Step By Step: Drawing Snow Covered Pine Trees With Pen And Ink

[rahul_jain]

Drawing snow covered pine trees is very easy and fun to do. With simple technique as illustrated below, anybody can attempt them and draw pleasing winter landscapes based on them with pen and ink. So grab a pen and paper and follow along.

Step 1: Draw the Outline

Draw a typical Christmas tree shape in dotted line as shown below. Don't use a hard line for the outline.

Step 2: Drawing the Edges

Use the following strokes to texture the edges.

Correctly texturing edges as shown above is very important as it gives the feel of pine trees to the outline.

Step 3: Texturing Inside

To give a feel of snow, add following marks inside the tree in irregular manner. Snow usually doesn't cover a tree completely and these marks indicate those areas. These help to bring out the feel of tree and snow. The white untextured area is perceived as snow. Relative density of white vs the marks will indicate the amount/level of snow on the tree.

Use the type of shapes as shown above to texture the inside.

Step 4: Texture Trunk and Ground

Trunk can be easily textured using 2 tone technique. Also bottom of trunk near ground is left white in irregular shape to indicate presence of snow on trunk there. This is how easily a snow covered pine tree can be drawn.

Step 5: Add Other Trees

Other snow covered pine trees can be similarly drawn and added per your composition to create perception of depth and visual interest.

Step 6: Finish with Ground and Sky

To create perception of snow on ground, use lines as shown below along with few blades of grass and twigs poking out of ground. A path on the snow can be added as well as shown below. Addition of sky creates a nice backdrop to the snow covered trees.

 

 

 

This finishes this tutorial. Following is another example. Notice that I have used less tone on the trees below to give them more snow covered feel compared to drawing above.

 

 

Following is a more detailed example but the technique used is the same.

 

 

If you find yourself with some time, then grab a pen and paper and try doing some such pen and ink drawings. They provide great relaxation and will help you appreciate beauty of nature in a new way as you will be able to capture and express that beauty through your own interpretation. You can also visit my Free pen and ink drawing tutorials for more information. You can also subscribe to receive my weekly step by step pen and ink drawing posts

 

Happy Drawing,

Rahul

 

[txomsy]

Great contribution. Will go through your site for more examples.

[Misfit]

Thank you for sharing this. I might try it later. Changed cable providers and it’s the usual frustrating experience. Lower bill, but it (Spectrum) comes with a simple looking remote, no clock or any numbers on the cable box.

 

I’m not stupid with tech, but just getting a series record is a pain. It was so easy with Time Warner, but saving almost $40 a month is better.

 

I think I’ll definitely try drawing snow covered trees as you showed, because that would be relaxing and have a positive result. I need that today.

[Misfit]

I just want to add your bark on the deciduous tree looks very much like a real tree

[amk]

Wonderful to see a step by step - wouldn't know how to get started if I just saw the final picture, but I'm going to try this. I love the more-snow-less-tree picture; it really makes me think of snowy days walking in the Pyrenees a few years back.

[morethanjustacat]

So very beautiful! Looks like an illustration straight out of a storybook.