Monday Morning Art School: how to draw trees

Last week, I challenged you to paint five trees in five days. Trees require careful observation and a clear sense of structure. If you understand how to draw trees, painting them is easy.

Start with the canopy

Before you pick up your pencil, ask yourself: what is the canopy shape? Is it rounded, conical, flat-topped, or irregular? Every species has a characteristic outline, and nailing that shape is the first step to drawing them right.

Then look at the branching structure. Are the limbs weeping, upright, straight, or crabbed? Do they branch alternately or oppositely?

Take a quick measurement to figure out the height-width ratio of your tree. How much of that is exposed trunk? A common error is to make the canopy much too small for the trunk, like a broccoli floret. Another is to have branches that only extend out to the sides, instead of all around the tree.

Next, the bark

Immature and mature trees often look very different. The bark tells the tree’s age and species—compare a baby birch’s smooth red trunk to the deep fissures of an old oak. Observing this keeps you from painting generic tree trunks that could belong anywhere.

Trees in the macro: careful observation

Andrew Wyeth was probably art’s greatest observer of trees. Consider his Long Limb (1998). The painting is less about botanical accuracy and more about design, but the narrow twigs and leaf shapes still reveal the species if you look closely.

In Far from Needham (1966), Wyeth didn’t improvise the structure—he carefully drew out what he was painting. That gives the abstract design much more power.

Tree in the midrange: integration and atmosphere

In J.E.H. MacDonald’s Windy Bay, Little Turtle Lake, above, trees are integrated into the background through a closely allied color structure. He’s not fussing over details; he’s ensuring they sit naturally in the landscape.

Compare that to Ivan Shishkin’s Oak Grove (1887). This is poetic realism: the lighting and atmospherics are exaggerated, but the branching structure and leaves are precisely observed. That balance gives the painting its impact.

Trees in the distance: simplify

As trees recede, shape and value dominate. In Tom Thomson’s Autumn’s Garland (1915–16), the silhouette is key, and value contrast is reduced to push them into the distance. Lawren Harris’s Montreal River (c. 1920) shows how distant trees can be reduced to brushmarks or even a single undifferentiated shape.

How to draw trees, step by step

I draw trees as a series of columns or tubes. I start with trunk and major limbs. This helps me see perspective if a branch is coming toward me or away from me in space.

When I’m done with that step, I always check my negative space. That’s how I catch errors in drafting.

Then I rough out the outline, but without erasing the initial circles; they’re the tree’s joints.

After that I set shadows and establish the value pattern.

Then I rough in foliage, thinking about masses and values, not leaves.

Presto, it’s a tree.

Observe first

Understanding trees isn’t about memorizing species; it’s about learning to see canopy, branching, bark, and structure at every scale. Once those fundamentals are in place, you can easily paint trees, each different, but all rooted in strong drawing.

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