Swirly Tree & Squiggle Bush Fun & Easy Step-outs

If you are looking for the Life Imitates Doodles Weekly Wednesday Giveaway #17 , you can find it here.

You might remember this drawing I did a couple of weeks ago. It gave me ideas – that can be a dangerous thing, but this time it was good.

Usually, my Fun & Easy Step-outs are based on shapes, but today’s Squiggle Bush and Swirly Tree are based on lines. Curving lines to be exact.

Watch on video:

And read as well.

Squiggle bush is based on a series of repeating squiggles. You can line ’em up, alternate them, dab ’em around at random, outline a bunch, vary the size, and use them to form all kinds of shapes. You get a lovely texture, no matter how you use the squiggle.

Swirly Tree is based on a series of curving lines that end in a swirled loop. The straighter parts of each line create the tree trunk, the curved ends create long branches and these are covered in small looped lines that create branch and leaf.

You can vary the number of curved lines and their lengths. The same can be done with the looped leaves.

The swirly tree and squiggle bush work well together because they are both line drawings.

You can vary the look of the trees with larger ‘fruit’ loops, and by differing the length of both trunk lines and looped leaves. Alternating the lengths at random creates a different look than alternating them evenly – one long, one short, one long, one short, etc.

If you draw a line, complete the closed loop and then continue to draw an inside line, you get a tentacled look .

Since these two step-outs depend on line, coloring them is a little different. You can color a shape, and then draw the lines. Here I used metallic brush pens to draw the squiggle bushes and trees AFTER I had colored the tile with fluorescent mildliner brush pens.

Notice the very faint purple squiggles in the pink, suggesting bushes in the background. Instead of long, solid lines, I broke them up to create a more natural looking tree trunk.

Tip: I felt the sky was too streaky, so using the same color pen, I did a series of swirls. This creates a textured sky that suggests wind. Doing this doesn’t hide streaks, but they become part of the texture, adding to the work rather than detracting from it.