odd thing, I think, when you look at a tree that you sort of see it all together and recognize it as a tree, but then you start to look at individual areas and notice more things and then the more you look the more you'll see, and hopefully the drawing will reflect that sort of sense of looking as a tree, seeing how the shapes that you draw relate to each other, so the drawing is really a record of how I have perceived the tree, so it's my visual record of my observations of a tree and hopefully your drawing will be your visual record of your observations of a tree, if you're drawing a copy of my drawing, the aim isn't for it to look the same as mine, but to be an honest response to my drawing, but in your own way, so there's lots to think about when you're drawing, but on the other hand there's oddly nothing much to think about either, it's more, particularly as you get more used to drawing, it's more a reaction to visual things that you see, but because I'm narrating this drawing, I'm trying to put it into words, but words don't go through my head when I'm drawing, but I'm just trying to articulate what words would, what words I would use, if I were to use words when drawing, but hopefully as you get more used to drawing and draw more, you'll find that drawing is a, it's always very difficult, it's a challenge, but it's a visual challenge, it's not a challenge to do with words, it's a challenge to do with thinking visually and making visual connections and trying to be as honest as you can as you make those visual connections and as you go along, at least I find this, as you go along you find more visual things to consider and visual connections to make, which maybe at first was sort of invisible, were not noticed by me and I only notice details later on, I mean clearly when you look at a tree you can straight away notice the detail, but it takes a long time, a lot of looking, to see how all of the details that we see connect together to make something that we would call a tree, even though it's an unusual old looking tree, it's still a tree and we recognize it as such I hope, so it's this balance between the details of the tree and the overall instant visual look of the tree and it's lots of different balances, so that's one balance, another balance is between the negative shapes which are becoming more prominent in this drawing and the positive shapes of the branches and then there's the balance between the amount of texture that I'm willing to add to the drawing, that I wish to add to the drawing, and the amount of tonal variety that I wish to add to the drawing, so everything is important when drawing and it should be a process, hopefully best, it's best when it's a process of self-discovery, of discovering what interests you in the subject that you're drawing, as you draw it and then all of the visual things that you notice, trying to represent them so they connect together, because at least in my view drawing is all about connections and making visual connections, that's why it's so fascinating for me to make drawings, because I'm learning to make better and more interesting visual connections each time I make a drawing and then the drawing becomes a record of those visual connections that I was seeing as I was drawing, so I draw as well as I can, but it's just a record of the moment in time that I was in when I was drawing it, so it's a little bit like a diary, drawing is like a diary because it's in the moment, it's happening right now and once it's done it's over and you move on to something else, so it really is a record of observations, so these small branches, it takes a while sometimes for the pencil to find the edges, but I'm leaving little gaps, partly because I want to do the drawing fast, probably wanting to find faster ways to draw, but also some little gaps in the shading just give a slight, a wider range of tonal values, so with the branches, I start them quite thin, as they're going further away from the tree trunk, but you can always make them slightly thicker if need be, so again, like with tone, you want to make it slightly lighter than you want and then you can always make it darker, with the branches of the tree, make them slightly thinner than perhaps you want, because you can always make them thicker or just thicker in parts, again you look at the rest of the drawing to see how the part of the tree that you're drawing now relates to what you've already drawn and what you're going to draw next, so I think this tree is starting to get some balance on the left hand side and I've worked more on the left hand side, I've still got more to do, so on the right hand side, even when those branches are shaded in and even when I've added some texture to the branches on the right, I think I'll need to add a whole series of other branches to the tree, so it doesn't look quite so empty and the branches that I can do later on, I'm considering if they should be the same tonal values as the branches that I've already done, because in a way the branches that I'm drawing now, they're all sort of on a linear plane, they're all sort of same, similar distance away from me, the viewer, but there will be other branches which go away from us, the viewer, to the distance more, and as things go away to the distance, sometimes they have a lighter tone, and things nearby tend to have a higher contrast tonal range, more darks and more lights up close, and more mid-tones in the distance and lighter tones in distance, so thinking about that a little bit, I'm thinking about quite how many of these branches, as they fork and develop, how many branches I need to actually put in, because you can't, I wouldn't really want to put in all of the branches that I could see, trees have too many branches, so it's just a matter of trying to indicate all the branches, give an indication of the branches, give an indication of what a tree is, without actually having to put all of the branches in, this tree is in winter, so I won't do any leaves, but I don't think anybody really draws a tree and puts in every single leaf that they can see, every artist finds a style, finds a way to represent lots of leaves without putting them in, and it's exactly the same with branches, you need to find a way to represent lots of branches, but it doesn't mean you have to put every single branch in that tree has, but it would be nice to indicate what the tree looks like and indicate how many branches there are, because this tree is a dark tree against a light background, it is like a problem, because all the branches are very clear to see, because they're dark against a light background, and that sort of contrast between dark and light makes it very clear to see the individual branches, to see the individual branches and also at the moment I haven't really allowed many of the branches to overlap, they tend to be side by side, so I'll add some more branches now, I've sharpened the pencil so it's a bit thinner at this stage as well, because I want to control the lines, if you find your hand sort of smudges the drawing at this stage, you could just get a second piece of paper and put it underneath your hand, as you draw and that would stop any smudging, and then you just move the piece of paper under your hand, as you move your hand, so you sort of pick up the paper and move it to another position, and in that way you won't smudge your drawing, so I think those branches work okay, but I need to do more, often when you add things to empty spaces, the first few branches or the first few details can seem to not work so well, but I found that oftentimes rather than trying to erase or change them, you can often just get away with adding more, so more branches I think will make the right hand side of this drawing work better, and then having branches which overlap and go behind each other, will give it a more dynamic feel to it as well, so again with branches they're always forking out, so they've got a sort of v-shape in them, so whenever you want a branch to fork out, you just draw a v-shape, and then one branch becomes two, and then you can repeat that, again and again, sometimes with drawing it's too tempting to make it sort of visually in balance, particularly with things in nature, they're so complex and we see, we look for balance in shapes, I just think that's, perhaps it's me, but it's just when we look at things, we're trying to see things that have some sort of balance and unity to them, but they also, it's not a chaotic shape, but it's a very organic shape, so there are lots of things which in a way don't make sense, but they're true to what a tree is, so just if you're drawing from a tree that you see in front of you, or drawing from this tree, just think about how you can make the tree feel like a tree, like you're trying to capture the essence of what a tree is, and in any image that you're working from, there's probably too much information, so a lot of drawing is about editing what you see, so you're not drawing everything, you're trying to draw an edited version, because visual things are just too complicated to draw everything, and indeed visual objects, trees, this is an enormous tree, which is three-dimensional, but I'm making it into a flat line drawing with tone, tonal values, on an A4 piece of paper, so I'm changing it drastically, so just jumping through some of the shading for the branches and getting on to the slightly smaller branches at this stage, and sometimes with these branches, depending on how your drawing is going, you can just draw the branches over the top of other ones, and they just won't sort of show up and in that way you can make the thinner branches seem more accurate, because they don't sort of stop and start, they just go through the branches, as long as it doesn't make it too obvious, sometimes the bigger branches just stop and then start on the other side, so it looks like it's going behind, but if it's a light tone against a dark branch, you can probably just whiz across and it will still work, so at this stage we're starting to put in lots of like lattice work of smaller branches, it's tempting perhaps to get a little bit too fast at this stage, so the branches don't always need to join up, they're just an indication, and sometimes you want to just make sure that you're not repeating the same shape again and again, or the same thickness of branch again and again, try and make it so the branches change their thickness and change their shape, when you're ready you could perhaps draw a horizon line behind the tree trunk and higher than the base of the tree, because the horizon is going to be far away from the actual tree, the tree is quite near us and so the horizon can be really far away, so just you'd be slightly higher than the base of the tree and then some shadows for the branches that almost touch the ground, they would create a sort of cast shadow underneath them and then just using the side of the pencil we could finish this drawing off, by giving some indication of some ground on which the tree is and maybe some small indications of textural marks as well, if you found this drawing useful for your own drawings, I hope you consider visiting my website www.circlelineartschool.com where you'll find full details of my online drawing courses for beginners, once you join a course then you'll be able to post me your drawings and I can help you individually, I really like to see your drawings and I've helped thousands of students now with their drawings and if you'd like to join too, you'll find all the information at www.circlelineartschool.com Thanks for watching, I hope you found this drawing useful for your own drawings, please subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay up to date with all the content that I make, if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and leave a comment, I read all the comments and it's very useful if you were to suggest any drawings that you'd like to see in the future, again thanks for watching and see you next time!