How to Draw Wood Grain

I really enjoy drawing trees, whether they’re live or dead, standing or not. I even enjoy drawing lumber. All of those can involve wood grain, so today I thought I’d show you step-by-step how to draw wood grain.

How to Draw Wood Grain

The Basic Drawing Process

Before we look at the step-by-step, let’s look at the basic drawing process. It’s the same no matter what type of wood you want to draw.

1. Draw the major characteristics. This includes shadows and any surface details like cracks or holes. You can do this while you develop the line drawing, or after you have a line drawing.

2. Decide on the base color. This is usually the lightest color you see in the wood. Look for the brightest highlights. If they are not white, this color is often the best base color.

3. Shade the values. This includes the shadows, but could also include darker colors in the wood.

4. Develop the color and values and add details, layer by layer.

I outlined four steps above, but you don’t have to limit yourself to four. If you prefer to work out a more detailed line drawing before you begin applying color, then you can add that step to the list above.

Step 4 as listed above also combines developing color and adding details. You may want to add the details earlier, and then begin developing color and values.

You may also want to develop the values first with a single color underdrawing, then glaze color over that.

In other words, you can adapt this process to your own particular drawing methods.

Now let’s look at my step-by-step.

About this Project

Here’s my reference photo. It’s a fairly plain sample of wood, but the wood grain is obvious. There isn’t much texture, other than a few cracks, so it suits our purposes perfectly.

Feel free to use this image for your own practice drawing of wood grain, or you can look for your own reference.

Step #1: Creating a Line Drawing

The first step is always a line drawing. The line drawing can be simple or complex, depending on the subject. For more complex line drawings, I usually use plain printer paper and refine the drawing until it looks the way I want it to look. For landscapes, I do a very simple, rough sketch directly on the drawing paper.

NOTE: I chose Beinfang Bristol Vellum paper for this exercise. You can do the same exercise on your favorite paper, but if you use a rough paper (like Pastelmat), it will take longer to get smooth color.

I lightly outlined the picture plane (4×6 inches) with Faber-Castell Polychromos Caput Mortuum Violet. Then I sketched in the two knots and the cracks with Bistre. I didn’t put in a lot of detail because I want to develop the wood grain as I layer. If you wish, go ahead and sketch in the wood grain, too.

This is my finished first step.

Step #2: Choosing the Base Color

I’ve already described in detail how I choose base colors and that description included this sample.

In brief, I opened the image in Affinity Photo, then hovered over the lightest areas with the dropper tool. I then matched the isolated colors to my collection of colored pencils to find the closest match. The closest match turned out to be Faber-Castell Polychromos Ivory.

Step #3: Laying Down the Base Color

Since there are no bright white highlights in this piece, I layered Polychromos Ivory over the entire picture using a sharp pencil and light pressure. I added four or five layers of color with straight strokes to hatch and crosshatch.

Ivory is so light I almost didn’t bother scanning the finished base layer because I didn’t think it would show in the scan. As it happened, it did show up, sort of.

The resulting color is smoother than what it appears below, but I’m thinking I have more layers in these areas than in the rest of the drawing. That is one downside to starting with a very light base layer.

Step #4: Adding Darker Values

Next, I used Nougat to sketch in the dark areas of the wood grain. I used light pressure and the side of the pencil for most of the work.

While I followed the general patterns in the reference photo, I made no attempt to copy them directly. That’s one of the advantages of drawing wood grain. You don’t have to get it exact to make it look good!

Step #5: Defining the Wood Grain a Little More

The next thing I did was use Dark Sepia to darken the cracks and knots in the wood. They’re the darkest parts of the wood, so I wanted to get them solidly established before going any further.

Then I darkened the darker areas of the grain with Walnut Brown. For this, I used the side of the pencil and light pressure to stroke along each dark stripe.

Since the grain has a sharp edge on the right and upper edges, and a soft edge on the left and lower edges, I held the pencil so that the tip was to the right, where it would make a good, sharp edge even held horizontally.

Step #6: Darkening Values

The next step was darkening all the values with Walnut Brown. To begin, I used a sharpish pencil and short horizontal strokes to darken the dark grain areas. The reason I started there was that if I darken all the drawing first, there’s the risk of losing some of the darker grain. So I’ve learned to darken the dark areas first. For this, I used light to medium-light pressure with the tip of a fairly sharp pencil.

Then I used light pressure with the side of the pencil to glaze Walnut Brown over all of the drawing. I did not try to draw even color for this glaze because the wood grain is not even in color or tone. While I’m making no effort to draw an exact replica, I am using the random overlapping pattern of glazing strokes to create some variation in color and value.

Step #7: Warming up the Drawing

After that, I glazed Cream over all of the drawing using the side of a sharpened pencil and medium pressure. Cream is such a light color that I needed to increase the pressure to make an impact with the color.

Then, because the wood itself actually is a bit gray in the darker areas, I went over the darker grain areas with Cold Grey IV. I applied several layers of gray to the lower half of the drawing using light to medium pressure with a sharp pencil.

I started out by scumbling because I thought I wanted soft, even gray. But it didn’t take long to discover that applying color with a horizontal stroke worked much better, even though I continued using the side of the pencil.

In this illustration, I’ve finished the bottom portion with Cream and Cold Grey IV and still need to add the gray over the top half.

Step 8: Darkening Values Again

Next, I used Walnut Brown applied with light pressure and open, horizontal strokes to add a glaze over the entire drawing. I wanted to tone down the yellow a little and darken the drawing.

After that, I used the same color and same kind of stroke applied with medium-light to medium pressure to darken the dark grain.

I continued using horizontal strokes, because I’ve seen that that type of stroke enhances the look of wood grain in the actual drawing. That doesn’t show up very well in the digital format, but I’m very happy with it in real life.

Step 9: Adding Finishing Details

You can take this as far as you like. I’ve already found that I’m losing the ability to add more color to the drawing because it’s on Bristol. Heavier pressure does help, but I don’t want to impress the paper too much.

So I glazed Walnut Brown over the entire drawing using the side of the pencil and light pressure, then darkened the grain again with Burnt Umber applied with medium to medium-heavy pressure. I used horizontal strokes with both colors.

Then I darkened the cracks with Burnt Umber and Black using heavy pressure.

To finish, I used transparent tape and a stylus to lift a bit of color on the lower edges of some of the larger cracks as shown in this detail. To do this, I held a short piece of tape over the drawing and used the stylus to stroke along each crack. This required medium to medium-heavy pressure.

Be careful if you use tape because you could damage the paper. Bristol isn’t very forgiving when it comes to lifting color with tape!

Here is the finished drawing.

Final Notes

Once again, my intent was not to copy the reference photo. The photo was merely the jumping off point. I followed the general pattern of the wood grain and some of the larger details like the knots. But I also let the pattern develop organically, using the random patterns that developed as I layered one color over another.

I also adjusted the colors to tones and colors that were more pleasing to my eye. If you’re not drawing specific things, then this is a good way to draw. I could use this wood grain in any drawing I care to make and it would look right.

If, however, I was drawing a specific subject that had a distinctive wood grain, then it would be important to get everything as accurate as possible. It’s the same principle that goes into drawing any old horse in a field and drawing a portrait of someone’s horse.

How to Draw Wood Grain

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and maybe even tried your hand at drawing along with me.

Drawing wood grain doesn’t have to be difficult if you remember the basic steps and try not to fixate on the specific patterns. Remember, you don’t need to get everything exactly the same in order to draw believable wood grain.

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