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Hi, I'm Jay French from jayfrenchstudios.com, and I'm going to teach you how to draw oak
bark today. What we've got with oak bark, and this is very specific, is that your most
common default, let's get a little trunk in here, is to just do some random scribbling
basically. But oak bark has a very specific look and what it is is essentially like uneven
bricks to the side. So what you want is to get some vertical rows at first, make sure
you don't make them straight. You want some uneven, you want some of them to combine,
and even break away from each other, that one's a little too straight, but that's all
right, since it's only one straight one in there, again we're going to do a combo, this
one's just going to follow, this one's going to come off of that one, this one's going
to go to the edge, and continue, okay, so. You have your vertical lines, now do some
just general separations, again, don't keep them even, you can even do steps because that
is the way oak bark goes. It's not a perfect like brick where you have each row there completely
fifty percent offset, you don't want to do that necessarily, you want to keep it a little
random, see this one's much smaller here. Let's do another step there. Here...we'll
do a real dramatic drop there. And that gives you an impression of the shape. Now from there,
we're only going to do half of it for time, you want depth. What you actually have with
oak bark is that some of the tree actually shows in between some of the bark shingles,
so to speak, the chunks. And we're just going to show that with dark area. Now if you're
doing this in color you can actually get that light color underneath of the bare tree, and
then start adding the shading as well, but from here we're also going to shade, we're
going to have to say a light source that's from the top rind. You want to shade the side
opposite the light source and the bottom, unless for some reason you have an upwards
light source, of each tile or each chunk of the bark. This gives it its depth. And if
you were doing this in color, and you could still do this actually with black and white
as well, you want to get a medium shade, and we'll do a real detailed one here. Here's
where we have the tree showing underneath, here's where we have the shadow of the bark.
Then you want a medium gray which is - and here is where you get the classic scribbly
bark look, a medium shade here that leaves a highlight on the sides of the light source.
And that gives you your final depth. If you're doing this in color you'd actually use a darker
shade for the corners here, you might use absolute black or close, a very dark shade,
for where the bark chunks are actually shading onto the tree that you see underneath. And
again you can use a light shade, so it's showing just a little bit through the bare tree that's
showing underneath. Then you'd use your medium shade a little randomly, again, just let your
hands shake to get that textured bark feel to the surface of the flat side or flat edge
side on the outside of the bark, and then leave your highlight or go in with a lighter
color of your paint or in pastels. That's a general lesson on how to draw oak park.