TUTORIAL: DRAWING TREES WITH FACES (PART 1)
::Lots of images to load, have patience!::

By special request, here is a sketching tutorial about trees! I made this while camping, so there might be some lighting weirdness in the photos.

In order to draw trees with faces (aka Hamadryads or Ents), it is first important to be able to draw trees! I recommend going out with your sketchbook and sketching different kinds that you might find in your environment first to get a feel for how they are constructed. Each species of course is going to have a different shape and branch style, and you'll probably develop your own favorite styles to sketch in. When I draw trees I like to just have fun with them and don't think much about where I'm going with it. They evolve on their own in a way, which makes them relaxing to sketch (and no two are the same). I think it is a good idea to doodle them often!

Grab your paper and pencil! In general, the majority of my trees start just like this. Two parallel, irregular lines that are wider on the bottom than they are on the top. I like to make most lines in a tree rather bumpy like this, since most trees have a lot of bumpy features in their bark. Though, not all do!

Here is the first larger branch. All I've done is split off one of the original trunk lines and then split that again. More or less all of the branches and twigs will be made this way, simply splitting off from lines I made earlier.

More of the same. As you can see I've split this second main branch even further.

As I go along splitting off branches, I like to overlap them by putting some of the new ones behind the old ones. If you are new to overlapping, you can just draw them right on top of the earlier branches and then erase the lines that cross over eachother.

Here I've finished out the main branches. Notice the continued overlapping to give it some depth.

Now it is time to have even more fun by splitting off tiny twigs. These are made the same way as the larger branches, just skinnier. Some are so thin that they are just a single line that splits. For the kind of tree I'm sketching here there are small branches that come out of the base of the tree. Many trees do not have these, but I like to draw them.

>>Part Two!

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