Sketching Trees

Trees have always been difficult subjects for me to sketch or draw. Most of the time my trees have turned out looking very unnatural. So when I came across a page in my book that was completely dedicated to trees, I was excited to see what kinds of tips or methods there were to successfully sketch a tree.

Crawshaw provides three main rules for sketching a tree:

1. Don't draw a curve for the bottom of the tree trunk, as you hardly ever see this in nature (58).

2. Practice by drawing trunks with ellipses (58). Since most tree trunks are round, this will make the tree look more realistic.

3. "Because the trunk is round, draw shadows going around the tree--not straight across, or it will look flat" (58).

I could already tell these rules would be helpful; whenever I drew a tree before, I'd curve the bottom of the trunk. Now I know that method is incorrect.

It was time to try out some of Alwyn's suggestions. First I practiced drawing the trunk with ellipses, and then I tried drawing the shadow around the trunk.

I also tried drawing a complete tree, using the picture in the book as a reference. Crawshaw reminds us that, "Unless you are working with distant trees, always start at the bottom of the tree and draw upward" (58).

I am pretty proud of the tree I drew. I think it is a lot more realistic compared to my previous tree drawings. The tips that I read in my book have really helped me draw trees realistically, so that the shape of the tree is natural and the shading creates good dimension.

As I was drawing, I realized that drawing the branches bent in odd places actually made the sketch look more like a tree. This is because no tree has perfectly shaped branches. I will still keep working on my trees, and maybe move on to different species of trees or try trees with leaves.


I am wondering if there are any other shading techniques out there to add dimension to objects?

Citation:

Crawshaw, Alwyn. Sketching. New York: Collins, 2008. Print.