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Drawing Trees with Pen and Ink by Vincent Whitehead

rserpe — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:11:40 +0000

About Vincent Whitehead

My life has been influenced over the years by many things. First is my fundamental belief in God and second my family and the rural up-bringing that I have had. These two basic values have guided me and given me a love for nature, history, and the country life style.

I have always loved to draw and paint but, in 1996, I decided that it was more than just a hobby for me. I was not happy with the occasional sketch or quick scribble. I began seriously considering the world around me and then working out the God given talent toward a perfecting of a personal style so that I could render the scenes that I so dearly love. It is that perfecting process that has guided me to where I am now. No, I have not arrived. Nor have I attained perfection. On the contrary, I believe my journey has merely served to push me on toward the mark. It has given me feelings of accomplishment and greatened my respect for God’s creation.

Follow this link to visit Vincent’s Website

Trees – Midground and Distant

Mid-ground objects as they relate to the whole image are just as important as the foreground objects. We, as artists, must keep the perspective in our renderings clear and in line with what the real world if we are to produce realistic images. I love detail work but, adding detail for detail sake will create a drawing that can be too busy or over complicated. I want to give the viewer enough information in the drawing so that they can recognize the subject without over-loading the senses. Keeping this in mind, we need to move to the mid-ground portion of the drawing.

In this view of the “Gilbert Home”, you can see the many different elements of the scene as it pertains to the trees. The property is loaded with them and this is one of the main reasons I agreed to do this drawing.

This is a crop close-up view of the finished drawing. Let's break it down into the three main elements of trees that we are dealing with.

First is the foreground tree that we have already drawn. It sets the gage for the size of the rest of the trees and foliage work that is left in the scene. The leaves and the detail work are much larger and more clearly seen since they are closer to the viewer.
Second, is the mid-ground trees. These trees are seen but, not as clearly as those in the foreground. This means that we don’t draw them as large or in as much detail as the foreground trees.
Third, we have the distant trees. They are completed in much less detail than the mid-ground trees. In fact, they are drawn by giving just an indication of shadowed spots and forms of foliage and only the smallest amount of information indicating suggestions of branches or limbs.

Let’s start the mid-ground trees. The first one I started is the one just to the viewer’s right of the large foreground tree. You can see that I started putting in the indications of this tree trunk with pretty light tones using vertical lines running in the direction of growth for this tree. I use my FINE point pen to do this with, as I said, with very light pressure.

Start with your FINE point pen and insure you have good ink flow. Then clean the tip with a tissue or paper towel. Then find where in the drawing that the tree is to be placed. Pay attention to your foliage areas that will overlap the tree trunk you are working on and leave those areas white.

! It’s easier to fill in tone than to try and lift it once it is on the paper so leave areas you want lighter alone until you are ready to work them…

Then, using the same FINE point pen, begin to layer over the top of your first tone lines in the mid-ground tree trunk with lines that start from the shaded side and roll out toward the lighted side of the tree. Place the pen tip at the shaded side and roll it toward the lighted side and lift as you move. This creates a darker edge on the shaded side of the tree and a lighter tone side giving the tree depth in the viewer’s eyes. You can see this in the next picture. This work is done actually very quickly. There is no need to try to define too heavily the bark lines as this tree is too far outside of the viewer’s visual depth of field.

The next step is to define the darker side of the tree trunk by going over the shadowed side one more time with the FINE point pen. I do this with vertical strokes again. You can see this in the second image of the mid-ground tree that is a close-up crop.

Next is the foliage work on these trees. This is also a job that is much easier in comparison to the foliage in the Foreground tree. Just as the tree trunk is much smaller and less detailed, so are the leaves in the mid-ground tree. The leaf areas are less than half the size of the one in the foreground tree. I use my Fine point pen again and insure that it is clean at the tip. I start by using light pressure and place smaller leaf indications running from the tree trunk out and in the direction away from the trunk and branches. Again, pay attention to how gravity will pull on the leaf clumps and direct them toward the ground at the ends of the limbs and branches. Once you have the leaf work in go back and pick out some shadowed details in the leaves. Some leaves will be left almost white with just the underside of the leaf drawn. You can see this in the next image.

The smaller leaf indications just below the larger detailed leaf clumps are what I am referring to. These are just indications of leaves but when viewed in the whole image they will blend in as realistic leaves.

As I move to the area in front of the home, there are a few more trees that need to be placed in the drawing. They are a bit smaller than the one we just did but, are still in the mid-ground view. They are rendered much the same way as the first mid-ground tree was done. Start with the light line indications in a vertical stroke. Then put the second layer of lines over this remembering to start on what will be the shadowed side and work the stroke toward the lighter side and lift at the end.

Once you have worked in the tree trunk tones you can start the leaf clumps. This tree is in the open and middle of the scene. Because of this, the leaf work will be much brighter and full looking. Since this tree is less detailed, we again, will only be doing basic leaf shapes and less detail. Work the lines to show subtle leaf shapes from the shaded side and layer the next leaf or leaves on top of that until you have worked your way to the end leaf point.

After the leaf clumps are worked in you can go back and add in spots of shadow and tone to give you some depth in the tree. I work my way from the bottom center closest to the trunk and out until I have a full limb or branch and then I start this over layering the leaf clumps one on top the other. You can see this in the next image.

As I finish one tree I am always thinking about how this one will interact with the next. The next one will be the one beside or just behind the one I finished. This seems like an obvious statement but, can sometimes be a bit confusing when you look at a scene that is full of trees such as this one. By drawing the closest tree to the viewer all the time and working to the next one and so on until you get to the most distant ones, you can keep the brightest areas intact and place layers of leaf clumps over the more shaded areas. This will help to naturally give depth and shadow to your drawing.

Keep in mind the shadowed side of the foliage areas or leaf clumps in the trees as they will be darker the farther away from the light source as they go.

! Remember to keep your ball point pen tip clean by wiping it on a tissue or paper towel regularly.

Work through the next trees just as you did the first and second mid-ground trees paying attention to the light source and the cast shadow areas from the leaf clumps in front of the other. Fill the leaf clumps in and then go over them with light tone layers of ink to work in the shadow areas. I do this until I get the tone value I want keeping in mind where the cast shadows will fall from the trees and their foliage on the ground and the objects below and behind them like he house.

Leaf indications will get smaller as you work in the branch areas behind and below those that are closer toward the front or toward the viewer.

That’s about it for the mid-ground trees and foliage. Next we will tackle the distant trees and foliage.

Trees – Distant

As I have stated the before, the distant trees are drawn with only the smallest amount of detail and line work. Most often I use a style of stippling and short dashed lines to indicate leaf and foliage work.

Stippling, as it pertains to Ball Point Pen work, is the use of dots to produce a form on paper that is recognizable by the viewer as a specific subject in the drawing. I use these series of dots in layers to yield tone and depth. I also us a form of dashed lines or squiggles that could almost be called “scratch work”. I do this work very quickly and without attention to a set pattern or design as I want them to appear more natural when finished and not like a type-writer or printer work.

Look at the cropped image from the mid-ground and distant section of trees from the finished drawing. If you compare the two areas you can see that the mid-ground trees foliage areas, while much smaller in detail outline than the foreground trees foliage areas, you can still discern the leaf patterns that make up the leaf clumps from the branch and limbs. Now look at the distant tree leaf patterns. After close consideration, you see that suggestion of leaf patterns and clumps are only made up of the dashes/scribbles and dots that I have mentioned before here.

Look at this close up cropped image from the previous image. You can see the dot and scribble work more easily.

Note that I can use these same techniques for leaf work tree sections and for Pine or needle like tree areas. I merely work the scratches or scribbles in a closer pattern that more closely follows the growth pattern of the pine trees in the scene. Those trees also appear much darker as they are behind the leaf type trees and are shaded. I will layer the scratches and scribbles until I get the tone value that I want in the scene. The dot or scratch work for the most distant tree indications are very sparsely spaced giving the appearance that you can just barely make them out. More white paper seen, equals more distance.

! Remember for the distant and mid-ground work almost all of it is done with the FINE point pen. Keep the tip wiped clean to guard against accidental ink placement.

I think this about wraps this one up. As always, if you have any specific questions, please feel free to email me directly, and remember, Keep On Creating!

Vincent D. Whitehead

Pen and Ink Drawing Tutorial – How to Draw Bark

rserpe — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:33:11 +0000

About Vincent

Follow this link to visit Vincent’s Website

Bark: Stumps and Trunks

Thank you for viewing my work and taking the time to look deeper into the way I go about doing my drawing work. Each artist will have their own methods of working but, they don’t all share them. It is my hope that by sharing my techniques that more people will become happier with their work and in turn will want to share what they enjoy with the people they come in contact with and promote my theme “Keep On Creating”!!

I have wanted to do this tutorial for a very long time now. I have had many opportunities to choose from in the past, but none quite like this. The tutorial I will do here is based mainly on trees from the “Gilbert Home” portrait that I completed in November 2006.

And on the large Oak tree from the Elwer barn drawing I completed in July 2005 called “Between Two Trees”.

I have done many home portraits in the past. Most of those have had trees in them of one kind or another. It is something that, as an artist, no matter what level of expertise you are at, you will have to do some time. You may be asked, or just decide, to do a tree in any season of the year, so you will need to know how to apply the techniques you learn to the various conditions of each season.

As you may know, I do my drawing work with Acid Free inks in ballpoint-style pens. I use Staedtler “Triplus” Fine and Medium Point pens for their archival properties. However, I have many drawings I’ve done in the past, with Bic or Pilot pens that are as old as 15 years and have not faded or yellowed. So, I would not be concerned with what type of ink or what brand name of pen you are using while practicing these techniques. I will only say that you should use the type of pens that you plan on doing your completed drawings with once you practice and get a handle on the techniques here. By doing this you will become more familiar with your normal tools, and will be better able to apply the techniques you learn here with them.

The techniques I will go through here are ones I have developed and adapted to my needs, but I would not go so far as too say that they are the only ones that work to get the results I am looking for. As a self-taught artist, I am always looking for new ways to improve my work. But, this is what I currently do and how I do it to render trees and foliage in my drawings. Keep in mind that you may want to change a step in the process as you go. That is all a part of your “artistic license”.

“The Blobs”

This is a term that refers to the ink that builds up on the ball tip of a ballpoint pen while in use. It can leave an unwanted ink spot on your paper. It happens when you use the pen in a motion that goes in more than one direction without the user lifting the ball from the surface. The ink builds up on the back side of the ball when moving it in one direction and then when you change direction the ball actually drags the ink back down and into the ball path depositing it on your surface creating an ink “blob”. To avoid this, you should clean the tip frequently. Try to get used to working your pen in one direction then lifting and returning it before placing it back down and working it in the same direction. It may sound more difficult than it is. With some practice you will get the hang of it. If in doubt, clean the tip. Better to be cleaning often than to wish you had and get the BLOB.

Getting started

There are two basic types of trees, Deciduous and Conifer. Deciduous trees have leaves, and Conifers have needles. Within these two basic types of trees there are many species, all of which have unique characteristics that should be considered when attempting to draw them. The best help I can be to you is to tell you that it takes a lot of time in observation of your subject in order to become familiar with the different characteristics of each type. Most of us don’t wake up and just know how to draw a tree. You may say that you’ve seen lots of trees in your time, but have you sat for hours looking at just one?

I mean get real acquainted with it. Pick a spot that you can come back to time and again for the same view. Do this at different times of the day, in different weather conditions, and in the different seasons of the year. See how the light and shadows affect your perspective of it. Make notes, do quick sketches, and photograph it.

Bark: Stumps and Trunks

For this tutorial I will be drawing mostly Maples, Oaks, and two different species of Pines. The main focus will be on the large, left foreground, Maple in the “Gilbert Home” portrait.

I start by making a light pencil sketch of the drawing taking into consideration what I have discussed with the home owner as to what is to be changed, eliminated or added to the drawing. In this drawing, the owner wanted the foreground of the pond edge to be removed, showing the water at the bottom edge of the drawing. I also made mention of opening the sky a bit and removing some of the foliage to give a less busy look to the image. I also intended to remove the shadow in the grass on the far bank that was being cast by the tree that was directly behind me when I took the photo. After taking these things into consideration, this is the sketch I ended up with.

This layout sketch is only a guide. It isn’t like what your mother used to tell you — “Now, stay in the lines, Dear.”

I don’t start in the same place on every tree I do. It depends on many things as to where I start. But in this one I knew that the base of the tree trunk, and the remaining stump from an earlier felling, would be the closest thing to the viewer, so that’s where I started.

Taking my Fine point pen, I first insured I had good flow of ink on a scratch paper. Then, using my paper towel, I cleaned the ball tip. Using a very light touch, I begin by defining where the bark will be darkest and how it will run. I make light lines with my pen to give myself a line to follow or build on as I go.

*Remember — this is a layering process, so don’t attempt to go to the darkest of tones all in one stroke.

Note: I did not attempt to make an exact copy of the tree or the bark lines in the photograph for this drawing. The tree is NOT the main subject. As long as it is recognizable to the property owner/viewer as being the species of tree you are attempting to render, that will suffice. You don’t have to have every bark line or leaf drawn in exactly the same position as in the scene or reference photo. Just be careful to capture prominent identifiers in the tree and it will be seen and recognized as being what it is and where it belongs. That is where artistic license is put to practice.

I started at the top of the cut edge of the stump and went down toward the ground. Be careful to follow the flow of the growth pattern of the tree. Bark starts out as a solid skin. As the tree grows the inner layers are forced toward the outside which forces the solid skin to age and split as it dries out and is weathered over time. You will need to consider the direction of your light source before trying to define the highlights too much. Getting the boundaries set for the bark lines allows you to see where the highlights will be. Consistency in light source and range in tonal value throughout the drawing will determine how believable the image is to the viewer.

After the defining lines are in I use a slightly angled line done in more of a scribble technique quickly and in short strokes to build depth behind the barks edge. Each line is drawn with a starting point just above where I want it to end, and drawn in a downward stroke that follows the contours of the bark section. This is where you want to avoid the blobs I discussed earlier. The stopping action of the pen stroke will build a more bold tone than where you started it due to the ink being heavier on the ball after it has been rolling a bit. This all happens in fractions of seconds without you thinking about it, but it is all a part of knowing your tools. Draw one and lift, place the tip, draw one and lift.

I then use the pen’s edge at the ball and barrel to put in some light tone where I want to begin to show shadows. I call this a ‘drag’ technique. I really am using the edge at the ball to work through ink that I have just put down. I do this ‘drag’ in a top to bottom motion, working through the area only once before repeating the motion or moving on to the next area. Once I have worked the areas I will assess the overall tone achieved and decide if another layer is needed. If more tone is required, I will follow the lines I had previously drawn and put a new line of ink down. Then I use the drag technique through that area until I get the tone I want.

After just a few minutes you can see a basic line layout of where I intend the bark to be and where the darks and highlights will be. The results of two layers of the drag technique are also visible in this image at the outside edges of the stump.

With the basic lines in place I proceed to build the textures of the bark in the stump. To do this I fall back on the time I’ve spent looking at trees. I look at the reference photo and note the general lines in the shape of the stump. Knowing the stump is rounded in shape and is narrower at the top than the bottom where the roots grow into the ground, I can use this in my texturing. I will follow the arch of the top to put in light, horizontal lines throughout the rest of the stump in each individual bark section. This helps build the belief that the subject is 3-D and not flat. Next I add light vertical lines in each individual bark section to show that the subject is growing out of the ground. In the bark sections that are at an angle, I use light lines that follow those angles to show continuance of the growth lines there. After I have completed these lines I go back and start over with the ‘drag’ technique to blend and build shadows where needed. These lines are very short and light but, come together to create textures that are seen as natural.

After a couple of more layers of using the drag technique, I ended up with the image you see here.

There are indications of light and dark areas in this image but, not enough contrast to make me happy. That will come with more light layers of ink but, before that happens, I want to build the texture more. To do this I use a stipple technique. Following the bark sections, I will stipple along the darkest edge. Layer the stipple points over one another to build shadowed areas. Place them closer together in the corners of the angled sections and then more separated in the open areas. This helps to build depth as well.


Section before stipple applied.	Section after application.


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	The tree stump so far after stippling has been applied.

Bark: Stumps and Trunks

Taking a Medium point pen, ensure you have good ink flow, and then clean the ball tip as before. With a light touch, begin to add darker tone layers by following the previous contour lines that were laid down with the Fine point pen. I start in the darkest area and work my way through to the area that will be the lightest.

Completed stump

Moving on…

From here I moved to the full tree just to the left of the stump. It is a matter of repeating the process that we did on the stump with a few minor adjustments. Since the tree is not cut off and there are no limbs or leaves in front of it, I will start at the base and work my way up. Using the Fine-point pen again, I get the bark layout lines in.

Then put in the angled depth lines along the bark section edges.

Now I want to focus on the section between the stump and the base of the tree. This is a portion of root section that is a bit different from the rest of the tree. It is a transition point between the two subjects. I don’t want it to be so different that it stands out, but I also don’t want it to merely be swallowed up by the rest of the image. I will define the bark lines lightly and then use the drag technique in an arched line stroke to show a slight roundness to the surface. Starting from the top of this section where the stump and the tree seem to come together and working my way down broadening the stroke as I come to the bottom.

Once this area is defined and toned I moved to the tree trunk on the left. I used the layering directional lines as described in the stump portion to build the texture in the bark sections. Then using the drag technique I built the values in the section of the tree to where I wanted them. Then use the stipple technique to push the textures up.

Then a final drag layer is used to blend the tones.

The next step is to take the Medium-point pen and bring in the darker tones to build up the shadows and show those wonderful highlights.

! Remember — we are only drawing the shadowed areas. The highlights we must leave for them to show. That is the reason I tell you to work in light layers. Once you get a very dark tone down in ink, it’s very difficult to lift the tone and bring back highlights.

In this next photo you see the results after adding 3 more layers of Medium-point work combining line strokes and the drag method. There are six layers in the darkest point of this image in the bark work. I constantly refer back to the reference photo to determine how dark I want to go in the shadowed areas. Those darks make the image go from flat to 3-D and make the image more believable or realistic.

For the rest of the tree trunk in this image, since is not covered by any overlapping limbs or branches, it can be finished by using the techniques that we have already gone over. Refer back to the reference photo and put in the bark layout lines so that the rest of the tree trunk matches closely and follows the same growth patterns throughout. There will be some slightly darker shadows on the left side trunk edge. This shows that the trunk is rounded away from the viewer, and it gets naturally a bit darker as it goes up away from the viewer. Likewise, the details get smaller and less defined as it gets farther from view. The cropped image shows the tree trunk completed with all the tone layers in place.

In tutorial 2 I will show you how the Leaf work is done, and how it is incorporated into the rest of the drawing in the Gilbert Home Portrait. Part three will be on mid-ground and distant trees. Part four will be on the Oak tree without leaves from the Elwer barn drawing called “Between Two Trees”. Then, part five will be on the North American Blue Spruce, from the same Elwer Barn drawing.

To see larger images of both the completed drawings that I am using as references for these tutorials please go the Gallery sections. Thank you and I hope that this information is helpful to you.

You can email me any questions and I will be happy to answer you.