How to draw a Christmas tree

Six frames, a decorated tree with presents underneath. The tiers arrive by size and already decorated, the star halfway, the presents last.

Almost everybody draws a Christmas tree as a triangle, and a triangle is a perfectly good Christmas tree. This sheet builds a slightly better one, made of separate tiers of branches, and the extra effort is small: instead of two straight sides you get an outline that steps in and out, which is what an actual fir looks like.

Frame one is two tiers rather than one, and they are not the bottom ones: the sheet takes the two largest branch shapes wherever they happen to sit, so the tree grows outwards from the middle rather than upwards from the base. Each tier arrives with its baubles, its stars and its string of lights already on it. Draw each as a shallow shape with a scalloped or zig-zag lower edge rather than a straight line. That edge is the single change that moves the drawing from symbol towards tree.

The remaining tiers fill in around those first two, largest first, each narrower than the one below it and overlapping it slightly. The overlap is what stops the tree looking like a stack of separate hats. This tree has five tiers; three or four is plenty on one of your own, and more than that gets busy without getting better.

The tiers should not step in by equal amounts. A tree that narrows evenly from bottom to top is a cone with notches; one that narrows sharply near the top and gently near the bottom looks like something that grew. It is one decision, made once, and it costs nothing.

There is no trunk on this tree: the lowest branches meet the presents and that is the end of it. If you draw one, keep it short. A visible trunk with a lot of daylight around it makes the tree look like a lollipop — just enough to show below the lowest branches, and a base or a pot underneath if you want one.

The star goes on in frame three, halfway through rather than at the end, and it is worth drawing properly rather than as a scribble. A five-pointed star is easiest built from a small circle with five evenly spaced points around it — mark the five positions first, then draw the points. Freehanding one directly almost always produces a star with one sad short leg.

The baubles do not come last — every tier arrives already carrying them, which means the scatter is decided the moment you draw a branch. The temptation is still to fill the tree. Resist. A scatter of circles, varied in size, more of them low down than high up, and a few of them overlapping the branch edges rather than sitting neatly inside, reads far better than an even distribution.

The sheet varies what hangs on the tree and that is worth keeping: round baubles, flat five-pointed stars and the small oval bulbs of the light string, rather than circles alone. All circles reads as a pattern; a mix reads as a tree somebody actually decorated. The variation is what makes it look like an object rather than a diagram.

The lights are already here, looping across each tier as a line with small bulb shapes along it and disappearing behind the branches in places. That last part is the bit worth copying carefully: a garland drawn entirely on top of the tree looks stuck on, and one that goes behind and comes back out sits in the branches.

The six frames run from the largest closed shape to the smallest, which here means the widest tiers first wherever they sit, then the star, then the presents and the last few baubles. Three of the six frames are spent on the wrapped boxes under the tree, and they are as much of this drawing as the branches are. It is an easy order to copy and it is not the correct one; starting from the star and working down is a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026662 words