Chapter 2 | ARMS AND BRANCHES

The arms of a tree grow directly from the trunk. The branches grow from the arms to eventually the finest twigs.

First I show you a simple way how to split a trunk into two arms and then each arm into two branches. First you split the trunk into two arms (left). Then split each arm into two branches. That way you can keep going. With each split, the branches become thinner.

Exercise 1: Try to draw this.

Exercise 2: draw more arms in front and behind each other, nice and complicated (left). There are, of course, trees that grow very differently (right).

In old Japanese drawings I saw a clever and beautiful way to draw arms and branches like waves. I show you how to do it: a new wave grows from every tip or valley of a wave. At the end you connect the waves so that it looks real. If you look at trees in the open air you will probably recognize this.

Exercise 3: Try copying the following four steps.

Draw each step before moving on to the next step.

‘Japanese’ arms and branches in a wave motion

Every tree is different and there are so many species that a draftsman could spend a lifetime working on them. You have narrow, tall, graceful, young, old trees and even trees whose branches fan out almost as wide as a football field. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can draw different types of trees like the climbing tree below.

Exercise 4: If you could invent your own tree, what would it look like?