One of the best parts about Simple Daily Drawing is the unique individuals who make up our encouraging community of art-lovers… YOU!
The holidays are the perfect time to express gratitude and join in on activities with each other… It’s when families get together, friends meet up more frequently, and we take a step back from our busy, daily routine to reconnect with what’s most important to us.
So in celebration of the approaching holidays, we decided to throw in an extra drawing prompt for you all to do with us – complete with step-by-step instructions if you’d like to follow along! Join Simple Daily Drawing’s Administrative Specialist, Angie Ellis (affectionately known around the office as GiGi), with a “How To” for drawing a simple Christmas Tree below!
Follow along and create your version of Angie’s step-by-step, or take those reindeer reigns in your own hands and create your very own unique Christmas Tree drawing.
Then don’t forget to share your drawings for this Christmas Tree prompt on the Facebook group page – we can’t wait to see what your festive drawings look like!
Here’s what you’ll be creating if you choose to follow along…🎄
Materials Needed:
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Drawing Paper (size of choice)
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Pencil
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Kneaded Eraser
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Colored Pencils
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White Gelly Roller or Paint Pen
I used a 9” x 12” heavy stock of uncoated bright white paper, various Prismacolor Colored Pencils, a standard pencil, kneaded eraser, and a white extra fine point paint pen.
Usually I’d say I’m a reference artist (I enjoy drawing or painting by looking at a reference picture). But this time, this Christmas Tree drawing I’ve created is all me! No reference image used. Nothing fancy about it, but it was fun and I love the way it turned out. If I were to do this again, I would paint it on canvas and add Merry Christmas in a nice font to give away as a gift. Maybe that’s some inspiration for you to try it out 😉
TIP: If you are like me – and use your Prismacolor colored pencils often – you might also dread when it comes time to buy replacement colors… My recommendation is to check out Blick.com.
They have the best prices on single replacement colored pencils. If you don’t have Prismacolor Colored Pencils, you can use any brand – they are just my preferred brand. I would highly recommend them to anyone who uses colored pencils on a regular basis! Ask Santa to bring you some for Christmas – you won’t be disappointed 😉
12 Steps – Draw A Christmas Tree With Me
Step 1
Using your regular pencil, sketch out a simple triangle and a rectangle for the tree trunk. Once you have your desired shape, take your kneaded eraser and lighten your pencil marks.
Step 2
Fun fact: I personally used 9 different shades of green on this Christmas tree (I know… I’m an overachiever ;)) I will name each color in the steps – if you don’t have that many shades, you can vary your pressure to get lighter and darker shades with the pencils that you do have to achieve a similar effect.
For this step, I used a Permanent Green colored pencil.
Start at the top of the tree and make “branches” all the way down your triangle. Start in the top center of your triangle and make a slight swooping motion to one side of your triangle. Take each swoop to just past your triangle outline. Alternate back and forth on both sides of your triangle, repeating the motion all the way down the triangle shape.
Step 3
For this step, I used my Pale Green colored pencil.
Create a rough outline of each swoop you made from Step 2.
Step 4
For this step, I used the Grass Green colored pencil.
Go through and fill in some of the white spaces, making sure to focus on the center line and filling in the bottom more, bringing some of the lines out to give it more depth.
I know it looks rough right now – hang in there! I promise it will be worth it 🙂
Step 5
Basically this step is a two for one… I forgot to take a picture before switching colors. OOPS 🤪
For this step, I first used my Dark Green colored pencil.
Add some darker lines continuing with the sweeping motion and focus on the center. Make sure not to add too much if you’re trying to achieve the exact same look as my drawing – you don’t want to cover up your lighter colors.
For this next part, I used my Lime Peel colored pencil.
Continue using the sweeping motions with a new shade.
(When using Prismacolor Colored pencil in a layering technique you will notice they start to blend together. This is my favorite thing about using this medium. There isn’t a need for a blender pencil).
Step 6
This step is about adding some highlights, filling in and blending where it may need to be blended.
For this step, I used my Chartreuse colored pencil.
Fill in and highlight over spots you feel may be too dark and use this type of color to help soften some of your lines.
Step 7
For this step, I used an Olive Green to really focus on the center of the tree.
Fill in more around the center of your tree and add some swoops of it here and there. To mimic this drawing, you won’t want any white to be showing in the center, so be sure to fill it all in during this step.
By now your tree should be looking pretty good! Take a break…walk away…grab some coffee (or in my case a Pepsi). Come back and look at your art in a different perspective. Do some tweaking if need be.
Step 8
For this step, I used a Light Umber.
Create your tree trunk shape and then color in the whole trunk. If some of your branches come down over where you originally drew your trunk, just color around those branches. Take your color up into the tree a bit.
Step 9
Add some texture to your trunk.
For this step, I used a Dark Umber.
Add detail to your trunk and some shadows to bring dimension. If you have branches that come down around your trunk, this is also the time to take one or two of your greens and fix those branches up.
Step 10
It is time to add the ornaments! I just added simple colored bulbs. You can add whatever you would like – candy canes, a star, or maybe some garland. I just kept it simple.
For this step, I took various darker shades for the bulbs: Tuscan Red, Indigo Blue, Sunburst Yellow, and Purple.
To mimic my drawing, just make circles with your chosen colors and then shade part of the circle. (Yellow can be a tricky color for this!)
Step 11
I took a lighter shade of each of my ornament colors and filled in the remaining circle for each bulb.
(Except for the yellow, I had to go darker with that one. I outlined the yellow circle with a yellow orange and added some shadows).
Step 12
Take a paint pen – or you can use a gelly roller – and add highlights to your bulbs.
(I like using the paint pens because when I use a gelly roller on colored pencil it tends to bind up the roller ball and frustrate me).
And there you have it… A simple, lovely Christmas Tree!
We hope you enjoyed this little bonus prompt as much as we did 🙂
Thanks for joining in on the festive fun – and make sure you share your bonus prompt results from this blog on the Facebook Community Page!