How To Draw Pine Trees (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

With winter fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, I’m finding myself wanting to draw more outdoor forest scenes and trees, so I’ve made this little guide to share my simple tips for drawing pine trees!

I draw quite simplified versions of pine trees, but there are lots of different ways to draw them, and of course you can add decorations to make them feel Christmassy too 🎄

Pine Tree Style 1

Let’s start with a simplified tree - just a basic outline with some definition in the middle.

Start with a tall triangle (curve the bottom a little), with a vertical line down the middle.

Using the triangle as a guide, start at the top and trace down each side with ‘J’ shapes so that you get an outline similar to mine. I like to make the bottom lumpy to suggest lots of drooping leaves.

Throughout the middle, add lots of 'U' shapes to give some definition to the tree. You can join some together in sets of two or three and spread them out to feel random.

Pine Tree Style 2

This style is really similar to the first one, but with a bit of extra shaping in the second step.

Start again with a tall triangle for a guide. You can experiment with how tall or wide this shape is to add variety to your trees.

Using that shape as a guide, start at the top and trace down one side about ¼ of the way or less. Do the same on the other side so that you have an upside down ‘V’, and then join the two bottoms with lumpy ‘U’ shapes like I have. Do the same thing another three times until you have four segments like in my example.

Now fill in the empty spaces with little ‘U’ and ‘W’ shapes to suggest groups of leaves on the tree.

Pine Tree Style 3

I think this style makes for a great Christmas tree - you could add a star on top, some lights and a few baubles!

Start with a tall triangle with a vertical line down the middle to act as a guide.

This time, we’ll roughly trace around the shape of the guide with a bumpy line, with the bumps angled upwards.

Now we can fill in the middle like we did with the other trees, but with all of the lumps and bumps pointing upwards or out towards the sides.

Pine Tree Style 4

If you prefer a minimalist style or just want to draw the branch structure first, you could try this style.

Start once again with the tall triangle guide.

Draw a vertical line from the top tip to just below the base of the triangle. From this main trunk, draw smaller lines toward the edge of the guide triangle. I like to angle them upwards slightly, and I try not to go outside the lines of the guide.

From those branches, draw some smaller lines out at a small angle to look like little branches and fill some of the empty space.

Adding Colour

Now that we’ve got some different styles of pine tree, we can colour them in! Here are a few ideas for colours with a palette that you can download below.

There are lots of different types of green that you can use for pine trees - you can try warm greens which are closer to yellow on the colour wheel, or you can try cool greens which are closer to blue.

Building A Forest

If you’re drawing a scene with a forest you can simply draw lots of trees (slightly differently so that they aren’t all exactly the same), and then add a little bit of depth by drawing trees that are further back a little lighter and less saturated.

When things are close to us they appear vibrant and detailed, but as they move further into the distance they start to look faded because of all the atmosphere, fog or snow that’s in the way.

I have a video for Beautiful Bluebells about adding depth to your art that goes into this concept a little more, you can click here to watch it.

I hope you enjoy drawing these trees! They look lovely in winter forest scenes or dressed up for the festive season 🎄✨