Creating trees in Illustrator

As a child, no doubt a tree was one of the first things you drew, with a brown rectangular block for the trunk and a big green scribble for the leaves. But with companies increasingly keen to shout about their ecological credentials, now's a good time to learn how to create a tree with a computer instead of crayons.

In this tutorial you'll start by taking a photograph of a tree, then trace its natural form and add your own creative touches to produce an eye-catching, contemporary illustration. You'll use a range of Illustrator tools, including the freehand drawing tools, the shape tools and the Layers palette.

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