Foliage Help?

I'm drawing a picture, but a problem occurs to me. How are leaves done? Individually, they're easy, but as a group I can't seem to get it right. Does anybody have any hints about this for me?

Hit me if I'm being too obvious, but have you tried photo reference for the specific plant?

Well, I can see trees, but I don't pay attention to individual leaves, and I definitely don't want to draw individual leaves either.

If the trees are in the background of your piece (or are far away) try just shading around the branches, adding dark spots where the light source doesn't reach. If you're using paint, try dabbing different shades of green according to where your light source hits.

I'd also look at photo reference of trees for the specific layouts of the leaves, to see what looks most natural to your piece and what looks best.

Good luck!



~ Lishie

Momo beat me to it.

I would also suggest looking at trees. It's not about looking at the individual leves but about looking at the pattern of colours, darkness and light, and see how the colour "flows".

Thank you so much for the advice. I'll give it a shot.

Little dabs and shading does work. Also pay attention to the shape of the tree. Obviously a pine is not shaped the same as an apple tree or a weeping willow. Depending on the type of tree, don't forget to leave a few spaces that you can see through.

For the actual picture referenced, what I did was I adopted a purposefully sloppy coloring style throughout the picture. The leaves, in the this case, were a swarm of forwards and backwards Cs, and the entire thing turned out fairly well, I thought.