Thank you for supporting me throughout the years. I especially want to thank those long-time students who have been with me for over 10 years. Sometimes, I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. You have all made this the best 14 years of my life. I hope you all will strive to continue fine-tuning your basic skills.
Since we are celebrating the holidays, I thought I'd give you a simple lesson on how to make a Christmas tree in less than 15 minutes. A few years ago, I sent this card out to my friends and family.
It's simple, fast and festive. Back then, I used watercolor, but today I'm going to use Tombow Dual Brush pens.
Notice that on the left side, the pen has a brush and on the right a bullet tip of the same color. These are highly versatile, water-based pens. You can paint with them as well as illustrate. Be careful though because they are water-based, which means you can experience smearing if you used a wet brush on top.
Another pen brush that I use is the Faber-Castel Pitt Artist Brush Pens. These do not have the same large brush, but can serve as a pen as well as a brush. They are not dual.
Recently, they have brought out the Big brush. I haven't personally used it, but the brush does look considerably larger.
The biggest advantage of using Pitt is the pen is permanent, using Indian ink. So when the ink is down and dry, there's no smearing.
So lets begin with the first marking. Again, I am using the Tombow Dual Brush in this exercise.
Step one
Create the base tree. Here I am using Tombow 177 on watercolor paper, hot press (smooth) paper .Now understand this is a free-style drawing, so one tree will be different from another. Notice to the right I am showing the marks I made, along with a zig-zag.
Step two
Now I added color #493.
Step three
I added #N60 (lt. purple) and #158 (lt. green)
Step four and final
Using the bullet tip #N23 (black), I added some details (I actually used an ink pen #01 but it wasn't bold enough). The trunk was #879 and undergrowth was #177. Finally, I placed red balls, using a red paint pen. In my original I used glitter paint, but no longer have it.
As in real life, no Christmas tree is the same when drawing free-style. But that's the fun part. By the way, for those who want to know the type face I used, it is Papyrus.
I hope this holiday season will bring you all the joy and happiness you deserve!
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