How to Draw a Sycamore Tree

Sycamore tree by Robert A. Sloan

Sycamore trees are interesting, with their half-peeled bark, twisting branches and big jagged-edged leaves. They are a great addition to any landscape in an area where they grow. While it's best to draw from life, here's some details to remember and use even if you have to use photos.

Things You'll Need

• Drawing paper or sketchbook
• Ebony pencil or soft graphite pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• White Verithin or Col-Erase colored pencil, or children's set white pencil
• Photo or real tree to draw from (or copy and adapt my sketches)
• Workable fixative.

Instructions

1. 

   The first step to drawing any tree is to look at its general shape. How tall is the trunk before it meets the crown (the leafy part). Do branches show under the crown? What general shape are they? This drawing is from a photo of a sycamore taken from across the street, because it was about three times as tall as the houses around it. Start with a loose outline of the general shape of the tree. Include any skyholes where there are spaces between clumps of leaves, and show bits of branch or trunk where they're obvious. Don't bother connecting them where they don't show. If you get a line wrong, just leave it, don't erase. Put the correct line in next to it and keep going. Scribble the shadow loosely on the ground around it too.

2. 

   Now look at the tree or photo and blur your eyes a bit, seeing just the shadow shapes of whole clumps of leaves. Start scribbling the shadows in especially on the side of the tree away from the sun -- the sun is on the right for me, so any clumps that come forward will be lighter, anything on the left will be darker. Use scribbly strokes and don't try to draw every leaf. Don't fill in solidly, leave spaces between the scribbles especially in the lighter areas to show tiny skyholes and lighter leaves behind dark.

3. 

   One of the ways you can identify it's a sycamore is to look for great patches of bark peeling off, showing white areas of wood. This doesn't mean the tree is sick or anything. It can be perfectly healthy and look like these branches. Sometimes the trunks can look like this as well, and individual branches can show up stark white against dark foliage.

4. 

   Finally, look close at the shape of the leaves and the vein pattern. Here's a scan of a sycamore leaf showing the vein pattern. When they are massed together, you see points and leaves on edge and folded leaves, but any parts that are flat if shown in detail ought to have the vein pattern reasonably accurate. Edges are pointy, veins don't spring in pairs from the central vein but alternate slightly, and there are two side veins about as big as the central one that go out to the tips of irregular larger areas.

5. 

   Sketch the leaf shape and then draw in the vein pattern with strong strokes to record it. This is my initial sketch of a sycamore leaf, just for its information. What's tougher is drawing veins lighter than the leaf surface around them. But this is a record that'll help you understand the vein pattern.

6. 

   One trick to make veins show up light against dark is to indent them with a white colored pencil sharpened to a fine point. You can also do this indentation with a dried out ballpoint pen or any other type of pointed scriber that doesn't lay down color, but a white colored pencil with a relatively hard core is easiest because the graphite slides right off the white pencil filling the groove. Draw the outlines. Draw the veins in hard with the white pencil or scriber. Then laying the point of the Ebony pencil on its side, shade in softly without pressing hard. Shade over more heavily between the light lines once you see where they are again. The sycamore leaf isn't very shaded unless it's curling, it'll be dark and smooth between the veins if it's fresh. A deep rich green, the back of it is a lighter green with even more prominent veins.

7. 

   Finally, it's good to sketch an example twig to understand how the leaves attach to the branches. Do they zigzag back and forth? Do two leaves come off opposite sides of the twig from the same spot, or alternate, or go around? Do the twigs curve between the spots leaves or other twigs emerge or go straight? These are things you can observe closely and by sketching, when you're putting it all together in a serious artwork, put in something like a branch closer to the viewer as well as the big sycamore in the distance. Do as many different sketches of parts of the tree as you have time and inclination. Be sure to date them and maybe make notes on where you drew them in case you want to return again to paint.

Tips & Warnings

• Whenever possible, draw trees from life as well as photos. You may see something at a different angle than the photo shows.

• Sketch the same tree often in different ways

• Take notes on what the tree is and accompany tree sketches with detail drawings of leaves and twigs and bark texture to keep a useful notebook for developing later serious paintings.

• If you like, also bring colored pencils or watercolor out on your sketching excursions to take color notes for later painting or serious drawing in the studio.

• Spray workable fixative on your graphite or Ebony pencil sketches afterward to preserve them and keep them from smudging. Even in a sketchbook, they can get blurred from handling.

• Don't work from photos without either taking the photo yourself or getting the photographer's permission. It takes a lot of skill to create art so different from the photo that it doesn't violate copyright -- though if you must, then try to combine multiple photos and change things deliberately to avoid infringing copyright.

• Don't spray fixative without adequate ventilation.