how to draw a cartoon christmas tree nicely decorated

In this lesson, I will show you how to draw a cartoon Christmas tree filled with accessories, bright colors and ... joy! You will have the opportunity to enhance your illustration using simple tips to create fun shadows and bright lights. Ready? Let's proceed with the first step of this tutorial now ...

Enjoy a license to use this illustration here

Working on the silhouette of the tree

First, you can sketch the silhouette of the tree using mostly short pointed lines. For this lesson, the tree is made from three simple layers. The bottom of each layer is made from small triangles and a large star is drawn on top of the Christmas tree.

Adding lights and baubles

Inside the tree, you can draw baubles using perfect circles. Don't forget to create hooks using short lines. You can also draw lights using smaller circular shapes. Make sure that all lights are forming an imaginary line as shown in the illustration below.

drawing garlands and candy canes

In this step, you can draw garlands and candy canes to enhance our Christmas tree clipart. You can also draw another star inside the main one and sketch lines on the trunk. Good job! Now that all ornaments are created, let's add some colors!

adding plain colors to bring this illustration to life

The tree is filled with a bright green color. The star and the garlands are colored in yellow. The lights and the baubles are filled with various colors like blue, red, yellow and green. The trunk is brown and the candy canes are colored in red.

working with gradients

To create depth inside the illustration, you can use gradients. As you can see below, all three layers are darker on top and brighter near the bottom. As for the garlands, they are yellow on top and orange near the bottom.

bright lights are much better too!

In this step, you can add a small halo around all lights that are available in this cartoon Christmas tree. Even if this is a cartoon version of a tree, adding small effects like halos will increase the level of realism of this drawing.

drawing shadows to create more volume

Now that gradients were used to enhance our Christmas tree clipart, let's draw subtle shadows to give even more volume to the subject. Simply draw new shapes filled with a dark green color and make sure these new elements are partially transparent.

You can draw shadows below the baubles, below the garlands and near the bottom of these same garlands. Remember that all new shapes must be subtle and partially transparent.

adding more shadows to complete this lesson

You can also use the same technique to create more shadows below each layer of the tree and below the star. One additional shadow can be added near the top of the trunk.

good job learning to draw a cartoon christmas tree

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on how to draw a cute cartoon Christmas tree. Feel free to create more versions using different accessories and colors. Possibilities are endless, just be creative and don't hesitate to try new things.

Above, you can see all steps needed to complete this lesson grouped into a single image. Don't forget that there are several more lessons related to Christmas available here. Enjoy! :)