Tutorial Botanical illustration: how to draw a tree

Learn step by step how to draw a tree starting from references and combining different techniques and processes with Paulina Maciel

Botanical illustration, whether realistic or absolutely fantastic, is one of the most beautiful genres a creative can practice, thanks to its abundance of colors, its ability to enhance our powers of observation and its multiplicity of applications, from editorial design to story illustration, through packaging designs or other graphic needs.

In this tutorial, Paulina Maciel (@pau_maciel), designer and illustrator behind Canela Estudio, explains how to draw and paint a tree from scratch, with a very simple method and using materials available to everyone. Find out in the video below:

1. Sketching the tree

As a starting point, we can take a photo of the tree we want to illustrate and start sketching from it. The first thing to do is to find the basic shape of the plant; to do this, placing a piece of tracing paper over the photograph, start by identifying the different groups of shrubs or foliage that form it.

Just circle the shrubs in a simple way, and then also sketch the branches that connect them to each other. Once the basic structure of the tree is marked, we can start to give it some depth by marking the shadows on the lower part of the bushes; as a general rule, the light will come from above.

Although each tree will have its own shape, with these basic principles you can sketch any of them.

2. Painting the tree

To start coloring our tree, we will start with three tones of watercolor pencils: light tones, half tones and shadow tones. If you don't have the sketch from the previous step, do it now (and if you can do it with a fine mechanical pencil, instead of graphite, better).

Shade the tree with the same mechanical pencil, paying attention to the areas of light and shadow to know in which of them you will place each shade of pencil. The important thing is not so much the details as to get the overall look of the tree; once you have it, start applying the color with the watercolor pencils. You can also paint some of the ground under the tree to give it a little more context.

Once it is painted, using a slightly wet brush, begin to fade the texture of the pencil with strokes going from the lighter areas to the darker areas. Remember, if you don't want the original sketch to show through, you will need to do it smoothly, with very little squeezing.

Did you like this tutorial? Remember that you can learn with Paulina Maciel to discover and interpret the natural world, combining watercolor with nib and graphite, in her online course 'Botanical notebook in watercolor'.

You may be interested in

- Botanical illustration with watercolor, a course of Canela Estudio
- Negative watercolor techniques for botanical illustration, a course by Cristina Cilloniz
- Botanical painting with acrylic, a course by Lucila Dominguez