Drawing a tree, how hard can it be?

 Actually, it's easier than I thought! 

Whilst you would think a landscape architecture student would already be well-practised in landscape drawing for me that was untrue. Before deciding to study landscape architecture most of my artwork had been focused on the architecture of buildings. I had stayed well away from anything with even a blade of grass near, being under the impression I would be drawing every individual leaf for hours on end. Sparking the fear I would have another cathedral-sized task.

Florence Cathedral - pen drawing 

 However, with the help of many YouTube videos over the summer, I have developed multiple ways to sketch any tree quickly with either a fine liner pen or a pencil whilst still being accurate to its true form. Below is my quickest method:

1. Draw the outline of the lowest leaves of the tree, using random disconnected lines

2. Continue using disconnected lines to draw the outline of the rest of the tree's leaves making sure your lines are very random looking, whilst keeping an accurate shape.

3. Next, draw the trunk of the tree connecting up to the outline of the leaves.

4. Here you will have to decide where the light is coming from, I have decided the sun is at the top left, from this you can add vertical shading where the trunk is likely to be darkest (for my tree, the right-hand side). As well you can add lines to represent the detail of the bark.

5. Finally add more random lines this time horizontally inside the outline of the tree head to represent the leaves, making sure to add a lot more lines on the side of the tree that will be darker due to the suns position.

Remember, the key to this is drawing randomly with little thought to where your marks are. This gives a more natural look to the tree as in real life the leaves on trees appear very random. 

More examples of this method