Drawing a wooded area with pen is one of my favourite activities as pen lines and texture is ideally suited to depiction of foliage and texture of a wooded area. My pen and ink drawing workbook vol 5 goes in detail about drawing wooded area with pen and ink. Here I will demonstrate a simple technique for drawing a wooded area. So let’s get started.
Step 1: Draw Initial Foliage
Use open loop stroke as shown below to create initial layer of foliage. Strokes and techniques for drawing foliage is discussed in detail in drawing tree foliage tutorial.
Step 2: Add Second Foliage Layer
Always draw an initial overall light foliage layer as shown above and then darken it in layers. This ensures that you always have feel for tonal contrast in your drawing. Don’t try to put down the final tone right away in a specific area. Add more strokes to darken the foliage.
Step 3: Add Tonal Contrast
To add depth to the foliage, it is very important that there is tonal variation in the foliage. Darker areas are perceived in the background and lighter areas are brought forward. Foliage with uniform tone appears flat. Add more strokes in irregular manner to add more tone and tonal variation to the foliage.
Notice how foliage above has more feel of depth due to some darker areas compared to foliage in step 2.
Step 4: Add Trunks
To bring out feel of wooded area, add trunks in bottom of foliage as tapered dark. Make it irregular as shown below. This brings out the feel of wooded area.
Step 5: Finish
A wooded area like above can be used in many different settings in different compositions. Here I have created a winter setting around it by indicating snow but by using grass and other elements it can be used for different landscapes as well.
This completes this quick tutorial. To learn more about drawing different kind of wooded areas, pl. consult vol. 5 of my pen and ink drawing workbooks. This FREE tutorial also has video demonstration of drawing wooded areas.
Do share this in your social media and with others of similar interest.
Happy Drawing,
Rahul
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