Want to learn how to draw a tree without feeling overwhelmed? Whether you’re just starting out or looking for a simple creative break, this beginner-friendly guide will walk you through an easy step-by-step method to draw a classic tree — no fancy tools or skills needed — it’s just one I made digitally on my phone whilst waiting for an appointment!
Step 1: Draw the Tree Trunk
Start with two slightly curved vertical lines. These lines form the base of your tree trunk.
Tip: Curved lines give a more natural, organic look than perfectly straight lines.
Step 2: Add Branches
From the top of the trunk, extend a few lines outward and upward — these will be your tree’s main branches. Keep the lines thinner as they go out, and don’t worry about symmetry; natural trees are beautifully irregular!
Step 3: Add Texture to the Trunk
Add some quick, light vertical lines inside the trunk to give it a bit of wood-like texture. You can even add a small oval or spiral shape to suggest a knot in the wood.
Step 4: Sketch the Tree Canopy (Leaves)
Now, draw a large fluffy, cloud-like shape around the top of the trunk and branches. You can do this using soft, bumpy lines that form a rounded canopy. Think of drawing a large cotton ball or broccoli top.
Step 5: Optional – Add Ground or Colour
Draw a simple patch of grass or ground under the tree to ground it in space. Then, grab your coloured pencils or markers to add greens for the leaves and browns for the trunk.
Final Touches
Erase any extra or sketchy lines and darken the outlines.
Why This Method Works for Beginners
This approach keeps things simple by breaking the tree into three main parts: trunk, branches, and leaves. No complicated shading or anatomy — just basic shapes and a bit of creativity.
Drawing trees is a great way to relax and practice your sketching skills. Once you’ve mastered this basic tree, you can experiment with different styles — from tall pines to sprawling oaks.
Bonus Tips: Drawing the Branches
To draw the branches, start by sketching a long, slightly curved line to represent the main structure. Then, add smaller lines branching off from it at various angles to mimic the natural, uneven growth of real branches. These offshoots should gradually taper and become thinner as they extend outward. Avoid making them too symmetrical or straight—branches often twist and turn slightly. You can add texture by drawing small, jagged lines along the surface to suggest bark, and include tiny offshoots or buds at the ends to give it a more realistic touch. Using light pencil strokes at first can help with shaping before committing to darker, final lines.
Conclusion
Drawing a tree may seem challenging at first, but with this quick and easy step-by-step guide, even beginners can create a natural-looking tree with confidence. By starting with simple shapes and gradually adding details like branches, leaves, and texture, you’ve learned how to draw a simple tree. Remember, every tree is unique—so feel free to experiment with different styles, shapes, and shading techniques as you continue to practice. With time and creativity, your tree drawings will only grow stronger ;).
There’s a quiet magic in sketching the small, often overlooked elements of nature. Twigs—those unassuming branches underfoot—can become beautiful, meditative studies when you slow down and capture their form with care. In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to draw a simple twig using 0.5mm and 0.1mm brown and gray fineliners, tools that bring precision and subtle contrast to your sketch.
What You’ll Need
0.5mm brown or gray fineliner (for structure and mid-tones)
0.1mm brown or gray fineliner (for delicate detail)
Sketchbook or smooth drawing paper
Optional: A pencil and eraser for light underdrawing
Step 1: Find Your Twig
Step outside and find a twig with personality—maybe one with a few little offshoots, a curve, or visible buds. Even the tiniest branch can hold a wealth of character. Bring it inside or set up comfortably where you can study it with minimal distractions.
Step 2: Light Underdrawing (Optional)
If you like planning your composition, start with a light pencil sketch – I used a brown coloured pencil. Use simple lines to map out the twig’s main stem and any smaller branches. Keep it loose—this is just your roadmap.
Step 3: Lay the Foundation (0.5mm Brown Fineliner)
With your 0.5mm brown fineliner, begin tracing the main structure of the twig. Use steady, clean lines to outline the form. This thicker pen helps define the silhouette and gives weight to the sketch.
Tips:
Let your lines taper slightly at the ends to mimic how twigs naturally thin.
Vary pressure subtly to create organic flow, even with a fineliner.
Step 4: Add Fine Detail (0.1mm Fineliner)
Switch to your 0.1mm brown or gray fineliner to draw the smaller twigs, bark texture, and natural imperfections—like tiny knots, bud scars, or broken edges.
Use short, fine lines or stippling to suggest rough bark.
Let the linework follow the twig’s form—curving and wrapping slightly.
Alternate between brown and gray for visual interest and realism.
Step 5: Shade & Suggest Depth
Use hatching or subtle cross-hatching with the gray 0.1mm fineliner to build shadows. Focus on areas where:
Smaller branches emerge from the main twig
One side is in shadow due to your light source
Bark texture causes dips and ridges
The contrast between line weights and colours will naturally give your twig depth without needing graphite.
Step 6: Final Touches
Now step back. Adjust your linework where needed—maybe thicken the base of a branch, or darken a shadow.
You can also:
Add a soft drop shadow beneath the twig
Label it with the type of tree (if you know it), or note the date/location
These little details turn your sketch into a moment captured in time.
Step 7: Adding Colour (Optional)
Once your linework is complete, you can add a touch of colour if you wish. This step is completely optional, but it can add warmth and more depth to your sketch—especially if your twig has buds, lichen, or a slight reddish tint to the bark.
Brush pens (for subtle blending, if using water-soluble ink)
How to do it:
Apply colour sparingly—let the fineliner work shine through.
Use light, dry strokes to tint the bark and emphasise depth.
Add a wash of muted brown or gray to the shaded side for more dimension.
Remember: The goal is to enhance, not overpower. A few thoughtful strokes can be more effective than full coverage.
Why Use Fineliners For Drawing?
Using brown and gray fineliners instead of standard black brings warmth and softness to natural subjects like twigs. The 0.5mm tip gives structure, while the 0.1mm allows for delicate, intentional marks that mimic the fine textures of bark and bud.
Final Thoughts
Drawing a twig might seem like a humble task, but it’s a powerful exercise in attention and artistry. With just a couple of fineliners and a quiet moment, you can turn something ordinary into a thoughtful, beautiful sketch.
Coloured pencils (variety of browns, yellows, and other earth tones)
Black ballpoint pen
Eraser and sharpener (if needed)
Step 1: Light Sketch with Coloured Pencil
Begin by lightly sketching the basic outline of the tree with a brown or light grey coloured pencil. Focus on:
The trunk and main branches
The general shape of the canopy
The direction and flow of secondary branches
Keep your lines loose and organic—trees are naturally asymmetrical.
Something to keep in mind is the shape and structure of tree branches are typically hierarchical and fractal-like, meaning they follow patterns that repeat at different scales.
SHAPE:
Tapered: Branches usually get thinner the farther they are from the trunk.
Irregular but patterned: While they may appear random, branches often grow at predictable angles and split repeatedly.
Arched or angled: Some trees have upward-reaching branches (like oaks), while others spread out horizontally (like maples).
STRUCTURE:
Main trunk is the central support.
Primary branches grow out from the trunk.
Secondary branches grow from the primary ones, and so on.
The pattern often follows a self-similar structure – smaller branches resemble the larger ones.
Step 2: Define Structure & Texture
Using your coloured pencils:
Layer darker browns on one side of the trunk and branches to define form and direction.
Use lighter browns or yellows for highlights where light would naturally hit.
Use short, quick strokes to suggest bark texture and cross-hatching technique for depth.
Step 3: Cross-Hatching with Ballpoint Pen
Now bring in your black ballpoint pen to add cross-hatching for depth and shading.
Make an outline of the tree, including the branches.
Use diagonal and curved lines to follow the form of the tree.
Cross-hatch in shadowed areas—under branches, one side of the trunk, and where limbs overlap.
Vary the spacing of lines: closer lines for darker areas, wider apart for lighter tones.
Step 4: Add Final Details & Adjustments
Step back and assess your drawing:
Add more contrast with additional pen lines in the darkest areas.
Enhance colour vibrancy by lightly reapplying coloured pencils over some areas of pen hatching.
If needed, use an eraser to lift off excess colour or soften overly dark spots.
Tips
Practice cross-hatching on scrap paper to get control over pressure and direction.
Use the ballpoint pen sparingly in highlight areas to keep the drawing from becoming too heavy.
Combining coloured pencils with pen creates a nice balance between softness and structure.
Final Thoughts
Combining coloured pencils with a black ballpoint pen offers a unique blend of softness and precision in your tree drawings. Cross-hatching adds depth, transforming a simple sketch into a textured, dimensional piece of drawing. Whether you’re a beginner or honing your style, this technique invites you to observe nature closely and express it with your own creative touch. Don’t worry about perfection—each line and layer brings character to your tree. Keep practicing, and soon, your branches will grow with confidence on the page.
If you’re looking for a new tool to add to your collection of artistic mediums, alcohol based markers might be just the addition you’re looking for. Alcohol based markers, also known as art markers, are a relatively new sight on the scene for those looking to enter into ink designing and artworks, often used by a variety of artists, from architects to graphic designers, tattoo artists and professional product manufacturers producing blueprints for new ideas that they’re drafting.
The choice to use these markers, and their notoriety as the preferred tools of industry artisans, comes not only from their versatility and ability to draw both narrow and wide lines, but also their reliability and great creative reach.
Alcohol based marker describes any number of pens, both brand name and generic, being that the name does not describe one method of creating a marker, but rather the main medium used to deliver the ink. That being, of course, alcohol, which dries faster and more evenly than that water used in water-based markers, that can smudge or wrinkle the paper as they dry.
The most commonly mentioned brand of artist marker that is alcohol-based is the notorious Copic marker, though there are many, many other choices in the market that are just as reliable and might actually be better suited for you, often with a much more manageable price tag.
What are alcohol based markers?
Alcohol based markers provide streak-free coverage in order to produce flawless artwork that’s seen in whimsical artwork. The colour dyes used in them provide an even colour lay down, with lovely vibrancy and tonal variation. They can be layered, merged and blended to create varying depth, multi-tonal colours, opacity and a versatile range of shading effects. Alcohol-based markers are not limited to paper, but can also be used on a variety of surfaces, including perspex, glass and even wood.
Another staple of alcohol marker is their reusability – some artists tend to have favourite markers, which can assist in producing repeatable designs, and with most alcohol markers worth their salt, there’s the option to swap out the nib at either end of the marker, and to refill the alcohol and ink, so that you don’t have to toss out your markers as soon as they dry out, saving both on plastic waste and allowing you to keep your lucky pens on hand. Speaking or either nib: many of these markers are actually double-sided, with a brush tip at either end, usually a fine-tipped one for line work and calligraphy, and a broad or chisel-shaped nib at the other end for thicker lines and colouring in linework.
Alcohol-based markers art
Pros of using alcohol based markers
The main appeal of using these markers, at least for most designers, is their vibrant colours, which can be as delicate as watercolour or as saturated as printer ink, drying quickly on the page to create smooth, professional-looking designs. Because of their variety in both colour and line thickness, artists may use them for both lineart and for calligraphy, and, in the period of time before the ink dries, they can be blended easily and with minimal effort.
There are few ways in the art world to feel like a project you’re working on is moving as quickly as you like it to be, and if an alcohol based marker is the desired effect you’re going for, it can make progress feel like an absolute breeze.
Cons of using alcohol based markers
The flip side to using these fast-drying markers is that uncapped markers will dry quickly, and unlike other pens, this dehydration goes not only for the nib, but also for the cartridge, so you need to treat these markers with more aftercare and consideration than you would with normal markers. Cap them whenever they aren’t in use, even while you’re working using several pens at once, and cap them well, making sure that they are tightly sealed.
Similarly, while they do dry very cleanly on the page, they can dry quickly, meaning that you have to be confident in your choices, sometimes working faster than your normally would desire, and their highly saturated, almost unnaturally vibrant colours call for a thick, adequate quality paper or parchment to work on to prevent blotting through. That does mean, however, that streaks are almost never a concern, meaning that your design, once complete, will have the look and feel of a final draft after only a few strokes of the marker.
How to use Alcohol based Markers
So, now that you have everything you need to know about the makeup of the marker, its upsides and its downsides, how can you incorporate it into your designs? Well, they can pretty much be added to everything you can think of, as long as it is of appropriate thickness and quality. So, if you’re a fan of watercolour, which already requires high quality, thicker paper to paint on, you can mix it up by using both watercolour and alcohol markers on the same artwork.
Because these markers aren’t water soluble, it is very unlikely that water-based pigment will interfere or cause smudging in the marker section, making the two an unlikely pairing that goes very well together. Consider, for example, the confident, sharply-defined lineart of alcohol based markers, balanced against the loose shapes and interplay of light and translucence granted by watercolour.
If you’d like to try an exclusively alcohol based marker piece, however, you may also try out calligraphy or word art. Entering calligraphy through ink and brush can be rewarding, but it’s also a bit scary to jump straight into it without much knowledge of how to control or monitor brush strikes to achieve desired results. Trying calligraphy out with an alcohol based marker can be a more approachable start to a new and invigorating field.
Calligraphy with alcohol based markers
Something else that artist markers can be used for is to recreate the strong linework of, say, comic book or Manga art styles, which can be achieved by first sketching out a design on paper, and then recreating it in marker. You can even print out linework, or templates, and then add colour to it using a set of colourful alcohol markers.
As you can see, based on the variety exemplified here, there’s very few things you can’t do with alcohol based markers! With such a unique look and a robust repertoire, if you have an idea in mind, it can almost certainly be adapted to alcohol based markers, just as long as you know how to handle them, and are using the correct methods!
