Pine Trees Guide - Christmas Edition - Ran Art Blog

After seeing so many creative and talented people on WOX, in the tree-drawing contest, I decided to dedicate this guide to pine trees, since Christmas is almost here.

Pen

Leaves are in different direction, different amount of foreshortening, and they overlap each other.
Therefore, they are quite messy.

To draw leaves, try to be abstract with your marks, without any pattern.

In addition, pay attention to brightness values.
If the value looks the same for the whole tree, it will look flat.

For your first try, just scribble something fast.
Decide on a light source, and draw the other side and the bottom darker.

For your second try, work a bit on transitions in values.

When drawing the outline for the tree, do it very gentle, without a bold line.
Even though pen produces lines, there are no lines in nature, so we want to avoid a contour line.

Pine trees have small, needle-like, leaves.
But, some have larger leaves, so practice both small, and big leaves.

Here is an example with bigger leaves.

For a snowy tree, you can either leave some areas without marks, or go over them with a white pen (here I used a light gray marker).

You can use a white pen for the whole tree, but then you need a dark paper.

The tree can be part of the landscape.

And, you can paint it with markers (markers work well with pens).

Pencil

Drawing with a pencil is almost the same process.

With pens, you scribble more lines for darker values, and fewer lines for lighter values.
With a pencil, you can create different brightness values by changing the amount of pressure you use, the grade of the pencil, and the amount of repetitions in that area.

It is good to start with the structure and then draw from top to bottom, so you do not smudge what you have already drawn.

It can be a part of the landscape.

Additionally, you can use pine trees when you draw in perspective.

You can draw with mixed media. In this example, I drew the pine tree with a pen, and the Polaroid with a pencil.

You can draw a snowy pine tree with a pencil too.

Christmas pine tree

For a Christmas tree, with decorations, I suggest to practice drawing the decorations first.

Boxes (of all types) require some knowledge in perspective drawing.

Lastly, you can draw a Christmas tree, which is a pine tree with decorations.

I invite you all to draw a pine tree (or trees), in ANY medium, and you are welcome to post it here.

I will be more than happy to give you feedback, and if needed, suggestions to improve.
Once again, here is my tree drawing guide, in case you want to read it again.

Ran

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