Pine Cone Step by Step

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One-Leaved Nut Pine - Step by Step

Although I enjoy drawing flowers I have a preference for more structural subjects such as seedpods, bulbs, pinecones etc, and I have a particular passion for trees.  Following an extremely interesting talk and walk around an arboretum close to my home, I began to work on a project to illustrate some of the rare trees within the collection.  I was particularly drawn to the Pinus monophylla  ‘One-leaved Nut Pine’ which has needles in pairs but that fuse together to become one, hence it’s name.

 

The completed full illustration is featured in publication 'Botanical Painting in Coloured Pencils' by Ann Swan ISBN 978-0-00-727552-6.

1.

For this picture I used Goldline Bristol Board, which I find has an exceptionally smooth surface, perfect for botanical illustration.  The colour pencils I used throughout were Faber-Castelle Polychromos. I made sure that my pencils were sharp, and used either little circular movements or line hatching.  I used only a light pressure, building up colour by layers instead of pressing too hard, just adding a little extra pressure during my final layers.

 

I made a very light and precise outline drawing of the whole composition in an F grade graphite pencil, then with 270 Warm Grey I put in the shadows on the sap that was on some of the needles and pine cone scales, adding 180 Raw Umber to portray the lumpy appearance of the sap. I then used 103 Ivory to burnish over it.  By choosing to do this first, the very pale colours acted as a barrier to resist the darker colours making sure that I didn’t accidentally go over them when applying the darker colours of the rest of the picture.

 

3.

It was now time to link it all together by adding the branch.  Leaving areas of white to show highlights, I used 280 Burnt Umber to put in the shapes of the folds of bark around where the needles were located, adding 175 Dark Sepia in subsequent layers to enhance the colour, and intensify the shadows on the underneath of the branch.

2.

Since some of the pine needles were placed in front of the cone, I decided to do these next.  I used a very sharp 165 Juniper Green for the first layer, leaving areas of white paper to show any highlights.  I then applied 267 Pine Green and 278 Chrome Oxide Green to build up the intensity of colour, adding 157 Dark Indigo to the darkest side of the needles.  

Because of the complexity of the cone I worked each scale separately to start with.  Beginning with 179 Bistre I put in as much detail as I could, making sure that I used the resistance of the cream colour I had applied to the sap to stop it being inadvertently covered over. Using 178 Nougat and 177 Walnut Brown I enhanced the shadow areas and built up the layers until I was happy that the colour matched the actual pinecone.  Using 157 Dark Indigo, I added areas of shadow to the right side of the sap to show its raised appearance.

 

To Finish

Once the composition was complete I left it for a week so that I could come back to it with a fresh eye.  Later on I found that I could put in a lot more contrast throughout the whole picture, especially in the really dark shadows deep inside the pinecone.  I did this by using more Dark Sepia and 157 Dark Indigo. 

 

Just one last step to make the picture come alive by adding a few shadows to the needles where they crossed over each other, and where their shadows fell onto the cone.