How To Draw Snowy Trees

Wintry Scenes Part 1- How to Draw Trees in Ink.jpg

Wintry Scenes Part 1: How to Draw Trees in Ink

How many days until a winter festivity, a birthday, anniversary or other celebration in your household? A time of giving.

Well, why not start practising now and create a lovely painting for someone special.

Beautiful snowy landscapes are great painting themes for a winter gift. Even if you live in hotter climes with sharper, warm light - the soft fairytale quality of a snowy landscape with gentle, cool light makes a lovely contrast.

The subject seems simple and once you understand the basics, it is indeed quite straight forward.

I have been fortunate to live in a log cabin in the wilds of Northern British Columbia where this landscape was just outside the window.

I was able to sketch and plein-air the natural wonders around me, the snowy landscape of winter was a feast for the eyes.

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Using Your Tree Studies

For this painting, it is helpful to first study the trees. Here we are dealing with coniferous ones. They offer simple shapes and as long as you have the shape and form in place, you can easily create your own trees without the need of copying anything.

With a pen or pencil on plain paper, try drawing these trees from my field sketchbook to get familiar with the shapes.

Think of the tree as a vertical stick (trunk) with irregular horizontal lines (branches) coming off it as the skeleton shape. Take note that the branches do not all slope downwards as you may think.

In fact, many will point upwards, especially further up the tree where they are smaller and lighter.

The detailed close-up from the second field sketch below shows how the twigs and needles on the branches are depicted very loosely as directional scribble (short, quick movements of the pen, back and forth in the direction of needle growth).

Showing contrast of light and dark branches helps the effect. This takes a little practice - try several to get comfortable with it.

Adding the Snow

Now we add snow into our practice. Not a couple of flakes, but a heap of thick, fluffy, cold snow.

Still a simple drawing, we only indicate the outline of the snow and use shade to show the tree. Such snow is heavy, so be aware of the change of shape it creates.

Some branches slope downwards with the weight of snow, especially at the ends. And more so at the bottom of the tree where the branches get very heavy.

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Try drawing the tree I have sketched. Observe how the snow takes shape in big blobs like melted candle wax. Check how it fuses into the snow on the ground, disguising the shapes of the branches as snow meets snow.

In part 2 of this wintery scenes series, I'll be getting out the paints to create a simple but pretty snow scene. Come and join me!

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