The 2-Letter Trick That Makes Watercolor Trees Look Effortless

I learned this trick in elementary school and it's still stuck in my brain. We had finished our art project for the day and our teacher was showing us some drawing tricks on the whiteboard. This one has stayed with me ever since. 

The other day I picked up a paintbrush to paint a tree with no leaves on it (great practice for fall and winter landscapes, by the way) and that same trick came right back to me. Except with paint, it's even easier.

If you've ever stared at a blank page trying to figure out how tree branches are supposed to work, this one's for you.

Why Tree Branches Trip People Up

Branches feel like they should be complicated. There are so many of them, they go every direction, and no two trees look the same. So it's easy to assume you need some kind of special drawing talent to make it look right.

You don't. You need two letters.

The Trick Is Just a "Y", Then a Bunch of "V"s

Start with your trunk. Keep it on the shorter side, wider at the base and a little skinnier as it goes up. You're not trying to get it perfectly straight either... a little wobble in your brushstroke actually makes it feel more like real bark.

From there, think of the letter Y. The trunk is the long stem of the Y, and the first split at the top is the two little arms.

After that first Y, every single branch split from here on out is just a V. Every time you want a branch to split into two, you paint another V. Wide at first, and skinnier and thinner the higher and further out they get.

That's genuinely the whole technique. If you can draw a Y and a V, you can paint a tree.

It's one of those beginner watercolor skills, like the ones I walk through daily inside the Watercolor Confidence Course, that feels way more complicated in your head than it actually is once someone shows you the shape behind it.

Why It Works So Well With Watercolor

Here's the part I really love about doing this in watercolor instead of pencil or marker. Because it's wet, you naturally get all kinds of variation in value... some parts of your branch dry darker, some medium, some almost disappear into the lightest wash. You don't have to do anything special to get that effect. You just need enough water in your brush.

If you use too little water, your branches can look scratchy and thin. Load up your brush more than feels natural and let the water do some of the work for you. This is one of those small things that separates a tree that looks flat from one that looks like it has actual depth to it, and it happens almost by accident.

If you're wondering what kind of brush is even worth using for something like this, I talk through that kind of thing in another blog post: Water Brush vs. Regular Brush: Which One Should You Use for Watercolor?

Making It Feel Even More Real

Once you've got your Y and your Vs going, there are a couple small things that push a tree from "fine" to "wow that actually looks like a tree."

Vary your branches. Not every V needs to be the same size or split at the same height. Let some branches bend, let some end early, let some keep going.

Let branches overlap. Real trees don't leave tidy space for every branch. They crisscross and grow into each other. So don't be afraid to paint a branch going right through where another one already is.

Leave a few gaps. Sometimes a branch just kind of disappears, like it's overlapped by another one you can't fully see. It's a small detail, but it reads as realistic, and it also leaves you room to tuck in leaves later if you want to.

You Don't Need It to Be Perfect

This is just a painting. It's a representation, not a photograph. It doesn't need to be exactly realistic to be good. Some of my favorite trees I've painted are the wonky, bent-over, funny-shaped ones, because that's where the personality of the piece really shows up.

If you want to see this whole thing in action, from the first line of the trunk to the last little twig, I walked through the entire process in this YouTube tutorial. It's one of those tutorials that's genuinely easier to just watch once than to overthink.

And if this is the kind of small, doable painting practice you've been wanting more of, that's exactly what I built the Watercolor Confidence Course for... 30 short daily lessons that build on each other, so you're never staring at a blank page wondering where to start.

For a slower, more guided version of this same idea, my Watercolor Workbooks walk you through pre-drawn pages so you can practice a skill like this one without having to plan the composition yourself.

So what?

You don't need to be someone who's "good at trees" to paint a good tree. You need a Y, a few Vs, a decent amount of water in your brush, and permission to let it be a little wonky.

That's it. That's the whole trick.

If you give this a try, I'd love to see it. Tag me on Instagram or send me a message, there's nothing that makes my day like seeing someone else's version of this.

Happy painting! -Alyssa