Drawing Trees With Colored Pencils

Good Wednesday morning and welcome to the CLASSroom. Hey, look at me! No dies anywhere to be seen. For my project today I challenged myself to create a freehand tree with watercolor pencils. I searched on Google and found How to Paint a Tree with Watercolor Pencils on the Paint Academy You Tube channel. I was intrigued and thought I would give it a try. I was fearful about doing this tutorial for the CLASSroom because I have never been good with colored pencils. I figured you wouldn't mind following along with me to see what could come up with. My tree is nowhere as detailed as the tree in the video but I have to admit I was more than surprised that it was even presentable. I couldn't quite figure out how to get clear leaf details so I used a "scribble technique". LOL!

KC Watercolor Pencil Tree 1

Begin by drawing in a faint tree trunk and then applying the lightest green color to form the outline of the tree.

1 May Green

Apply a medium green to fill in spaces.

2 Cedar Green

Apply a darker green to fill in.

3 Olive Green

Choose a dark blue green and fill in to create more shading and depth.

4 Prussian Blue

Finish the darker shading using a purple pencil.

5 Dark Violet

Fill in the blank spaces of the tree using a bright yellow/green pencil. Apply more the light color on the right side of the tree.

6 Lemon Cadmium

Fill in a portion of the trunk using a brown pencil.

7 Vandyke Brown

Sketch in a few branches in the lighter sections of the tree using the brown pencil.

8 Vandyke Brwon Branches

Apply dark violet to create the shady side of the trunk.

9 Dark Violet Trunk

Apply dark yellow to fill in the trunk.

9 a dark yellow

Using a medium wet brush I lightly brushed over the tree image to wet the color to create a painted appearance.

10 Water 1

I tried to be careful about over blending the darker colors into the lighter colors and creating a murky

11 Water 2

My final step was to scribble green pencil on the ground area. Looking back I probably should have tried to add a bit of shadow on the ground area on the darker side of the tree. Maybe I'll do be next try.

12 Green Ground