How to Draw Realistic Trees with Ink Pens: Observation, Shading, and Shape

1. Introduction : No matter how long have you been creating art, chances are you've drawn a tree, and maybe it's looked a little bit like this. The thing is, in real life, trees look a little bit more like this. They're weird, natural organisms that grow in strange and unexpected ways and drawing them it's a really fun. The thing is trees can be really intimidating to draw with a permanent medium like ink, however, this class is all about taking away that intimidation and giving you the skills you need to draw realistic trees with ink, without the fear of making mistakes or messing up. Along the way, you'll learn the fundamentals of shading, depth, texture, and what to look for when you're observing trees in the wild. I'm Sam Gillett. I'm an illustrator and art educator from Ontario, Canada. The thing that pops up over and over in my drawings are trees. I find them so fascinating and endlessly challenging to draw, trying to capture the beauty and individual aspects of different trees. It's such a cool challenge. By the end of this class, you'll have two completed pen illustrations, but hopefully a lot more confidence as well to draw trees from your imagination or from photos, or in the real-world at your local park or in your backyard. In this class, we'll start off by going out and observing a tree around you. Sketching out a tree without any expectations and no pressure at all. Coming back into the studio, we'll talk a little bit more about some pen techniques before switching to pencil to sketch out a skeleton of a tree and then an outline. Finally, we'll go over creating two completed pen drawings. One of a tree without leaves and one of a tree with a huge bushy canopy. This class is perfect for beginners, those who have just started in drawing an ink, or from more experienced artists who want a grounding in terms of how to draw realistic and immersive trees. The skills you pick up in this class by drawing these two trees, will really help you, no matter what style of foliage or tree you draw in the future, or even if you switch into different mediums and styles as well. The fundamentals of creating a three-dimensional and immersive organism, like a tree, are really transferable across mediums. I hope you'll join me. I hope you'll dive into drawing trees with me, so I'll see you in class. 2. Project Video : Let's talk about the project that you're going to make in this class and the supplies that you'll need before you begin. Throughout this class, you're going to be creating a finished drawing of a tree. You might have guessed that by the description and the title of this class. But the entire class is going to be building towards a final tree drawing. But we're going to draw it in two ways. By the end of this class, you'll have two drawings of one tree, one with leaves on it, one without leaves. That way you'll get a sense of how to draw foliage and leaves from afar in pen, as well as how to draw branches. Besides those two drawings, you'll also have a few chances to put your skills to the test as we work up to those final drawings, you'll start by creating a sheet of pen techniques and there are three or four really crucial pen drawing techniques that I'll go over that will help you in this class and beyond. We'll also be creating an observational pen drawing. You'll go out outside your front door, into local park and sketch a tree, observing shadows, sunlight, and the shape of the tree is such an integral part of creating fantastic pen drawings yourself. With all these drawings, you're going to need a few supplies. It'd be great if you have at least three or four sheets of paper without lines on them, they can be as thick or thin as you want. I use a thicker or Bristol paper for this class in Edenic sketchbook. But really whatever paper you have on hand will be great. For some recommendations, check out the class description. You'll need some pens for this class as well. I use Micron Fineliners because I really like the way that they lay down ink on the page steadily and predictably. As well, they come in various sizes, which is going to be especially useful in the rest of this class. Now, I'll go over pens in a little bit more detail later on, but for now, you can check the class description for some recommendations. However, if you don't have access to Fineliners, don't let that stop you from continuing in this class. You can do it all with a ballpoint pen if you have to. The techniques that I talk about are transferable no matter what you're using to draw. One more thing, you're going to need some pencils because I love using pencil as a way to gain confidence in my drawings before I begin. With all the projects stuff and supply stuff aside, let's dive further into the main concepts of this class. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Choosing Pens : Fine liner pens come in a variety of thicknesses, and the number is usually printed right on the outside. That refers to the thickness of the nib. It goes from 003 all the way up to 10 and 12. Basically the higher up the number, the thicker the pen is going to be. That thickness is really valuable metric for artists because that tells us where to use the pen on our drawing. While this doesn't really depend on your style, there are some general rules that are helpful to follow and things that might be useful for you to know as you decide which pen to use in which part of your drawing when we go further into this class. A 005 pen, for instance, is really great for light areas of detail or things that are really far away from us. That's because it lays a really thin line down on the page, so you can draw things in with pen without making them unduly dark. For instance, this background was drawn with a 005 pen, and since it's drawn so lightly, it doesn't really take away emphasis from the objects in the foreground, which are a little bit darker and drawn with darker and thicker pens. For us when we're drawing trees, a 05 is going to be great when we're really drawing dark areas of shading or emphasizing the contours of bark for instance. I usually suggest having two pens on hand. A really thin one and a thicker one. They compliment each other and are useful for different parts of the drawing. 4. Pen Techniques : Before we start actually drawing trees and thinking about trees, we're going to become very obsessed with trees in this class. First, we need to get a groundwork of how to draw with pen. This isn't a masterclass about pen drawing, but this is a lesson that will equip you with three or four different skills that'll be really helpful as we do this class. First, what I want you to do is divide your page up into three sections here. These lines don't have to be straight, they don't have to be that intentional and these are just going to allow us to different areas of the page to practice different techniques. Now the first technique, you've already practiced, if you drew these lines and that's being intentional and observing what is the most comfortable position with which to grip your pen. Often beginner artists might grip far up on their pen like this and grip it really tightly so that when it's going across the page, you're creating really thick and slow lines. That might work for some people, but I find it makes me anxious about the drawing. It also hurts my hand after a while. So I just grab the pen, pick it up from the paper, and see how you end up holding it naturally. For me, that often means gripping a little bit of the way up in the pen and hold it really lightly and loosely as I draw across the page. The other aspect of this is adjusting how you move your hand when you're drawing. I find if I keep my palm in the same place and just move my fingers and rotate as I'm drawing up the page, it makes for less confident lines and it also does not feel super comfortable. Instead, if I'm drawing a longer straight line, I'll move my entire hand up the page with me as I go. Now, I'm not talking about drawing super straight lines here because we're drawing natural and organic shapes. The most important thing is to be comfortable and to draw in a relaxed way. We don't really care about straight lines, and in fact, these little variations of lines are what make an effective drawing. Now, in this top section, just draw a few straight lines. Figure out what way of holding the pen feels natural and normal and then try drawing by moving your hand across the page and moving your whole hand in a fluid motion as you draw lines up the page. Next, we're going to talk about some shading techniques. Now in pen drawing, there's a few common ways of shading. Because you may have guessed that if I shade like this, not very good for variation on the drawing. First let's talk about hatching. In order to do that, let's draw a square, and I'm going to hatch the square. That means these really light, thin, close together lines. Towards the middle of this square, they're getting further apart. You can go over this multiple times, but try drawing a square yourself and try hatching in the square. Again, those are really short lines up and down across the page. By drawing them in a square, it also forces your hand to become used to the parameters of the space you're shading. This is really great practice and a technique we'll use often in the drawing to create fluid and more borderless areas of shading. Next, let's draw another square. We're going to talk about crosshatching. Now using the same method we used there, we're going to draw straight lines across the page. You'll notice, since I'm drawing faster, these lines appear lighter and more sketchy. Now, cross hatching is when you draw lines perpendicular or in another direction over top of that first layer of hatching. It's a great way of adding three-dimensionality to a shape and making it appear rounded. In this case, I'm moving my hand around the object and then drawing some light lines the other way. You notice the hatching lines over top make it appear that this section is darker. If I draw on a sphere, you can use this method to really create a three-dimensional, rounded look. I am hatching over top here, mirroring the curve of the sphere. One thing I talked about here, that you'll see as you go deeper into this class, is that the speed of your line often dictates how dark it is. I'm drawing with a 01 pen, but you'll see how these lines appear much lighter than these ones up here. That's because they were drawn quicker. If I draw a line quick like that and slow, it changes the density of the line. This applies even if you're using a ballpoint pen, for instance. Lastly, let's talk about a concept I like to call darting out or laying out your drawing. Pen is a permanent medium and that can be a little bit intimidating for a lot of artists. But the way to get around that permanency is by layering up your drawing over time, almost drafting it out. For tricky shapes like trees, this is going to be especially useful. What I mean by that is, I'll create really light dotted out lines following the line that I want to draw. You'll see here that this is creating the outline of a shape but it doesn't really give the full dimension of the shape as of yet. It's a branch. That means when I go back over these lines, I can visualize how the shape might look. That helps my muscle memory as well as the actual pen technique creating a nice firm outline the way that I envisioned it in my mind. If I try to draw that shape without an outline, often my hand can go off course and it might be harder to actually create the shape. Why don't you try this now on your piece of paper as well? With any sort of shape, try dotting out the line first and then drawing over top of it. This works for me, but it might not work for you. Check it out and let me know in the class description, in class comments, if this worked for you and if you find it easier to draw a finalized shape using this dotted out method. I wanted to talk about one more really important element of drawing with pen that I want you to practice. Let me grab another sheet of paper or a scrap. Maybe turn that page over and let's practice flowing lyrical shapes. When you're drawing trees, we're only going to be using organic shapes. What I mean by that is shapes without a ruler that are flowing. Just like these lines down here, it'll be great practice for you to practice creating a flowing curve that we'll use when we draw the branches. Because branches flow and curve upwards towards the sun as we talked about earlier. Let's practice that now. On that new piece of paper, we're going to put the pen down and then create a nice flowing line. I'm starting at one point and I'm almost leaning backwards and up. Let's try it one more time here. So you're placing the pen down, bringing it up, curving out to the right, and then bringing it up to the top. Now let's try the same shape quicker. You'll see how quicker, it almost looks like a piece of hair. Now, the actual curve is not as important as getting that taper, and by taper, I mean from thin to thick. It's easier to do it when you go quicker. This shape is so fundamental in how we're going to create the branches. From one of these fast lines, you're going to be able to branch off into thinner and thinner branches. Here's what I mean. We have one branching shape that tapers off like that and then another one that tapers off like that and another one that tapers off like that. Now, the tree we're going to draw is more methodical, but you can see how I'm using the same shape to create lines and branches as we go further up the tree. This is especially important when you are drawing really, really thin branches at the end of the tree or the very outer edge. Those are some key techniques that I think are going to be really helpful as we go deeper into this class. Keep those sheets with you and you can refer back to those shapes or practice them. I find it really helpful to practice during work meetings, or whenever I have spare time just mindlessly doodle, and then you're not mindlessly doodling, you're actually improving your art at the same time. 5. Observation: Part I : We all think we know what a tree looks like. You know, in my mind, when you say tree, I think of a nice bushy tree stemming off of a nice solid thick trunk like an oak tree in front of the picket fence house. The thing is, that's not what a tree actually looks like. Just like so many other things in life that we tried to draw, we get a vision of what the object looks like in our head. Sometimes that vision is so different than reality. That's why it's so important to spend time observing. Becoming a really great observer is the way to become a good artists. That's why for this lesson we're going outside. I want you to find a tree and you're going to sketch it. Just go wild. Don't think about it too much and focus on the outline. Set a timer maybe let's say 5,10 minutes. Just focus on drawing the outline of the tree starting, with the trunk and working your way up to the branches. We have our sketchbook and we're ready to draw our tree. When you're drawing your tree based on observation, it can be helpful to try to observe three basic aspects of the tree, that'll guide your sketch. First, start off with the silhouette. When you look at the tree, what's the outer shape like? It's a little bit harder with this willow tree, but with evergreen tree that might be a little bit easier, but I'm trying to sketch in the overall shape of the tree. What my eye catches when I look at the overarching shape. This is not going to be very beautiful and that's all right. The whole point is to have a sketch without any consequences. You're just trying to gauge the outer shape. What you'll often find is that the trees are often a lot wobbly and irregular than you might think they are. This, when I look at it, it doesn't even really look like a tree. To me it looks like, I don't know, maybe some monster or something. But it's such a great way to realize that what we think a tree might look like is not actually what it looks like at all for the most part. We're going to be messing with this silhouette a little bit more because the next thing to observe is where is the darkest and where are the lightest parts of the tree? For this tree, it's definitely the trunk. This trunk, almost seems black from this far away and you don't have to shade it in all the way. Try to identify where those super super dark areas are. Because the next thing I want you to observe is the flow of branches. Where are the branches thickest on your tree? Where are they the thinnest? The trunk is obviously the thickest part of nearly every tree I've come across. But then as far as the branches themselves, they tend to be thicker, lower down an closer to the trunk. You'll notice that each side of the branch mirrors the other side. Well, it seems obvious when you think about it a little bit more that can really guide how you draw branches because you realize that they often don't have bulges or other weird irregularities. They follow the same flow. You'll notice as well, using this method of identifying branches and the flow of branches, how often branches overlap when we view them. You realize that getting that overall flow rate can be a lot more important than getting the details for every single branch. I'm missing a lot of branches already, but you are starting to get the picture of what this tree might look like by having the darkest areas inked in a little bit and the overall silhouette. You're starting to get a glimpse of the fact that this is in fact a tree without me having to draw all the details. It's all right to be refining the outline of the tree as well as you go. Don't be afraid to mess with that silhouette that you drew earlier. It's all right to correct it as you go and the point of this exercise is definitely observation, not perfection. My tree is looking pretty ugly and that's all right. That's what I want. I want it to be just a chance to experiment. I don't know, I'm not super happy with the tree I've drawn, but that doesn't matter. In fact, actually that's great. The messy or your tree is, the more it means you are focused on observing and trying to learn along the way. The whole point here is the idea of observing in order to realize that trees in the wild, everything we're trying to draw is so much more irregular and messy than we tend to believe. By focusing on outline, on shadow and the flow or the most dominant lines, in this case branches, you have a better groundwork in which to draw the thing yourself, whether you're making it up or drawing it inside the studio. 6. Observation: Part II : Now that we're back in the studio after drawing tree from observation, let's go over a few commonalities between many different kinds of trees. Specifically by knowing how trees grow and generally how they tend to appear to us on the ground, you'll probably become a better artist and better at depicting them. First, let's talk about branches. You see this picture of a tree here is such a great example of how the way that branches branch off the main trunk is all aimed at one thing, gathering sunlight. While the branches themselves are important, they are there to collect sunlight for photosynthesis. That means that branches want to find the sun. That sounds really simple, but when you think about it, it translates into how you draw the drawing. On a blank piece of paper let's draw a sample branch system. I have the trunk here and then just like in this image, I'm drawing some of the lower branches. When you think about it this way, you realize that the lower branches are thickest and longest because they have the longest way to reach sunlight. If this branch has to go all the way out here, that means branches up in this area don't have to go as far. Drawing this one branch at the very bottom, drawing this one other branch a little bit higher, and then let's draw one other branch up here. On your page, you should have a trunk and then one branch dotted outline and another dotted outline up here, one more at the top. That means that the very ends of these branches should generally be out in the sunshine. You can imagine that these are the very outer limits of the tree and they create its silhouette. That can tell us a few things about how the branch would branch off these main branches next and I know that's a lot of branches in one sentence. But that means that perhaps a branch here would come out to right here and maybe another branch would come up like this. Up here on this branch, let's draw another branch up that way. Then you can keep filling this in as you go further into detail. Drawing branches from the interior means that we can draw them out to that same area there. Now we're starting to get an outline of what the finished tree might look like. You'll see that this common shape right here is replicated in so many of the deciduous trees that you'll see. If we zoom in, let's draw this in a little bit more detail and there'll be a branch coming off like this, getting a little bit thicker, meeting another branch like that. What can we learn from how this branch system looks and how the branch in the photo appears? There's a couple of things. We have this general outline, but then let's pay attention to how this branch intersects. For one, it doesn't come abruptly, so it would look weird if this branch was here and this branch was like this. There is a sense of natural flow to it and that's really valuable thing for you as a pen artist because it means that you don't need to worry about drawing straight lines. In fact, straight lines actually take away from how the branch looks and takes away from the realism of the tree. Another aspect of this is that most of the trees start with a thicker branch at the bottom and the branches tend to flow upwards. If we look down this branch here, look odd if there's a branch coming down like this. Just like I talked about, branches want sunlight and that means generally, if a branch came off the bottom of the tree, instead, it would curve around up towards the sun. Now, branches aren't always successful and that means that sometimes there are strange branches that branch off in weird ways. We're going to talk about that later on in the class. But in general, you want your branches to flow upwards. Another great way to think about drawing trees is by drawing the silhouette. Now, you have experienced that just in the last lesson when you observed a tree yourself. But drawing the silhouette first can be a great way to find out the overall shape and guide how you draw the branches. For example, if I'm drawing this trunk here, and then I'm inking out a really rough light silhouette of a tree. If I know that's the silhouette and the final outline I want to end up with, I can use the rules that we just talked about in order to fill out this tree. This is especially useful, of course, if you're drawing without a reference photo. Now, I can add in some longer branches down here that curve upwards and then some other branches that curve around in the middle part of the tree. You recognize that with this tree I want to have here, there's obviously a lot more complication than what I've just drawn. More branches and different elements that we need to draw in. But you'll notice here that we need to define where the tree trunk, the main part of the tree actually goes and I couldn't get into that in this lesson. But I'm going to leave that to the next lesson because now that we've talked about a few rules and drawing trees, we're going to dive into how to sketch out the skeleton of your tree. We're going to do that in pencil before we move on to pen. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Drawing a Tree Skeleton : Now that we've talked to our branches, we can start to sketch out a skeleton of our target. Sketching out a tree with pencil is such a great way to define the flow of the branches and work on that silhouette that I talked about so much in the lesson on observation. I know I'm mixing metaphors here, but basically what we want to do is draw out the foundation of our tree without any detail whatsoever. No thickness, no weight, just the skeleton. I'm drawing one, stick upwards, and this down here is going to be my tree trunk. Let's draw in some ground just for old time's sake. Then as I mentioned in the last lesson, let's draw in a rough silhouette. I want this to be a really awesome old oak tree. I'm going to add some leaves to it, but I want to pretend that I'm drawing the canopy outline right now. Again, you don't want this to be straight. You don't want it to be like a cloud shape. You want to have some irregularities in there. You'll notice it's not centered, there's some weird waiting off to the side and that's all good. You don't want this to be a perfect, balanced tree because trees are wacky and weird out in the wild. The tree that we're going to draw here should be similar. Now, we can draw in some branch system. As I talked about in the last class, the lower branches are going to be the thickest and longest. We also want these branches to all curve upwards towards the sun. That means this lower branch is going to be curving like that. Maybe branch over on this side like this. At this point, I'm even overlapping some of the branches because I want it to appear three-dimensional. It's all right for branch to start lower than one of the lowest branches and to go over top of it as well. That'll give us a great building block for creating a three-dimensional flowing branch outwards towards us. Now, of course, the topmost branch here, it's going to be so thin at the top. It'll hardly even be drawable. That's why we need to add some other big pillar branches that come off the trunk. This is going to split the trunk halfway up. Then I'm drawing branches not only off the trunk, but off these other central branch. Another element of this, as I talked about it in the last class, is how branches tend to become more vertical the higher up the tree they are. As they need to travel less distance to find the sun for their little leaves, they can be leading almost straight up in some cases. We have a basic outline of what a tree could look like. This is just a skeleton. There's no details, no three-dimensionality. In the next lesson, we're going to go back in with pencil again to fill out some of the details of our tree, creating a blueprint that then we're going to detail in with pen and draw over top of. 8. Sketching an Outline : Rama's we're almost at the point where we're actually going to use pens on this final tree drawing. But for now we're going to draw in the trunk and the branches before drawing in with pen. Down here, the trunk should always slope outwards towards the ground. Unless it's a new tree, most often the trunk has a nice slope and gets fairly thick towards the ground. A new tree might hit the ground almost vertically but I'm drawing an old oak tree. I want the roots to have some character. We'll talk about that more when we only go over it with pen. Now, in this case, I'm going to focus on the trunk and I'm drawing it ever so thin as it goes up. Just a little bit more than halfway up the tree. The trunk is already almost just a single line. As I talked about in the last lesson, however, this other branch is another pillar branch and we want it to be similar length of the one beside it. After they branch off into another branch, they all should get thinner. It might be surprising to you that most of the branches we see here turn into single lines fairly quick. This branch that's coming up in the foreground, we'll keep it a little bit thicker because it's closer to us. Then these branches down here, they're also going to get thin very quick. Now, all these branches, even though I didn't use a ruler, all look pretty perfect to me. There's no knots or narrows or whatever you call them on the trees. They all seem to be fairly flowing. We're going to mess that up a little bit when we go in with pen to create some imperfections that I think really add a lot to this tree. But for now, when you're going in, you should be adding some thickness to the branches and to our outline. The tree shouldn't be weighted in terms of composition, it should make sense. That means that it's important to gauge whether areas like this are thicker or thinner than areas like this. Very rarely would a tree draw up and have a really thick area right here because I would throw it off balance and it would probably be more likely to crack or break in a storm. We're going to keep all these lines out here very thin and we don't even have to draw them in all the way. We can finish that off with pen. In the next lesson, we're going to go in and draw these branches again with pen before we start adding details and shading. 9. Inking an Outline : Now we have a tree drawing already, but in pencil, and the whole point of this class is drawing with pen. Now that we have some understanding of how the tree is going to look, we can now start to ink out the outline in ink. Let's dive in. We've been spending the last two lessons using pencil and I know this class is all about pen, so grab your pen, I'm going to use 0001 for this section. I'm going to start inking in the tree. This base section is so important that I want to use the method I talked about really early, which is almost like dotting out the outline of the tree. This not only allows us to gain confidence in the lines before we add a darker layer, but also gives us some room to play with in terms of adding imperfections to the trunk. It's always better to start with these light dotted lines, especially when you're drawing a natural shape like a tree. If you find that these lines are not to your liking, you can always draw them again without many repercussions since you can take those dots or those unused sections of line then shade them in really darkly. I'm starting with the thickest areas of the branches and especially this overlapping section. I want to make sure I leave it pretty light and loose. You'll notice that with pen, the branches already seem a little less perfect, a little jagged, or a little uneven, and that's good. It makes it appear a little bit more realistic. I like this more rugged approach to drawing the tree. As we get up to the thinner areas of the tree, you can just draw a single lines. Now that we have drawn in most of the trees branches that we drew with pencil, this is where it becomes important to use the tip that I talked about much earlier. That is drawing really fast light lines. Since so many of these branches are so small, it becomes really important to drop them in using really light, loose lines, they're hardly perceptible to the human eye. They branch off in very fluid ways like this. Adding these branches gives a sense of realism. Because if you observe a tree like an oak tree in the fall when there's no leaves on it, you can really see how many small and perceptively tiny branches there are. The smallest branches are always going to be at the very outside of the tree. Because small branches inside, they don't have light. As I've talked about a lot in this class, the tree branches and the leaves are looking for light. If you make mistake like I just did here by drawing a thicker branch off this bottom one, you can just continue it out and it might look a little wonky, but that's all part of the game, is drawing these branches and rolling with the branches. Remember the main thing to take away from this lesson is that all the branches on the very outside of your tree should be small, imperceptible, little scribbles made really fast with a nice, loose hand. You can add as many details and other branches as you want. Especially when you're at this stage of the drawing, it's really cool to overlap them. For example, this branch goes up and then goes underneath both of these branches, making it appear like it's behind the tree and giving a sense of three-dimensionality. In the next lesson, I'll go over adding texture and shading in the tree, giving it a sense of space and scale, before we talk about drawing a canopy. 10. Adding Texture : We have our tree outlined, but it doesn't look completed, because right now there's just a blank space all throughout the trunk and all throughout the branches. In this lesson, I'm going to go over how I shade in a tree using layers to create detail and also sunlight and shadow. You draw a vertical section of tree trunk, let's first practice hatching. Hatching is these light lines going from side to side of the tree. Now, that is different than texturing, because for the texture of the tree, it's going to rely on a couple of simple shapes. Tree bark, as you can see in this picture, is nodded and gnarled and has a lot of different planes and surfaces causing the shadows. [NOISE] That means that creating the illusion of detail and shadow is really important. What we want to do is follow the flow of the tree vertically with a nice flowing line downward and then a jagged line going back up the page. It's great if we make these lines dotted and loose, just like I talked about with the outline lines. A vertical line down, and then a line backup the page. Now, since we're doing our three-dimensional object, these lines will appear closer together towards the side because our eyes perceive the distance between each piece of bark to be less when it's on that angle. Each piece is a vertical line down and then a jagged line backup. You can repeat that all the way down the tree, and often they don't overlap, they're fitting together like puzzle pieces. You can see that there's varying shapes, details, and darkness of the lines. At this point it's important to figure out where the sun is coming from, so if it's coming from this side, that means that everything on this side it's going to be darker. We can use hatching again, to hatch over sections of bark to make them appear darker on the shaded side of the tree. Well, it is circular. Often the bark creates a harsher shadow environment, especially for older and more nodded trees. If you think about the age of the tree, that can also tell you about how much texture you should add. An old tree growing for a while. Specifically if it's oak tree for instance, would have more texture towards the bottom of the oldest part of the tree that has the most knots, gnarls and sections of bark. After I have one layer of shading and texture, I can go over again and add some areas of shadow. These harsher lines give the illusion of harsh sunlight, and I'm really adding them in on the right-hand side of this tree. Each little section of bark that I drew before, it gives us an excuse to shade it in individually. Creating more variation in the tone, so we can see on this section of tree. You remember, I talked about hatching being lines all in one direction, and so go over your tree with really light fast lines. In order to give a base of the shading that will then detail in later. These lines should be really light, fast and loose. Remember when I talked about how creating these really jagged lines makes it easier to add another layer on top. This is a little bit harder to do with a ballpoint pen, but the same technique really works in this situation. It's being really fast and loose and using the each side of the tree as a parameter for your shading. The shading will, by nature, fade out as you get thinner out into the branches. The branches are so thin, they don't really need to shade them. They already appear like little black lines. The important thing now is to think about where the light is coming from. Let's say the sun is in this side of our drawing. That means that everything on the right-hand side of the drawing is going to be darker. Before we're going to add texture, we can add another layer of hatching on the right hand side of the drawing. You'll notice that my hatching is on a diagonal line and that gives a nice sense of curves. Even now, you can see some texture is starting to emerge. The areas closest to the right hand side of the tree are going to be the darkest. This is where you can draw in a little bit of an outline as well. Adding some imperfections to the shape of the tree at this point can be really great way of adding interest. I'm wiggling my pen around and gripping it a little tighter. As I mentioned at the beginning of the class, this tighter grip usually causes my lines to be a little scribbly and wobbly. Now we're going to implement the texture that we drew before. Keep in mind that primary shape and that's a jagged line down, and then a nice loose light line backup. If we do this really quickly we can use the same method I talked about earlier, which is creating those really light sketchy lines. Remember that the bark of your drawing should follow the lines of the tree. Since we're a little bit farther away, you can be a little looser with how these lines appear, and using less detail in the sunnier section of the tree. With the sun on the left-hand side, we're going to shade in the right hand side here. As you can see, I'm layering it in over time, and I'm shading at the same time I'm texturing after I draw in that first layer of shading and texture. This can really happen simultaneously after you get a grips of the basics. What you don't want to do is draw a complete black sections of the trunk, because that flattens the object that you're drawing. Instead you can see how areas that are darker almost create their own imperfections on the tree. Like this section, almost looks like a null or a little hole in the trunk. Areas of shading are by nature going to get less detailed and imprecise as they go into the branches at the top. That's all right, because they're so small, we can't really see the textures on them. One other thing to keep in mind is the root system at the bottom of the tree. Often roots will branch out into the ground, especially if it's an old tree. Drawing these lyrical shapes that spread away from the tree is a great way of creating the illusion of roots, and they can be shaded in as well. We have a finished ink tree, and now we're going to go back and add foliage. 11. Adding Foliage : We have one tree that is shaded in. It looks fantastic, but it looks like it's winter or fall. There's no leaves. We want some leaves on the trees sometimes. We're going to redraw this tree with a canopy. It's super fun to draw leaves and to experiment with how many details to add to make your drawing even more immersive. I think the coolest way to do that might be trying to replicate the tree that we've drawn, just the trunk this time. I'm drawing it in with just pen this time. I know I'm brave and just up to where the first branch is going to be. Then you know how when we planned out this tree, we drew a silhouette of the canopy. We're going to do the same thing this time with pen using our first tree as a reference, drawing a nice silhouette. Again, it shouldn't be perfect. No straight lines and very light and loose dots. Following the same silhouette we used before. This time, however, we're not drawing the trunk all the way up. We confirm in that trunk shape and then even let's really lightly dot in some of where these branches first appear, but we're not going to draw them yet. The most important thing here is this outline and we really don't want to firm it up because it will change over time. That main concept here is determining where the Sun is coming from. With a pencil this time, I'm going to dry in the Sun as a nice reminder. But imagine if the Sun is right vertical over top of the tree, shining down from this side. That means we know this side of the tree is going to be darkest, but also underneath because trees don't fall on a straight line down. There is a canopy that shades the trunk underneath. Just like we drew the trunk, we're going to start with a layer of hatching. We're going to start with these darkest areas, really light. Now, this layer is not as important as the subsequent layers of detail and hatching. You can start with just a really light layer underneath. We're going to follow the general flow of the tree. This does work better with a smaller pen, so 01, or 05, or even as 02 or 03 is perfect for this. What you want to do is shade in the right-hand side a little bit darker than the left. In fact, we're not even really going to add any shading to the left hand side as of yet. As I talked about earlier, this is all part of using a layers approach to drawing with ink. Specifically by drawing in this base layer and then adding in detail over top is a great way to gain confidence in the final drawing and being able to picture what it might look like before you're done. I have this side of the tree shaded. It's looking a little three-dimensional, but I want to make sure that I'm adding detail and shading where it needs to be. This is a really great way to add some individual sections of foliage. Just like in this photo, you can see how the different sections of foliage, when you think about what's underneath, they all correspond to different branches, meaning that there's different parts of the trees that have space in-between them. What that means for us is we can draw in different sections of branches as a guide for our shading. Let's try to mirror a little bit of what the canopy looks like, a little bit inside. I'm drawing really light, loose line like that. Then over here, I'm going to do the same thing but maybe down on this angle. These really light, loose lines are mirroring the outside of the tree, but they should be fairly different. Not uniform, not straight, and not precious little curves, but nice light and loose and dotted. We're going to add another one halfway up here and then let's add another one right here. We're going to add some more over time as well so maybe one right in the middle. These all give us another guideline with which to shade. We're going to add a second layer of hatching and I'm going to leave this section a little lighter and hatch in this outer section. First, I'm hatching in the outer section here a little darker. Now, that fine line we drew right here is pretty hard to follow and so I don't really care about catching every single shape of it. But this time I am just hatching in again over top and I need to do the same down here. Then we do a new line down here so I'm going to hatch in the bottom of this line. Now, on the left-hand side, these lines are going to mark where we want some of the highlights of the tree to be. We know this outer edge is going to be really light and loose. It's going to be where the Sun's hitting. These other edges are going to be the same. That means these interior sections just to the left are going to be shaded in a little bit. That might seem surprising, but let's try it and see how it looks. I'm using the same really light shading method here to add some darkness to the outer side of this X section of leaves. Now, to fade it out, I'm spacing the lines even more and being even lighter on the page and drawing even faster. Again, a lot of these lines are not meeting with the actual outline and that's all right. It's just giving the illusion of depth at this point. We have one layer of shading done and we're going to follow this method as we shade in the tree darker and deeper. Specifically, let's note where the other areas of shading ended here. This is a really great way to add another layer of lines that we're going to shade around. With this layer of shading, we're getting even more detail and you can start adding little elements or little areas of dark shading like this. For example, down here, I'm adding in some slower darker lines that mirror this bottom angle. Then I'm going to outline it really light and loose to give the illusion of a section of leaves. Up here, I'll do the same thing with a really dark section and then lightly dotting it out with a lot of imperfection. Let's do the same thing up here, a slower, really dark section, dotted out with imperfections. Now, before we add a final layer of shading, let's draw in the outline with a little bit more detail. Now, you don't need to draw it in really thick. In fact, it's best if you don't, but this is an area we can add some nice variations to make it look a little bit more realistic. You notice most trees like this one have a lot of variations in the silhouette and a lot of the leaves go in and out and there's a lot of sections where you can see sky behind. That means you can add really light and sketchy outline of the leaves, like this. For this method, I want to be really light and sketchy. I really don't want to even connect the lines and creating a really loose and messily. However, for this bottom section, it's in shadow and so we want to shade it in even more. Let's start a little bit into the canopy and draw another layer of hatching. We want to keep the hatching darkest towards the interior of the tree. We can add some nice darker sections in the very outline as well. Now we can add some final layers of texture, and we're going to use the same formula we use throughout this lesson. That's creating outlines of sections of leaves, but now we're being a little bit more granular so it can be really light and loose and make them shorter. Really uneven sections of leaves here. Using the same methods we talked about earlier, you can now start to replicate some of the shapes you put in other areas of the tree. Like those really dark sections of leaves or they're really highlighted areas. I'm going to start shading in these other sections too. I'm really creating a three-dimensional canopy shape at this point. What we need to talk about next though, is the trunk, because now the trunk is going to be shaded a lot different than it was in this other version. Specifically, the canopy is now going to be shading a lot of the trunk. That means let's start with a layer of hatching that goes down about halfway. Once we're halfway across, we're going to continue the hatching, but just on the right-hand side of the trunk. That's because the Sun would hit the trunk around this area. It's never an exact science, but it looks all right to me. After this section, you can add the same textures you did to the tree on the right with those long lines and the jagged lines upwards. However, now let's go over with another layer of shading because as you noticed in your observations sketch, the trunk is usually the darkest part of the tree, even more so when it's in shadow like this. It's these harsh shadows that create the three-dimensionality that we really want to see in these drawings. In the next lesson, we'll go over revising your drawing and seeing if there's any other details we can add to add interest and immersion to your piece. 12. Final Details : We have two completed or almost completed pen drawings; a tree with a canopy, and a tree without a canopy. Now it's talking about how to finish the drawings, add more details, and basically mold them into a wider environment. First, let's talk about where the tree meets the ground. Specifically, you can see in this tree, we have the bottom of the trunk but we don't really have a ground section. I'm going to add some natural vegetation around the base of the tree. This is where it can be great to add different types of lines than you added in the canopy to both add contrast and some visual interests at the bottom. Specifically, this can be I'm drawing straight lines up and down. These are not really lines you see in the tree that much, but it gives the illusion of grass around the base of the tree, especially because the full canopy implies summer. This grass growth can really add a lot to the bottom of the tree. These lines should be varying shapes and sizes. Even though I didn't add very much here, your mind instantly fills in a lot of the rest of the scene here. You can make them smaller in the foreground to add more of a three-dimensional shape. Since this tree has no leaves, we're assuming it's fall or winter. In that case the ground is going to be a little bit flatter. Might want to draw what looks like maybe little trees, or little leaves on the ground. They're so small that they're basically going to appear just as little dots. Then I'm adding similar texture to what I did with the tree bark. But in this case, it's giving the illusion of maybe fallen leaves on the ground. In black and white it's hard to capture that idea of fallen leaves, but you get the drift. Secondly, let's talk about adding some elements of interest on the trees themselves. What I mean by that is so often trees are a little imperfections or weird little bits that are fun to add. Those can take the form of holes for animals to live in. In this case, I'm going to draw a nice oval. I'm inking it completely in. Then just drawing a little bit around it to give the illusion of a nice little bit of growth in a crack through the middle of the tree. Another thing that can be really fun to experiment with is some broken off branches. Let's add another branch down here then abruptly cutting it off, making it clear that there once was a branch there, but maybe a little kid jumped up and broke it off or it was a swing set or something like that that did not work out on the tree. These elements just really make the tree seem a little bit more personal and add some characteristics that just keep the viewer looking longer. It's all on that final layer. I've talked so often in this class about layering up your drawings over time. This final layer of details is really all about that, adding personality to your drawing to really make it your own. Lastly, this is a chance for you to experiment yourself, and maybe you want to add some mysterious elements and vines, or other things that you're trying to make the viewer guess at what they are. 13. The End : Now, that we have these completed pen drawings, the main question for you is, what's next? What do you want to do with the skills that you've picked up in this class? The thing I love about drawing trees is that they're basically everywhere in the work I do. Trees are such an integral part of our natural environments that they pop up in so much art I create. That means that these skills that you've picked up will be super useful whenever you're drawing landscapes in pen. But the main concepts here such as wine, death, and darkness, as well as shading and texture, those are transferable no matter if you're drawing in pen or even painting or using other mediums as well. Or if you're not drawing trees, the same concepts apply to whatever you're drawing in pen. For instance, drawing a castle or buildings, houses, for instance, these concepts apply the same way. You can experiment with different textures and different ways of using light, shadow and shading to create really fantastic immersive drawings. I'm so excited to see the work you create. Make sure to post your finished drawings in the class project page and check out other students and what they drew, the trees that they saw and the ones that they observed in Sketch. Thank you so much for drawing with me and I'm so excited to see what you've created.