How to draw Trees part one Pine Trees

Hello everyone, Michelle here from the Creative Cove. Thanks for joining me today. Today I thought we would do trees. So I put it out there that I'd like to do a series on trees, kind of random uploads of different trees. Today we're going to work with pine. They are one of my favorites to draw. I really love their shapes and their overall form. So then there's so, of course, many pine trees in the world to choose from. I think every continent has its own version of a pine tree or a fir tree or a spruce tree, the kind of deciduous, no coniferous trees is what we're going to focus on. So we'll do a couple of those today. And then we'll play with other trees throughout the series. I have had some requests on what kind of trees we should be drawing. And there are some seriously fantastic trees out there. I'm blown away by the kind of trees that people are suggesting to draw. I've never heard of. And it's really a lot of fun to see what kind of trees are out there in the world. And I think it'd be fun to draw those together. So today, though, we're going to do some fir trees, pine trees, spruce trees. So I've been practicing a little bit here. Got some other ones here. Some junipers, some hemlock, Japanese pine. So I thought it'd be kind of fun just to doodle a few with you, trying to give you the idea of how to capture the form of these trees. So today, I realized I don't have tons of drawing paper left. So I found these little white little file folder markers, I guess they are. And I got them from the thrift shop. So we'll use these. That's me. I was trying to find things to draw on without paying big bucks. So let's try one of my favorite trees is a western pine. They get really, really massive out on the west coast of the Americas, like all along the coast of Canada and the US. And they're just, I really love them because they're, they get big naturally, but they're very, they've got some unique forms. So when you go to draw a tree, you want to look at the overall shape of the tree. Let me get those drawings back here real quick. So it's not just about the details in here, it's about the full shape of the tree. And you can have some, a lot of fun with trees, because you can give them characters. We have a western, sorry, an eastern white pine here, this guy. And these probably my favorite to draw and paint because every time you drive in the car, you see them because they're quite tall. They're very spindly looking, but they get beaten up very easily. They're very sensitive trees. So if a tree goes close to it, it will die back. The wind blows on it for too long. There'll be sections missing, missing in it. And sometimes the length of the top branches are longer than the ones on the bottom. So it creates a really fun, fun form to draw. So we do want to concentrate on the overall shape of the tree. So we'll start with something easy, like a red fir. So when you're drawing a tree, you want to start with the center of the tree, which is the trunk. So I just give myself a line and we're just doing a silhouette. So we're capturing the form of the tree and implying the details in the tree. We're not going to draw every tiny little pine needle. We don't have time for that. And we're looking at a silhouette. So it's going to be black, basically, is how we're going to build this. So I'll show you really quick here. When you're drawing a tree, when you're drawing a tree, you want to, in this red fir type tree, you want to concentrate on that Christmas tree shape. So you want to start off small and have your branches bigger at the bottom. So a lot of people, what I find they do when I teach them to draw and paint is they do what I call the kind of mustache effect where they just they do this and then they do this and they just work their way down. Or they do the ladder effect where they're basically just going straight across. And though it is got a tree feel to it, it's not very realistic. And then what I find too is some people, they start really big up here, which means by the time you get down here, your branches are going to be this big. So you want to always start out thin and you can always go thicker as you go down. And as we get into other trees like coniferous trees, we're going to talk about weight of branches and the weight of the line that's used for that. But for this, it's really just the weight of the trunk. So as the tree gets taller, it gets thinner because it's new growth up here and old growth down here. So the tree branches will get heavier and thicker down here. And I'm going to show you that now. So something to bear in mind when you're drawing is visually in your head, remember that Christmas tree shape. Okay, so let's start here. I'm going to turn you down. That's pretty good. So all I do is I just gently scribble my way out. Now these red fir trees are quite thick and dense in branches. So there's not going to be a lot of trunk showing through. And I just play and feel my way down. And I just draw little lines, scribble a little. I don't want to, what I don't want to do, and I'll do it right here, is repeat the pattern. So you see, I have two sections almost exactly the same. Well, it doesn't look so natural. So you want to break that pattern by adding something in it. So now I've broken that pattern. And then I just keep working my way out, just scribbling away. And these types of fir trees are very soft. Their pine needles are very soft and are really pretty green. And they grow up. They grow up like this, their little branches, until they get too heavy. And they've got a smiley face. And at the bottom of the tree, they have more of a little bit of a frowny face. So here I am. I'm going to draw another one in a pattern. Let's do a little in a pattern so you can see how strange it looks or how unnatural it looks. And it's natural to want to draw in a pattern. You're just going to repeat what's in your head or what you're thinking about. So I'm drawing this tree out of my head. I don't have the reference in front of me. So you can see how unnatural it looks, how rigid it looks when you repeat the pattern. So now you want to go back in and break the pattern. So you're going to make a separate cluster in here, maybe thicken this one up, maybe bring a branch out this side, thicken this guy up. Now this is still a pattern, so we want to break that. And now it's starting to feel a little bit more realistic. I'm still bearing in mind that Christmas tree shape. So if I make this really wide, I'm going to be really wide down here. And these trees don't get super wide. I mean, they get old and big, but they don't get crazy wide. All right. So I'm going to thicken up in here. Again, I'm just scribbling. Oh, by the way, I'm using my Uniball. I'll try and remember to link it. It's a Vision Uniball and it's an archival ink. So you can add water or paint or whatever on top and it won't smudge. So I will try. My problem is I don't upload these right away, these videos, and I can't remember what I promised, what I said I was going to do. So but I'm pretty sure I've linked the pen in other videos and you can get it off Amazon and they're great. OK, so now my tree is getting a little older down the bottom. So this is new growth. This is old growth. So it's been a little weathered, a little heavier, a little beaten up. So we're going to thicken the branches. So we're nice and thin up here. And now we've got some old growth that's been sitting around for a while on these trees. And we're going to start thickening them up. And of course, the heavier they are, the more they weigh on the ends and it will start folding the branch a little further down than flaring up like this. It's going to flare down a little. So I'm just going to put a few spindly ones at the bottom. So I don't want to spend all day on every tree. I want to try and get as many trees drawn as we can. I'm so excited about drawing other trees from other countries. There has been some amazing suggestions on trees I had to Google. I've never heard before. A lot of fantastic trees in Australia. Wow. Every time somebody mentions something from Australia, I have to Google it. I've never heard of it. So we're going to pull the trunk down here. It flares out a little at the bottom. And that is our red fir. So there's a fir tree. And there's all kinds of different ones. Douglas fir is probably one you've heard of. They also grow massive out west. Beautiful trees. And they have a lot of character as well. So if you want, we can draw. Let's do an eastern white pine first. Maybe we'll do another fir underneath. Okay, so the eastern white pine, one of my favorites, which grows all over my house. I'm going to start with the trunk. And you know what, let's give it a little character to this tree. So it's been bent. It's been beaten by wind over the years. So we'll, we'll give it some character here. So I like to build a big cluster of new growth at the top. And again, we're going to capture the overall form. So these ones are different. They are not a Christmas tree shape. They're almost a rectangle shape. So we want to bear the overall form of the tree in mind when we're doodling. And I like to just scribble branches. The same rules apply though, you don't want a pattern. You don't want a repeat of the ladder or mustache effect, I call it. And what I like to do is bulk up on the one side. Sorry, is my camera shaking? Trying to get a new camera holder, a phone holder, but I haven't got one yet. So I'm going to just bulk up these little branches. Now this one also grows uphill like a smiley face. And it does pretty much all the way down. It's got these really fun limbs that can be completely empty of pine needles and then have a big bush of pine needles at the end. And that's why I love these trees. I call them fingers, these little arms that come out. I like to call them little fingers. And when you're driving around in Ontario, and I live in the Muskoka's, so when you're driving around up there, you'll be surrounded by these trees and every single one of them is different. They're like fingerprints, none of them are the same. And they make such a beautiful looking part of a beautiful addition to the landscape. That's what I was trying to say. So here's one that's growing right at me. This one's coming right towards me, this branch. And this is another really important thing to do when you're drawing trees, is remember that the trees are growing around, they're three-dimensional, they're not a single dimension. So you want to make sure that you capture that as well. So for example, I'm going to put the trunk in here and then maybe I'll do a branch way down here that's growing the opposite direction of me looking at it. So the trunk will interrupt that. We'll see the trunk before we see the branch. So I'll leave the trunk and give it some flair here. And again, these fingers go up, dainty little fingers. Maybe a significant big branch on this side and I just scribble it in. So I just feel my way, that's the whole point of these sketches. My quickie sketches are all about quickly grabbing form and working on technique and little tricks and tips like this that give you more dimension in your drawings. Okay, so one in front can't see the trunk, one behind can see the trunk. So now I can do maybe a little branch coming off here, a couple of pieces on there. So again, we're not drawing every single pine needle. We do a close-up and that could be something we could explore too, is doing kind of like a field study of trees, that would be fun, where you draw their bark, their pines, their roots, their seeds, all that stuff could be really fun, especially after seeing some of these trees from Australia. The seeds alone are really interesting and some ancient trees that have been suggested. So I can't wait to get into that. We will be covering, I hope to get to as many suggestions as possible. Let me put this guy in front now. I won't be able to do them all of course, you guys will be sick of me and trees by then, but I would like to cover quite a few. So I'm looking at my overall form here and I'm finding these are almost perfectly even, which I'm not loving. So I think what I'll do is break it, the pattern, and maybe add, make this a solid chunk and pull it out a little bit further. Really bulk up the top of my tree just to break that even pattern that was happening. And that's the beauty of sketching. You just go back and make any kind of adjustment you might want. Bring this guy out a little further. And again, this is a tree from my head, so is it accurate? Probably not exactly, but again, you can see that it's a, it's a white pine, an eastern white pine. I hope anyways, you can see that it's an eastern white pine. All right, let's scribble this guy in here. Keep working my way down. I'm going to put this guy behind as well and make him a little shorter on this side. A little bit bigger over here. The wind's beating up this side. And what's really fun about these trees is there's so many characters in their branches. They're dead branches. So they have a lot of broken branches that break off towards the back end. So you have these fun little sticks that come out. Just adds more charm, I think. So they've been broken by the wind and age. So we'll do a few more. Let's do, let's do a branch coming from the trunk here. So we've got a branch coming towards us under the, and then a fun tuft of pine needles. We have quite a variety of deciduous trees here. I keep saying deciduous, coniferous trees here. We have a lot of deciduous as well, but coniferous trees where I am further up north, you can see them all year round. They go through a little kind of molting phase where they'll turn a bit yellow and drop a whack load of pine needles. But we have green, this kind of green all year, which is really nice. And when the snow sits on them, oh so pretty. Okay, so I think we'll, we'll bring the tree down now towards the bottom. And so you put a kink in it, kind of gives it a little something, a little something, something. And towards the end, towards the bottom, I find they get pretty beaten up. So the energy is going in the top of the tree and new growth. And the bottom of the tree just kind of breaks away and with the elements over time. I mean, these are pretty old when they're big. And I mean old. So out in BC, on the island, Vancouver Island, I visit my dad now. And there's a place, I can't think of the name of it right now. I can't think of things and concentrate on drawing at the same time apparently. But there's a place on the island not far from Courtney. It's a really beautiful ancient trees there that are really, really old. One of them is before Christopher Columbus arrived. That's how old the tree is. And I'll try and remember what it's called and link it. Because if you're on, if you're in Vancouver Island, and you're looking for something to see, you have to stop at this place. And it's just, it's free. Just park alongside the highway and get to see these. You walk through a park of ancient trees. And some of them are pines. Some of them, most of them are Douglas firs and some ginormous cedars. I guess they're red cedars, it would be my guess. But absolutely stunning. And you're just blown away by the size of these trees. And they're protected. Thank goodness. Thank goodness for that. So there we go. So now you can look at the overall form and say, do I want to add something? Do I want to change a pattern? Say, I think maybe I will pull this guy out a little further. Just to bulk up the top a little. Maybe fill it in a little bit more. Just to change the overall form. And there's our eastern, white, pine. Fun, right? That's another tree. So have fun drawing that one. So let's do, what else should we do? Let's do a spruce tree. So maybe a Colorado spruce. We have those here. They're beautiful blue trees, kind of like a blue gray tree, very cold green compared to these greens, which are very warm green. But they have a cute little shape to them as well. They are also like a Christmas tree shape. So you want to bear, again, the overall form of the tree when you're sketching. And they're very, very dense. So they're very thick. And we used to have one on our front lawn when I was a kid. And I used to try and climb it. Was not very successful. Because the pine needles are very sharp. They hurt. And they're very thick. Like I said, the tree is extremely dense. If it's a healthy tree, it gets a little spindly at the bottom. If it's, you know, if it's got other things growing around it, and it touches it, it can be pretty sensitive and die off. But otherwise they get their beautiful addition to any landscape. So in this case, we're scribbling in where there's very little negative space in between. So very little openings, a lot of openings here, very little openings in here. And it grows up like a happy face as well. And by happy face, I mean, the branches curve up until they get real heavy, and then they'll start to curve down. Gravity, like everything, pulls it down. So in this case, you rarely see the trunk because the growth is so dense. And you can see already just by the way you're scribbling how different forms you can capture by using just this technique of scribbling away and bearing in mind the shape and the form of the tree itself. So it's always good to have a reference in front of you. I don't have a reference in front of me, but I've been around this tree quite some time, and I'm familiar with it. So it's a beautiful blue-green, a very cool color green. It's almost got a gray tinge to it in some ways. So it's a really beautiful addition to a garden. So I think the branches are going to get a little heavier. So I'm going to start with my frowny face here and kind of feel my way up so that I don't have too many gaps. So I think it'd be kind of fun to do maybe a field journal on some trees because there's some trees in my garden. I'm not sure what they are because we just moved here and I really haven't had time to study them, but there are some I'd like to know the names of. Alright, so there we go. That's that one. Give it a nice solid trunk. And these I find grow right to the bottom. Right down to the bottom. So I probably drew the trunk a little too long on that one. They skirt the grass. So I'm just going to fill that out. Okay, and this is a Colorado blue spruce. Okay, so one more maybe. So we did, I wanted to do a western pine. What else do I have in my repertoire here? Well, there's a juniper. Should we do a juniper? Let's do a mountain hemlock actually. That's a really fun tree. I don't know if we have them here. I know they're out west, but we probably have them here, maybe a little further south, but they've got these kind of wispy tops. They're almost something you would see in a cartoon. They have this kind of fall over top because it's so delicate and you just want to slowly build up. Sorry, they go this way actually, they go downhill. I'll show you in just a second. So they're all frowny faces in a Christmas tree, my technical drawing terms. So it's just kind of like sad faces all the way down. And again, you don't want a pattern. Make sure that you break any patterns, but you do want to have that Christmas tree shape going. And you just slowly build it up. So the wider you go at the top, the wider your tree is going to be at the bottom. And I just fill in a couple of darker spots with the ones that might be growing towards me. So I fill it in a little bit. I just love this kind of Dr. Seuss looking type top. It's just so thin and light. That's probably exaggerated. It probably doesn't bend quite that much, but it does have that kind of flop over droopy, almost like a sad looking feel to it. I thought it was kind of a fun tree to draw and a little different. So again, these sad frowny faces. A little denser in the middle. But you see my pen just never stops moving. It's just a scribble mode. Kind of scribble it down. And then once you've got your branches established, which I think that works, then you fill out the trunk at the bottom. And the width of the trunk will determine the weight of the tree. So if I go really fat on my trunk here, I got to draw a taller tree. So that's why I do the trunk at the end. In case I do go too wide up here, I know what weight to make my trunk. So should we do one more maybe? What else should we do? There's the Japanese. I have a drawing here. We'll do one of these. There's the jack pine, which is really pretty. I think we've covered that one. Let's do the western pine because he's a beauty and they get massive out west. And they're kind of a different shape because they grow in these little tufts. Looks kind of like a tuft of branches as opposed to limbs. It's kind of hard to explain but I'm going to draw a line for my trunk. And I'm just going to kind of draw these balls. So kind of like these powder puffs. Again with my technical terms. And I'm just going to feel my way out. So it has almost a Christmas tree feel but I would call it more of a thin rectangle. It doesn't have these exaggerated branches like the eastern white pine here. It has a very short, tight branches. But they're very dense with greenery. And so I'm just going to draw little tufts to start to try and build up the overall form and composition of my tree. Reverting back to my trunk. And there's space in between. So now I'm going to start filling these out. And basically I'm just scribbling it in. It doesn't even look like pine needles. It's just an implied texture. And I'm just going to scribble these in and fill out the little bubbles that I built. So they have these branches that come out in massive clusters of pine needles. Very dense on the ends. So this one is this branch here is growing towards me. So this gets filled right out across the trunk. And I break the original round line because we don't want to see that. So the color outside my lines. Get rid of that initial. So this for example, I don't want to see that. So I'll scribble over it. And just keep playing away. I don't know how long I've been. I've got to set a timer for my videos. I don't know if we'd have time to do another one or not. I wanted to show you a juniper. I love junipers. I'm a gin drinker so I definitely love junipers. So now I can come back and play with it a little bit. So do I want to bulk it up? Do I want to extend this one down a little exaggerated a bit? I keep building my form. So I'm gonna put my trunk in here because I think I want this guy to be behind. I can draw a segment of the tree. I don't have to draw the full trunk yet while I'm deciding what I want where. Go outside that line, break it up, and nice and loose just scribble away. Maybe a branch going across in front and do the bubble here. And then every now and then stop and have a look and see if you've got a pattern going and break that pattern. You're going to find you either love drawing trees or don't like drawing trees. I don't like drawing deciduous trees. I like drawing these kind of coniferous trees. So deciduous trees I struggle with drawing because there's so many detail and you have to be able to simplify it to capture its form because there's so many branches and so many leaves going in so many different directions that it can be a little overwhelming to draw. But we'll do it together. I'll figure it out a way that I can do it and teach it at the same time. So I didn't like the shape of that so I'm adding a little bit more into it. I'm just going to scribble these little it's a little too perfect for me. Scribble away until you get something you like. All right so you can see they're much tighter big bulky clusters of pine needles. And I'll come back and kind of fix up maybe what I don't like. Put my trunk in. Okay all right and then do a couple more branches. These also will have some dead guys coming off. So just scribble some lines coming out and some big nice guy down here. And then let's do another branch from behind. A nice big cluster of pine needles. So when you're drawing you always want to concentrate on the overall form of what it is you're trying to capture. So if you have a reference in front of you it's much easier. All right and for this one for this one and this one I was using my reference for my drawings that I showed you earlier. And it does help especially if you're not familiar with the tree. But how cute would these be in a journal? I think they'd be really cute anyways. And just do another dead branch coming off here. Maybe one going up this way. Now this looks like a little bit of a zigzag to me so I'm going to break that shape. I'm going to pull this out the side. Pull this in maybe. That was just a little too much. So I'm going to carry this guy down because I have a big massive cluster on this side that looks a little weird. Let's just play with it until we get a form we like. Sometimes you can overdo it and that's okay. These are just quickie sketches. It's all about learning and sorting things out on learning mistakes and learning from your mistakes I mean. So this got a little bit too exaggerated. I wouldn't have carried it out that far. But that's okay. Now you can see what not to do. So yeah I would have probably put this negative space back in right in here and whited this back out. But that's okay. It's all right. It's all good. Okay so there you go. This one I'd probably bulk up my just because the weight of these branches would be so incredibly heavy that I think this guy needs a little bit more of a foundation to stand on. So there we go. A western pine. Okay do we have time for one more? Maybe we could do, jeez I don't know how long it's been. I'm going to quickly do a juniper, a common juniper, because we have them everywhere here. And I also had one of these when I was a kid in my yard. And these have a rectangle shape, almost a pyramid shape really, and they grow uphill. So they grow straight up like this. So they are quite easy to draw in the sense of capturing their form. But they are such a pretty tree. They're also here, they're a very, the common juniper have quite a blue tinge to them, kind of like the spruce tree. And they are common. They're in everybody's garden because they have, you can trim them and shape them. They're really quite beautiful dense trees with little blueberries, gray, gray blue. And they grow up from a trunk. I'm rushing this one because I don't want to take too much of your time. And they grow up from a trunk like this and then just flare up. So another fun little evergreen type tree. Coniferous tree. No. Yes, coniferous. I can't remember. I remember learning that in school and I still can't remember. Coniferous and deciduous. There we go. So that's a juniper. Pretty, pretty simple. You can do little clusters that maybe the branches are getting older and moving away from the tree a little bit. Just to give it a little bit of interest. Maybe one up here. Snow's gotten in it and pulled it out. They are sensitive to the weight of snow. There we go. So a common juniper. Okay. Well, we covered quite a few. So I hope you like that. I hope it gives you some ideas. I hope you practice with it. Have fun with it. Just take your time and study different kinds of trees around you. Again, this is just pine. This is basically deciduous trees today. We'll do some coniferous trees. We didn't even touch hemlocks and things like that. So there are many, many other variations of trees. But hopefully you like this series and draw along with me. And we'll see you again soon. Take care, everyone. Bye.