Drawing A Simple Tree House
Art Lessons at Grandpa’s House
It’s been a long journey through the woods, but every minute there is something new and beautiful to experience. The cool autumn wind is rustling the leaves in the trees, little creatures poke their heads out of their holes. As we near the other edge of the forest, we can see the sun setting over the horizon, the night is beginning to set in. In the distance, warm light is glowing and the smells of fresh-baked pie are wafting through the air. As we get closer, we see one lone tree in a beautiful field of grass and colorful mushrooms. We follow the path up to the door and leave a few gentle knocks…
Grandpa answers the door! It’s the perfect time to share a delicious slice of pumpkin pie and begin our weekly art lesson. Today we’re learning how to draw a simple treehouse!
In reality, this is a bit of historical fiction. My grandpa, or Poppy, was in fact a skilled artist and woodworker. However, he passed away when I was a baby so I never got to learn from him directly. I’m left with the pictures painted by the colorful stories my grandma, Mema, told us about their lives. Sometimes it’s fun to dream about what could have been.
Hot Tip: Experiment with Types of Trees
Here’s your drawing an easy treehouse tip number 1: play with different types of trees. If you’re going for a more realistic look there are over 60,000 species of trees for you to choose from! The beauty and freedom of artistic choice is that you can take all of those 60,000 species and mash them up, stylize them, or create your own. The options are endless, so decide how you want your piece to feel and go wild!
Before and After Spotlight
I’m pretty sure this started as me cleaning out my crayon drawer to test colors and I just ended up dropping a doodle on the scratch page. If we’re being honest I’m not sure when I did the original, but let’s assume it’s been about a 7-year trek through the forest.
This was my second before and after drawing, maybe my third drawing created with ink and Prismacolor Markers. Overall, I’m really proud of myself. Drawing this treehouse was a fun experiment in finding new ways to draw leaves and the trunk. I like the way the shading and shape came out. I’m also pretty proud of the grass texture and shading.
One thing I wanted to carry over from the original doodle was the swirly sky. I’m constantly on a quest to find the best way to fill large background spaces with the markers without getting that streaky marker overlap thing that happens. The swirling sky was a fun and interesting way to blend colors without having to drop a couple of markers worth of ink into a hopeless blending mission.
Hot Tip: Find the Balance Between Cartoon and Realism
When I began doodling, my drawings were always extremely cartoony and flat, like a coloring book. As teachers, friends, the internet started pointing me in the direction of shading and light I set out on a quest. I discovered realism and I wanted to own it. I wanted to own it so hard that I could imagine things and draw them with perfect realism down to the pores in the bark of trees. After copying image after image, I’m proud to say I got pretty freaking good at it. I also got pretty freaking bored. I wanted to create magic, colorful worlds. The limitations placed on my projects by what actually exists put a hitch in my giddy-up. So after paying this dude a couple of hundred dollars to show me that realism was just really looking at an image and copying it like a printer in the slowest way possible, your girl was out.
I took the knowledge I learned from all of the realism practice, the shading, color blending, attention to detail. I utilized them in the more stylized graphic work I do today. This gave me room to make up whatever the heck I wanted, in whatever colors I wanted, with no limits. So learn the techniques but determine how you want your art to look and go for it! Find that perfect meld between making things look real and imaginary. That perspective switch can change the whole game.
The Process
Admittedly, I created this drawing a couple of years ago, so I don’t have a super detailed process to relate to you.
What I do remember, is that my biggest struggle was figuring out what to do with the sky. I really liked the swirly vibes and the trick to clean lines without ink or pencil is to sketch the lines lightly with a pencil, color the areas in between without touching the pencil, then erase it out. This will leave the white lines between each swirl.
I also remember figuring out the best way to color the grass and I opted for the million tiny lines strategy. Still not my favorite in practice, but it has a really effective result!
This was the first time I mixed my gel pens with marker and I kept doing that through almost all of my future pieces! I love never knowing when a whim is going to turn out to be something you fall in love with.
Hot Tip: Don’t Add Individual Leaves to Your Tree House
Drawing leaves as big blobs will save you a ton of time!
Drawing trees appears to have been my jam, you’ll see they come up quite a bit in my work. Here’s one giant mistake I always made: I thought you had to draw each leaf individually. I would sit there, painstakingly draw each leaf, and wonder why my trees looked like a broom with speckles.
When you’re drawing your treehouse, especially if it’s a bit more cartoony, stylize the leaves in big leafy blobs. Don’t worry about how each leaf connects or how close they are to each other. Start with the large leaf area shape. Add texture to the outline, then draw in a few detail areas within the blob. Extra points if you leave some spaces in the blob where the sky breaks through the trees, but that part isn’t necessary.
There you go! I just saved you a whole bunch of time and you’re going to have a much better result!
Close
Art is all about learning and experimenting. There’s not always a clear cut path to creating the thing you see in your head. Often, the limitations of the materials take you in a direction you never meant to be but end up enjoying so much you adopt it into your technique for the future. Taking something and making it more beautiful than it was when it started out is the mission, but using limitations to find new ways to succeed is the adventure!
So go over the river and through the woods. Take it all in and see what magic treehouse drawing you can create!
Want to bring some tree house magic into your home? Check out my print shop!