Top 10 YouTube Tutorials for Drawing Trees

Article by Win Phyo.

We take a look at 10 tutorials for drawing trees that will bring life to your sketches and help you communicate your design schemes with more confidence.

Trees are awesome! Feel free to disagree with me but who doesn’t love trees? They provide us with shade during the summer months, make us feel peaceful in a park, provides homes for birds and as a landscape architecture student, they are one of the key things I can use to create functional and beautiful designs. They are also the most frequent features we will end up drawing throughout our academic and professional lives. Therefore, whether you are a beginner or a pro, here are 10 YouTube tutorials that can help you capture the most simplistic to the most intricate details of our majestic arboreal friends.

I realize that as artists and designers, we all have different styles of expression; hence the videos explore various drawing mediums. What is your style?

Tutorials for Drawing Trees

10. Brush Pen Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> How to Draw a Tree With Brush Pens – An Oak Tree – How to Draw Trees

In this tutorial, the artist draws an elegant oak tree using very simple circular scribbles, which intensify in mass to create a sense of 3D (three dimensional) space. He continues by drawing a bare tree trunk with impressive mark-making skills. The finished piece will show you how simple it actually is to make a beautiful drawing.

9. Chalk Pastels Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> How to draw a tree at distance with pastels

If you like the bright and colorful, this tutorial is for you. A friend of mine loves drawing in chalk pastels so much so that it has almost become her “thing”. Every time she whips out the colorful soft colored chalks to present her design, I am in awe of how effective they can be. This tutorial is a perfect representation of this feeling. The artist starts of with a chunky block of green and just applies layers over different colors to create a simple and colorful tree drawing.

8. Marker Pen Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Mike Lin: How to draw a tree with markers

I will assume, at least from my personal experience, that most students own the kind of marker pens used in this tutorial. They are great for rough coloring and can cover a huge area in short amount of time. This tutorial is my personal favorite and I feel it will be useful for us all. Mike Lin shows us a great tip to blend the different marker pens and even adds a bit of pencil and watercolor pencil to the mix. The great thing about this is that the final product can be as general or as detailed as you want.

7. Colored Pencils Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Rendering trees using colored pencil

Gone are the days where we used to color our apple trees within the line (mostly) in our coloring book with the colored pencils. If you want to go from block coloring to what I would like to call “dot” coloring, where each color is dispersed throughout the drawing, watch this video. The artist gives a step-by-step guide to render a group of trees by using light to dark colors, starting from a simple outline.

6. Pencil Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Drawing tutorial – Tree: simple way | Kurs rysunku – Drzewo: prosty sposób [S02E01 ENG/PL]

Drawing trees with just a pencil can be the most difficult task. However, when you can master the toning techniques, it is a great, lightweight tool to take with you on your travels. This artist uses an abstract technique that breaks the form of the tree down into ovals, which allows you to separate the light and dark areas- what a drawing genius! If other techniques have failed for you, this one may give you hope again!

5. Pen Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Linescapes: How to draw a tree II – groups of trees

Trees don’t usually come as individuals. They are most often clustered in a group. This three-minute tutorial shows how to draw groups of trees within a rural-type landscape. The sketcher gives a great tip of representing tree clusters in the distance as a single, two-dimensional volume. Take a look at the short clip to see what else he does!

4. Watercolor Drawing Tutorial

This tutorial is a great way to familiarize yourself with different tree forms and represent them as a very simple three-dimensional shape within seconds. I wouldn’t hesitate to try out this technique, as it is so quick to do. Once you have mastered this, you can try out a more advanced tutorial, such as this from the same watercolor artist.

WATCH >>> How to Paint Tree Studies in Watercolor – Basic Shapes

3. Aquamarkers Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Painting a tree with Aquamarkers – tutorial

https://youtu.be/bB0-GviPp5w

I have never come across Aquamarkers, but being a watercolor fan, watching this tutorial, and seeing how versatile the medium was, I would definitely like to give them a try. Coming in third place in this article, it is incredible how a few lines made with these Aquamarkers can be blended with a watercolor brush to give a smooth painting finish. It is easily achievable and in my opinion, should become must-have equipment for landscape architecture students!

2. Pastel Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> Moody Views trees in pastel

Earlier on, I showed you a tutorial to create a brightly colored drawing using chalk pastels. This one is using pastels in a different rendering technique – more subtle and dream-like. Again, the end drawing looks phenomenal yet I am in awe of how easily anyone can re-create this effect!

1. Pen and Ink Drawing Tutorial

WATCH >>> How to Draw Trees | Pen & Ink Drawing Tutorials

This is the most comprehensive, all-around tutorial with tips on strokes, form, and showing light and shadow. If you do not have time to watch all ten videos, I highly recommend this one. Not only is it great for beginners, but instructor Alphonso Dunn truly gives the opportunity to explore different ways of drawing the trees. His approach is unique and can be easily applied when drawing on-site, as well as at your drawing board.

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There you have it! After reviewing the above tutorials, you may have noticed that I described many as “simple”; I admit that the mediums may have been different but the level of difficulty did not seem to be so high. You can say that the artists have made it look so easy but I think we can all achieve it and eventually develop our own styles. They all started with scribbles and strokes but ended up with elegant tree drawings.

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