Saturday 2 August 2008

3 Free Places With Lessons On How To Draw Fantasy Art

In doing some research in the world of drawing fantasy art, I have built up several sites that have free lessons on how to draw fantasy art that I often visit from time to time, when the inspiration needs to be helped along it's way.

And these sites really are of use if you find yourself in a bind or have reached what is termed as artists block, the art resources that these sites present is very top notch stuff and it also inspired me to do some of my own drawing tutorials too.

The first one at the fantasy art school has some great resources on how to draw various fantasy art characters, creatures and the classic fantasy icons like dragons, goblins and unicorns.

About.com has a good section on drawing fantasy art and dragons from fairie art to dragon drawing, this site has lots of good quality free links and content resources on how to draw many aspects of fantasy art, so get learning the basics.

The Fantasy Art Resource Project at Elfwood is by far one of the best sites together with fan artists and volunteer artists who contribute to the sites resources, alot of topics in fantasy art are covered here at Elfwood including some useful digital art articles of note with photoshop.

Drawing Tables For Fantasy Artists

Over the years of drawing, I have been meaning to get a drawing table or drawing board, as they look very professional and can make it easier for drawing and create a nice workspace for drawing, instead of hunched over a flat horizontal desk which I have done for years, so I began my small research to find one online and there are lots to choose from, but I have narrowed it down to a few sites, and I thought I'd share these with you.

The first place I found early on in my search for a drawing table was
Graphics Direct

And I came across the Rotring A2 Drawing Table

The Rotring A2 Drawing Table

I was impressed by the price, and the feature of being able to draw at 3 different angles, so I noted this down and moved on, maybe I could have one imported from another country, this may be more expensive, but I thought it was time for a drawing table to sort out my workspace, I soon abandoned the notion of importing one as it would probably quite costly , especially as I could get one cheaper in the UK where I live, so on with the research.

The next one I found was at Blundell Harling an A2 size one just like the previous, but it appealed even more than the first drawing table, the price was lower for one and this one had a transparent surface so the drawing area could be illuminated from the back, which provides possibilities for some great tracing work, and unlike the previous A2 Rotring drawing table, this adjusted to four angles for ease of drawing.

The A2 Truelight Drawing Table

By now I was a bit of a mess, as they were both good quality drawing tables, so I decided to find one more on my research, which took me to...

The A2 Bertram Drawing Board at the Art Drawing Office was by far the cheapest and looked fairly similar to the Truelight Drawing table.

The A2 Bertram Drawing Board

I made a decision on which one to buy and that was the Truelight, as it had some more functions I could use as an artist, the tracing utility of the transluscent drawing surface sold me, so I ordered this drawing table the other day and just cannot wait to start my drawing and sketching on this table.

Thursday 31 July 2008

Finding Inspiration In Others Artwork



This piece of artwork by Rob Sheridan really jumped out at me and it really inspired my own work, I often like to see what other artists are doing out there, and plus in this piece the aliens look really sinister and everyone likes aliens right?

In fact seeing what our fellow artists are creating right this very minute could be an excercise to do in between your drawing chores, so do this now and see how you can create some better art.

See the Post it project for some quick sketch inspirations on those little office post its!

Tell us what you found out in the comments below!