Learning how to draw plants is something people frequently skip over, because its not as exciting as drawing, say, a cool guy with swords. But learning how to draw plants well is something that you can add into your drawings to depict peaceful areas, areas that give a nostalgic aura, or anything really. Plants give off a peaceful vibe that, if added in the right places, give your art a nice touch.

When drawing plants, you need to consider how many kinds of plants there are. There are many different kinds of plants, which all look different from each other. Going outside and studying plants is not only good for your art but is also a calming activity. You can study plants wherever you go, actually. I recommend bringing a sketchbook with you.

intro

All plants, like all things in nature, are imperfect. Not one plant has exactly the same amount of petals, leaves, etc., and no plant is completely similar to one another. No part of plant is identical to each other, not their petals, leaves, branches, or stem.

 

All plants have unique features. Birch trees have white bark, roses have thorns, daisies have small, waiflike petals, moss is weird, cactuses look weird... etc.

 

When drawing plants in an environment, try using the Rule of Thirds. Basically this is used in photographs, painting, and drawings alike. It divides your drawing into a 3x3 grid, and then you try to put whatevers in your drawing in a way that seems interesting. Notice in the drawing I made above, the daisies are on one side of the drawing, and I didnt just obliberate the drawing by putting daisies everywhere? When you make a drawing, you need to give the viewer some space to breath- breathing, yes I know, weird how you give someone space to breathe in a painting. But just like you need space in life to breathe comfortably, you need space in art to let your eyes breathe.

 

Some plants are tall. Some are short. Some are so short that they lack a stem and roots, like fungi, moss, or lichen. These can grow on rocks or buildings or trees, while other plants usually grow on plain ol dirt. Some plants are very tall, like redwood trees. Some plants have flowers. Some don't. Some plants can grow in the desert. Some can grow in the Arctic. Some plants can grow along a wall, like ivy or morning glory or grapes. I know this is beginning to sound a lot like a picture book, but plants are very weird organisms that there are many kinds of them to study and draw.

green

Plants come in all sorts of colors. Plants come in many different shades of green. Some plants are orange. Some plants are blood red.

 

 

 

plant anatomy

yes plants have anatomy too. Plants usually have a root, a stem, leaves, and bulbs. But some plants are nonvascular organisms meaning that they lack a xylem and floem and roots and stuff. These are usually known as moss, fungi or any kind of plant that grows everywhere. Some plants have trunks and branches. These are known as trees. Their trunk is covered by bark, which is brown most of the time, I don't know why. Some tree bark is white or red or yellow too.

 

Trivial plant biology- leaves at the top of the plant which are nearer to the sun are smaller and leaves at the bottom of the plant that receive less light are larger. This is because the leaf needs to absorb more light, so it has more surface area that will capture more light.

 

Some plants are bumpy, spiky, or smooth. Some plants are spiky to defend against predators. Some plants are smooth because it makes harder for insects to latch upon them.

 

When drawing plants, you should try to understand their mechanisms. Being able to draw something is one thing. To be able to understand every little detail of your drawing is another thing. When you're able to look at your drawing and understand why you drew it like that, it's giving meaning to it.

 

Knowing how to draw different types of plants makes your work very diverse and interesting. Having knowledge of different kinds of plants can add to your art style, because plants come in many different shapes and forms which these shapes naturally become part of your style. Its much more than knowing how to draw a pretty flower.

How to draw a plant

On to what you're actually here for. How to digitally draw a plant. Drawing plants may seem boring, but once you understand them you can hop into it, and once you do, it will be interesting and fun. Plants are complicated life forms that have specific shapes and patterns.

When I draw plants, I use a reference. This isn't cheating at all. It's for learning how to draw things correctly. What's cheating though, is tracing. Then you really don't learn much at all.

 

One thing I do is put the background color down first. This avoids the "painted around look" Where, if you put the background on after you've done your subject it may have little gaps and holes in it. Its unattractive, and it's inefficient. It also sets up the mood- does the painting take place during the evening, sundown, or midnight? It helps me determine how the lighting would look, and what mood of colors I use.

Notice how everything in the daytime looks yellow, and everything at night looks purple/blue. This is how I shade stuff. Stuff in the shadows looks more like a dark blue than a black. I don't know why. Stuff in the sunlight looks kind of yellow white.

 

You can apply this to drawin plants too-

The plants at the top look more yellow, and the ones near the bottom are blueish because less light reaches to them.

 

If you're wondering how I did that "glow" effect at the top-

First I put a very, very light blue as the background. Since the sun is flooding the view with light it makes everything including the sky way brighter.

 

Then I add a yellow. Bright yellow, doesn't matter which shade.. just yellow. I slap it on, and then with the eyedropper tool (shortcut "I") I select the sky and with that I add little dots onto the yellow. This is supposed to show the little gaps in the canopy of leaves.

Then I get a yellow green and then I put it inside the yellow. Make sure to leave a border of yellow inside it, because the yellow is meant to show the light hitting the edges of the leaves. The yellow green is supposed to show the leaves that receive less light.

 

Notice how the leaves don't have a defined shape, like they just look like circles? Thats because the camera isn't focused on the canopy. Usually I do this for drawings which focus on a subject below the canopy of leaves, which I did above. When cameras aren't focused on something, they look blurry and their shapes kind of merge together. This the effect im trying to replicate.

first of all i get a fun brush. Like a thick, painty brush. For the ones I drew above I used:

 

Pen => Mapping Pen / no Anti-Aliasation (pixel) / around 50 Brush Size

 

or

 

Brush => Dense Watercolor / around 20 Brush Size|

 

I like these brushes because drawing plants should be like painting- the petals of a flower are much like the strokes of a big brush. A watercolor brush allows me to control the opacity of my strokes, so I can easily define how bright or dark one part is.

 

Then I get a reference. I'm gonna paint a plant sitting near my window.

 

First I sketch the plant.

The plant I'm drawing, I think, is a white edge hosca. Its edges are white, and to achieve that white border look I just draw a rough shape of it and then hone it with green, kind of?? Lemme show you-

 

I can hone down the edges, taper 'em, to a certain thickness. It looks better, its faster than adding them after.

 

After Im done adding the basic colors, I just add the other details. Theres nothing much I can tell you in terms of this besides trial and error, and experimenting with colors.

 

When experimenting with colors, it helps to move around the color wheel. You dont want to shade with black, either. Because most things are more blue than black, since the sky is blue and some science thing. Since the sun is kind of yellow, that means objects with more sunlight hitting them look yellow. Therefore, darker areas of plants, you would want a dark blue-green. Lighter areas, a bright yellow-green.

 

Also also. You also want to move toward the gray part of the color wheel. If you make your plants too vibrant it may look unnatural. A grayish green would look way more natural. Vibrant greens work in cartoony worlds, but if you're drawing realism you should dampen the colors with some gray.

Life and death

Plants are highly symbolic depending on what context you use them. Plants continue to live while animals don't. Trees can live for thousands of years- humans only live for a hundred. One context you could put this in would be a gravesite. A grave of a fallen warrior rests beside a tree. The tree imparts a melancholy feel, because that tree was probably still alive when the warrior was alive. The reader could imagine what events took place while the warrior was alive. Maybe he used to play hide and seek with his friends around that tree. Maybe he got engaged near that tree. But all we see from that picture is someones grave. But we can feel so many things from it.

 

Trees are usually seen as a symbol of peace and serenity. When life as a human gets stressful, we often retreat to nature. Trees give us a sense of peace. They do not ask anything of us. They don't hurt us. All they do is live quietly.

 

Flowers are often seen as fleeting beauty. Flowers exist for very short moments- they bloom in the spring, and die as winter arrives.

 

Ivy growing on a statue give the viewer a feeling of melancholy. How old is that statue, now that ivy has grown all over it? Who built the statue? It can also give the viewer a feeling of life and death. After humans have died, Plants will grow over our cities and creations after we are gone. Its what happens eventually- things break down into soil, which plants can grow from, continuing the cycle of life.

 

This is the importance of plants in art. They are capable of conveying so many emotions.