In this Affinity Designer tutorial, we will draw evergreens for the holidays. Of course, there are so many types of evergreen trees. In this lesson, we will draw the long needled evergreen, such as the Ponderosa or Scotch pine.

If you look closely, you will notice that the needles on an evergreen tree are not all the same color. So our first task is to choose three shades of green for our tree needles. As the branches will be mostly hidden, we only need one color of brown. In the example, I used these colors.

Light Green - 4DD281
Medium Green - 14AD5E
Dark Green - 1C804D
Brown - A65959

We will draw three lines in each green color. Next, we will add them together to create a single sprig. Finally, we will draw a brown branch and place the sprigs along the branch.

Open Affinity Designer and let's get started.

1. Start a new document that is about 1000 x 1000 pixels at 144 dpi for the web or 300 dpi for print.


2. With the Pen tool, set the Stroke to a green color and the Fill to Null. Set the Width to 5 pt and the Cap to Round. Draw three lines (see screenshot).


3. Repeat the previous step for the other two green colors.


4. Also with the Pen tool, set the Stroke to the brown color and the Width to 8 pt. Draw two lines for two branches (see screenshot).

Now that we have the basic shapes for the evergreens, we can start combining these parts in to a branch of sprigs.


5. For each green colored sprig, rotate the lines so that the tops of the lines are closer together, giving the appearance that they are all part of the same sprig (see screenshot).


6. Join the three colored sprigs together to make one full sprig (see screenshot).


7. Add the first sprig on top of a branch. Move a little along the branch and add another sprig (see screenshot).


8. Repeat the previous steps until you have a full branch. Place the springs at different angles and on both sides of the branch. Let the brown of the branch show in some spots (see screenshot).

Once you have your branch, you can add it too your holiday graphic elements collection (see screenshot), use it in a nice holiday card or in a holiday marketing project.

Index - How to Draw a Holiday Theme Collection of Elements

Affinity (R) Designer screenshots used by permission of Serif (Europe) Ltd. This article is not endorsed by Serif Ltd.