Tree on Cambie Street in Afternoon Light

I'd like to share with you my process for my drawing "Tree on Cambie Street in Afternoon Light".

There's a tree that I've seen many times that happened to be in really nice lighting one day, so I took several pictures of it so that I could make a drawing.

I picked the one with the composition I liked best and then started my drawing. I kept the initial sketch pretty loose, no details, just an indication of the overall shapes.

Then I started the lines. I jumped around quite a bit, being careful about which leaves and branches needed to be ahead of or behind each other. I also made sure to keep the areas with the most detail in the areas that appear closer, and made the background far less detailed.

Once the lines were done I added in my first light ink washes. I made them a little darker than I normally would because I really wanted to make sure I was creating a strong blueprint for myself of where I wanted to add my darker shadows later on.

Once I started adding in the darker ink washes the piece started to really fall into place. I kept layering and layering my ink washes to build up a sense of depth and lighting.

Finally, once the darkest ink washes were added it all came together nicely. I'm not sure how many ink washes I added in the end, but I feel like I got a really nice sense of depth in this piece.

I hope this inspires you to go out and draw and try out ink washes! They are fantastic for making monochromatic illustrations, value studies, and light studies.