Tuesday 18 May 2010

Subscribe To Fantasy Art Inspirational Resources

If you have previously subscribed to this blog, you may have to subscribe again as a feed error occured, if not, then why not subscribe now, just click on the orange feed icon at the left of this post or up somewhere in your browser and click subscribe to this feed!

I hope to bring you lots of drawing tutorials and help with drawing fantasy art, so if there is anything that you want covered on this blog, then just let me know.

Thank you.

Wayne Tully

Monday 17 May 2010

Sketch A Dragon - A Drawing Video To Watch

Sketching dragons is a fun thing to do, especially when you've practiced drawing dragons for a few years like me. And there are many dragon ideas that you can use, from Japanese dragons to Chinese dragons to your own custom dragon creatures.

Of course dragons don't exist in the real world so we have to rely on drawing them from imagination, but there are a few animals in the world that resemble dragons slightly and it's these that you can draw inspiration from, such as lizards, ,crocodiles, snakes and some other amphibious creatures, mainly for some of the general physiology of legs and arms, aswell as scaly skin.

Below there is a quick drawing video in which I explore a possible dragon sketch, of course it isn't perfect, but the intitial sketch never usually is, it's more on seeing how to approach a dragon drawing and work out what mistakes you need to correct later on in the drawing stage, so in the drawing video I just sketch a rough drawing of a dragon, nothing final, nothing finished, it's just an example of a sketch of a dragon.

Sketching is what you should be getting used to and finding out for yourself, pencil lines all come together to make a drawing complete and one idea can form the basis of several ideas, try sketching today.

Watch the drawing video lesson for some dragon sketching inspiration.



Also see - Drawing a Dragons Head

Friday 14 May 2010

Drawing Secrets, Are There Really Any Secrets To Drawing?

Drawing secrets, yeah right, I don't think there are any secrets to drawing, as they are all out there in some form or another and further more drawing, you either get on with practising sketching or you don't, because the world of art revolves around you actually trial and erroring the way you work anyway as an artist, so test every medium to find your strengths and your weaknesses and lose the weak mediums, for me watercolour painting is my weak medium, but I will be practicing to try and improve my skills in this area.

There are no drawing secrets because no one is hiding them or with holding the truth behind drawing, it is up to the artist to draw some stuff, as much as they want!! Sorry for this rant, but I am annoyed by the apparent marketing of Drawing as hidden secrets, which they are not, fine, show how to draw something, but do not pretend that there are drawing secrets when there are not, people either choose to learn to draw or they do not, end of!

Now here is a little drawing secret...you what, shut up!!

Sorry about that little rant and rave, now what I want to do with this post is to do something different and to ask you what you are good at drawing, because I thought it would be interesting to see what we are all up to and what we all enjoy drawing the most and so I'll go first and show you my drawing.

You can comment below and add a link to your best art and I will check it out and comment and subscribe and just generally encourage you, as it should be really!

Right now I've been drawing all day as usual and today I have drawn another demon design, but it's for a tattoo and which will be a set of 8 demon head tattoos that will all be the same size and I hope you like it, because this is what I enjoy drawing every time, monsters and demons and other wordly creatures.





Thursday 13 May 2010

Drawing Vampires: Sketching The Figures

When it comes to drawing vampires I do like to sketch out a load of potential figures and poses first to choose from, the process of draft sketching is an important one for the artist as it not only gets you into the practice of drawing in an ordered way it builds your confidence as well with quick sketching, by creating fast ideas right on the page.

We all know what vampires look like with the many horror films that have come and gone and so,it's just a case of deciding on a character idea that you are happy with, I've settled for the woman villager type of vampire (which is based on those classic Hammer horror Dracula films!), dressed in an old style dress or maids out fit, possibly a nightie, haven't decided yet, we'll just see as I start to sketch along with my written words here.

In the following draft sketch I have drawn the full figure of the vampire woman and then done a separate head shot to see a close up of the vampire woman's head fangs and all, you'll notice that a sketch is just the rough outline and will probably be not the final drawing so don't worry about getting it wrong at this stage, because you've got plenty of time to make it work, that's what they made art erasers for!


Hopefully in these web cam shots you can see the vampires drawn figure, together with the close up sketch of the head too and this is the classic way of drawing new characters, a profile head shot with a full figure drawing, of course you'd add other notes along the way like costume colours and things you would change, but it's a start.

I'm going to do a couple of follow on posts for this blog post as I can see it as a small drawing project and a 3 or 4 part series on drawing this vampire so watch out for the next post soon!

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Art Book Review: Drawing And Painting The Undead By Keith Thompson

Drawing the undead and painting them seems a rather brilliant statement to undertake and with the above named book I have been having some fun with the many undead creatures in this book (Drawing them that is!) there are a couple of classics, but there are some undead nasties that I must admit I've never heard of, but they do look like fun to draw.

The book itself is filled with fantastic illustrations of such undead classics as Wraiths, Vampires and undead corpses or zombies, in fact the book gives a rough outline of how the drawings are created from scratch with small sketches that form the basis of an idea and then you can see the progression of the drawing to it's finished form, but this is done in such a way that it inspires you to come up with drawing your own creature of the undead.

The cover of the book, just drew me in when I was going to buy it and who can resist drawing the undead? I certainly couldn't and plus I read some of the reviews on Amazon before I purchased it and some people said it was a good book and I agree, with over 145 pages, each page has a drawing or painted piece of artwork to draw inspiration from.

From the start of the book you are introduced to sources of finding inspiration from outside sources such as movies, comics and books and then with quick overviews in working with digital art and the importance of keeping a sketchbook, then really short, quick overviews of the building blocks such as basic anatomy and then it's straight into drawing a few examples or draw your own and that's what I like about this book is that it doesn't say draw this and that, it just lays it all out for you to absorb what you will and go off and sketch some stuff.

Keith Thompsons art is excellent and you can visit his website here - Keith Thompson, although he does occasionally have help from other artists in the book, but you can see that this guy is a fantastic fantasy artist who likes to draw some horror elements in his work, although I never heard of Keiths fantasy work before and his work I most certainly do now.

Drawing and painting the undead is available to buy on Amazon and I do recommend it if you like to draw all that horror fantasy stuff like me. Check the book out below!

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Draw Fantasy Blog Artwork

Draw Fantasy artwork that I did which at the time had to incorporate a fantasy feel in a way that also included the logo type Draw Fantasy to match the domain name of that blog, also I wanted the pencil drawing to be just this raw drawing that described in a visual of what the blog was about, so as to make it clear.

As you can see in the drawing below, which also has a sword and tree branches which are part of the angry looking face. I wanted this drawing to be a good visual too and I feel I achieved this, although in time I may jazz it up a little. What do you think?

Daily Journal Sketching: Demon Tattoo Idea Sketches

Sketching demon tattoos is a little hobby of mine, ever since I saw those two classic Dario Argento movies Demons and Demons 2 I have always sketched demons at least once a week ever since, demons have many variations that you can sketch out and that's why I like to draw monster creatures and demons are my most favourite to draw, often you can draw just the heads and then work on what the body will look like later on.

Drawing a demon tattoo idea is what I do often and I like to either sketch with pencil the initial idea or I'll sketch a drawing and then ink it to see how the design could look and this is what I've done here with the following few small sketches, tattoo designs are different from the finished versions as the complete tattoo drawings need to be crisper and more tattoo friendly and so that means losing alot of the over top detail that I always add to my comic book type art.


The first demon idea was one I did previous but with a skull in the centre of a flame design and sometimes this works as a standalone tattoo and one that can be re-drawn many times with different creature or head concepts in the centre.

Obviously different ideas can be inspired by other drawings and designs that you do and demonic tattoos are no different, I suggest that you build on the old sketches that you already have, I'm sure you have half finished drawings that could be reworked to create a finished drawing that is much better.

The drawing below was an idea I had whilst watching ghostbusters as it has a ghostly feel to it slightly and although it is just a head drawing of a demon tattoos it can be re-designed at a later stage.


Sometimes you come up with lots of tattoo ideas other times you struggle, but what I do is force myself to draw ideas even when I don't feel like it, because you find you can draw some great stuff if only you set aside some time to get on with it.

The demon tattoo idea below is a variation on the first one, except it has a swirly almost tribal smoke but not quite background design to it instead of a flame design. I did at one time have lots of demon heads all drawn in a massive sketchbook, but to my horror I lost it whilst at college and I still have nightmares about losing that book!

Demon creature sketching is becoming more and more a part of my weekly routine, together with other fantasy things I like to draw, you can find out what the best things you can draw just by practice and lots of it.

Monday 10 May 2010

Daily Journal Sketching: Fairy Sketching

A couple of months ago, my mum requested a fairy/angel drawing that would be coloured as a present for her birthday, which is in under 3 weeks (Yikes!!) and so between this time I've only done a couple of sketches for this, to try and work out how it will look and will more than likely finish this last minute for her colours and all.

The idea that I had was of a small fairy angel after trying to draw full size fairy angels I settled on a 2 sketches to work on in the next few days and you can see these 2 below, they are of typical fairies with almost old fashioned dresses and long flowing hair with some curls on it, I always liked the idea of fairies dresses made up of bits of flowers for decoration and make the fairy angles look quite nice and beautiful.

Although if you've seen all of my other drawings, you would know that I'm more used to drawing demons and monsters, but I took this upon myself to challenge my artistic abilities and try to draw a fairy that my mum would be proud of and hang on the wall in her house.

Now the first drawing was one that I won't consider for my mums fairy angel, because it's too large a fairy and more of a comic book fairy, but I thought I'd show you the sketch anyway....


The fairy sketches below are the ones that I think are more suited to my piece of fairy art for my mum, as they show the angel fairy small and quite tiny compared to the flower and I think this will better reflect the design brief my mum told me, although she wants the fairy to be coloured a turquoise colour, which would look quite nice, I think I need to do a few more sketches before I decide on a definate fairy pose.

Here is another fairy, which I liked when I drew it, I wanted to almost capture the fairy flying in the air, possibly above a garden of flowers or something that fits what a fairy is expected to be doing like in the fairy art of Amy Brown or some other fairy artist.

Hopefully you can see the image of the fairy holding her arms up in the air, much like actors do when they are on wires and so I've took 3 web cam shots to see the drawing in slightly different views.


What I hope to achieve is a fairy angel artwork that will look good and last forever as that special piece of art that Wayne Tully took the time to create for his mum.

Sketching Wraiths

Wraiths are almost like ghostly figures that remind me of the ring wraiths from The Lord Of The Rings films, although they have no legs usually and they have lots of rags and bits of cloth that flows behind them to make it look even spookier, I have had a go at sketching a few wraith like figures below and all I've used is a HB and a 2B pencil to try and capture the energy of the wraith like ghosts!

I wanted to try and draw a wraith, because it is a superb example of a fantasy figure that has no real human form, it can be made up of the raggedy flowing cloak and bony hands of the undead, although I like to do a skeletal form under the cloak and suggest some form, but also try to balance the drawings as ghosts.

Take a look at this quick drawing below it only took 5 minutes to sketch, see how I've just sketched in the skeleton hands with claws and the skull peeking out of the cloak with rags all flowing behind it.(And I do so hope to get my scanner fixed as I can go back and add the proper artwork that would be nice and clear!)



Now obviously you have to do a few more sketches to get the look and feel of a wraith right, maybe by doing a head sketch and another couple of body sketches, so that you know the ins and outs of the wraith form and the way of drawing one.

Update - Here is the newly scanned version of the inked sketch I did with my trusty Sharpie Marker, it's heavy on the ink and rather sketchy, but it turned out quite well I think.





Below I quickly sketched out a head for the wraith and it shows a little bit more detail of the rotting skull form and the hood of the wraiths cloak flowing downwards, I enjoyed drawing this!


Update - Here is the inked version of this sketch, I used a fine point ink pen instead of the thicker Sharpie marker to get some detail in there.....


Have a go yourself at drawing a wraith, they are great to draw and if you are stuck for inspiration, just watch Lord Of The Rings or The Frighteners for wraith like references!

All fantasy art drawings Copyright Wayne Tully 2010

Sunday 9 May 2010

How To Draw A Comic Book Page

The process that I use to draw a comic book page is a rather simple process and one that incorporates a small written note pad of ideas and some rough sketches and just the actual doing it instead of thinking about it.

First things first we have to have some kind of rough idea of the story, so that we can plan the action on the page, I like to describe each panel in maybe one or two sentences to give me a working description that will help me draw each panel out right.

I do this next, draw a rough page plan (which could change at any minute I might add!) the draft doesn't have to be that detailed as you want to just get down the layout of your page.

Top tips - Try and work out the panel layout early on, so that you get it right and so you can just get on with the business of drawing everything in the panels, sometimes you may find that a few sketches are needed in order to plan a good comic book page out.

Also some pages require something that makes the page stand out, some do splash pages which are a one page panel of action usually or you can create a 3 panel page with the third being the largest one and a character bursts out of the panel creating some dramatic action.

The choices are up to you, but here is an example of a quick written description followed by my own little comic book page layout drawing:-

I've opted for the 3 panel page layout as I described above, so....

Panel One - Our character is an evil demonic creature who we see just a close up head shot looking really evil.

Panel Two - The demonic creature in a slightly larger panel where we see the full dark shape of the demon.

Panel Three - The largest panel we see the demon bursting out of the panel almost leaping towards the reader.

Now see how I planned the action out below in my rough sketch, nothing fancy yet, but you get the idea....


Now what we do is take this intitial draft sketch and we try and develop it, I prefer to start with a fresh piece of paper and roughly mark out the panel layout and then I start to loosely sketch the innards of the page panels, you'll find that re-drawing what you envisioned will help to bring out some creative ways of relating your idea on to the page and most times it will be better than the rough sketch or thumbnail as it's more commonly called.

As my preferred method I use a darker pencil to get some sense of shadow and form to the drawings, although not that detailed at this stage, I simply refer back to my written description and try and fill in the blanks with my own imagination of the demon creature, the drawing below is what you should be aiming for, some that looks like it is progressing and developing into something more....


The best part of drawing is moulding and shaping your drawings into solid ideas and this stage is the best as you can be as imaginative as you like and with mine I draw in lots of detail that probably at the inking stage will be blocked out when I start to realize the light source to add a bit of atmosphere to the page, but I try and make the demon creature look evil and scary just like my written description said, as often as a comic book artist you will be working from writers notes and scripts so it's best to get used to this way of working.

The idea is to get this stage of pencil drawing finished and ready for the inking stage, so by now it should be clear of where there will be totally dark areas and what remains light, you can fill large areas with your pencil or just leave them blank and add small crosses to identify for inking later.

Here's the drawing now, see how finished it looks...


The inking stage is more than just going over each individual pencil line, it's about adding a style to your work, now in the real comic book making world, you may find that you are a penciller and someone else inks your work, but today I'm going to assume that you are a complete comic book artist and just start inking your own work is the best thing you can ever learn to do.

I usually fill in the large black areas first and then swing back on the detail of the characters in the panels, this way I don't do really great detail ink work and then ruin it by using my large black markers, you though may have some other way of working and that is entirely understandable, so just work however you want as this tutorial is just an inspiring look at what you can achieve with your comic book pages.

I try to at the inking stage vary the line weights, so that it creates a good style, sometimes you'll see other artists do this and you'll notice the difference that it makes, it seems to bring the characters to life by adding movement lines and such...

Here's the finished piece drawn and inked.





So I hope you have a good time drawing a comic book page and remember, there are many ways to draw a comic page and you don't have to feel limited in any way, because comics are to feed the imagination, so go wild and be creative in your comic creations on the page.

Of course the above example isn't finished in terms of the lettering and any colour that you want to apply to your comic book page, I may write further blog posts about lettering at a later date.

Have fun!

Learn to draw comic books the Marvel way is an old book that I recommend if you need further help on drawing comic book pages and characters too...


Drawing Fantasy Worlds - Drawing Ideas

How do you draw fantasy worlds? This is a good question and one that results in a how to draw drawing tutorial that I did recently, this was intended as only one example of what you could posibly draw as a fantasy scene and I hope to do two more video series on drawing different fantasy world pieces of art, but this one I did a classic fantasy castle scene with the mountains as a backdrop with the sun in the sky and a couple of stray clouds thrown in, with the path leading to the castle from the corner of the page.

In the first drawing video as always I try to pre-plan the scene as well as I can and get in all the elements of it that I want to, obviously the main part of the scene is the castle, it's the centre piece, although it's to the left of the page, hopefully it will be the visual draw of the artwork, castles can be drawn anyway you want, yo can try and draw realistic castles or fantasy castles that look cool, but in reality they would never get built.

The sketching process is light at the start to get a feel for the drawing and as such you can figure it all as you go along with the drawing stages.

Watch this video to get an idea of how to approach those first pencil lines...

Video 1 - Draw Fantasy Worlds - First Sketches

When choosing a scene to draw, you do need to have a good idea of how it will look in the end, some kind of afterthought or vision at the end to work towards, so that in the second drawing video you can see how the castle scene is getting on. It is really just a case of defining those pencil lines again and making the scene clearer to see by adding small details that will be finalized later on, working as you go along you can chop and change things however you want, because it's your drawing, so never be afraid to change areas of your drawing that you are unhappy with. Now in the second video I started to shade in the mountains and this was in direct relation to wherever the light source is and in this case it's the sun in the sky from the left so I shaded on the other side of the mountain and also sketched a few rough details for the mountain ridges under the castle and surround the path leading off of the page, definite details can be worked out later. Watch the video and gain some inspiration in the creative process.... Video 2 - Defining The Castle Fantasy SceneThe third video you should see the scene coming together with more details and shading that emphasize the fantasy scene of the world that you have created, the more drawings you draw yourself, you'll come to understand this process well and maybe find your own way of working that will suit your style and creative conditions, I've tried to make the final pencil drawing as finished as possible, within the confines of a short standard video at around 3 minutes or so, although I do see it does need some more shading work and fleshing out the scene a bit more, but you get the main idea with drawing a fantasy world, it's the same as any other drawing, plan and execute and follow through with sketching. Watch the last video below.... Video 3 - Nearly Completed Fantasy Pencil DrawingHere is the work in progress of the fantasy world, with the castle at the top of the mountain.
I wish you luck with your own fantasy world drawings and have fun with trying to create them, I know I will!
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Saturday 8 May 2010

Daily Sketching: Fantasy Creatures

For years I've been drawing fantasy creatures and so I have done a few more sketches of classic fantasy creatures like werewolves and vampires and am also part way through drawing a medusa drawing, which I need to ink it and complete it, so that I can scan it into the computer and colour it with some fantastic layers from Photoshop or maybe Gimp, I haven't decided yet.

Right now I am still focusing my efforts on some of my graphic novel pages and ideas for new pages, so that I can tie it all together and I'll show some sketches another day for that. but right now, lets take a look at some of my current fantasy creature sketches.

Now I  haven't quite got my scanner working at the current time, but when I do, the drawings will look better, but for now, I've had to use my web cam and you can't fit all the sketch in fram, so I've tried to show you a couple of different parts of the sketches below, first up is werewolf head that I sketched and inked, I just wanted the side profile view, so that I could try and practice the long nosed dog like head of a werewolf, I think it turned out well, better with more practice.

Now, the other thing I did that I was quite pleased with was sketching a gargoyle and that was on the spur of the moment, after someone requested it on my youtube channel one day, so I quickly sketched a Gargoyle drawing and it looked ok and I sketched it in the typical crouching pose that we remember from the gargoyle statues that adorn many buildings around the world, I do have a gargoyle drawing tutorial planned, so look out for it.

I took 4 web cam photos of some of the parts of the sketch that I couldn't take a shot of all in one, so you see the following parts of the gargoyle a bit closer now....

Medusa is a classic greek monster that I always used to draw back as a kid after seeing Ray Harryhausens Clash of the Titans, always loved his stop motion creatures as I always tried to draw them. Medusa here has all the elements of the 70's Clash of the Titans that I wanted to keep, just have to finish off the inking, so that I could scan it in the computer for some cool computer colouring, this is not the first Medusa drawing I've done and it won't be the last as I've had a few requests to do a drawing tutorial, so I may opt for either a video one or one right here with the step by step pictures.

Again I've done 4 web cam shots to show all the parts, such as the head and the serpent like body with the classic rattle snake tail end, so you can see the main Medusa design elements I wanted to achieve.

I may show an update in the future about these drawings and any drawing tutorials that I come up with.

Also I'm trying to set up a mailing list so that you can sign up and be made aware of any blog updates such as new drawing tutorials and also a free ebook which you can download and read, I'm aiming for the angle of the ebook to inspire artists with fantasy art, I'll keep you posted!

Friday 7 May 2010

Daily Journal: Sketches Inspired By Avatar

The last week has been a movie madness week where we rent some movies and even buy the odd DVD that looks interesting, but since I am an artistic type I can't watch a movie straight without having to get my sketchbook at the ready to sketch some ideas down and with the movie Avatar I was certainly inspired to draw some quick creatures and other sketches and this does mean that I have to watch the film a second time and force myself not to draw and sketch whilst trying to follow the movies story and visuals.

Sometimes what I sketch may be just random ideas and other times I am inspired by the films so much that I find myself sketching and not taking any notice of the movie at all and my wife says "well there's always another time to watch it" and I think yeah I'll buy the damn DVD so that I can watch it when I don't get the buzz for some sketching.

There are only 2 examples that I will show you of my quick sketching time and the first one below is almost like an alien sketch with the claws as the hands, I'd almost thought of making them wings but the pencil had a mind of it's own and decided on making them just arms with a one claw on each.

The lower body was inspired by some kind of insect, so you can tell that my mind wandered whilst watching Avatar, because there wasn't any insects really in that movie, but that's the beauty of being inspired to draw, it allows you to draw what you want and let your imagination take over.















Another sketch I did was this Spider sketch, I was fascinated by the smooth alien markings on the Na'vi skin and the riding beasts almost like horses and thought what if a spider had a smooth shell like surface on it's back, although I didn't get to the inking and the colour stage I already have the purple and blue colours in mind that will blend together, I'll have to finish it to show you what I envisioned with it.

Spiders are quite easy to draw once you know that they usually have eight legs and a fat hairy body, you can pretty much do anything with them design wise, make the legs longer and more bonier, add ridges on it's body, hell you could even sketch in some wings.


I'd recommend trying to sketch whilst watching a good movie or after watching one, it's really up to you, but quite often it's the Sci-fi and Fantasy movies that really inspire you to draw some cool ideas and concepts.

Thursday 6 May 2010

Daily Journal: Weekly Sketching

I'm starting to day on this blog with a journal of the things that I am drawing and sketching and so I thought I would try and show a few sketches and other drawings that are currently works in progress that I have decided to try and finish, today marks the day that /I take this blog seriously and start to publish at least a new post every single day for the rest of my life.

Now on with the daily journal....

Sketches are my best ways of getting my ideas down, but also to get a feel for what I want my fantasy worlds to look like and to also get things in order to show on this blog....

First of all, what you see anywhere on this blog, all artwork is Copyright © Wayne Tully 2010 and any duplications of my artwork online and offline will result in a DMCA which is a copyright file notice and any other legal action will be sought in the under taking of such event, permission must be sought to show any work from Wayne Tully and his network of sites, unless you want to link back and give me the good credit, then just email me about it.

Right the esketches below are works in progress and some are still a bit sketchy, so here goes....I used my cheapo digital camera, so you can see a slight blur on some, oh well, next time I'll fire up my scanner and scan em in.


This one is sort of how I wanted it to be, a demon creature appearing out of the mind of a young girl, don't know why or how, but it looked cool when I drew it, I hope to use this as a cover to another comic book project that I have in the works, the trouble is I've got lots of big and small graphic novel projects going on that I am finding it hard to concentrate on them all, must focus on one project at a time eh?


This pencil and ink drawing sketch was just a random demon creature as most times I get obssessed with drawing tentacles and other weird creature parts, that look quite cool when you draw them in contrast with an almost humanoid type body. Heavily inspired by some of the Resident Evil creatures here with this one so who knows how I might re-draw it and re-design the idea.


A Flaming Skull art concept sketch that I am developing for another project which involves a lot of skulls, interestingly enough I haven't done much shading lately with my art and I used to excel in it, so I'll do a
shading tutorial soon on how to shade effectively and that should be a good blog post.

One of the things that I always think about when I'm sketching everyday is that everything should be archived and used, because if you don't use a piece of art for anything then why draw it in the first place? I like to draw the best possible ideas and I always try to think how I could use them, if not now, but in the future for some new project.

Any ideas on what I could show you how to draw, go on request a drawing lesson and see what I can come up with.

Also check out - Random Sketches

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Daily Journal: Current Drawing Project Thoughts

Working hard on a couple of childrens books, to which I will not reveal the characters or any sketches at this point until I'm near enough publishing the thing, but it's a classic childrens book, one of them is for under fives which will be minimal words, but more emphasis on the pictures and that art that will tell the story more, I've often been interested in making a childrens book and until recently I thought I couldn't do it, but there is such things as self publishing on great publish on demand sites such as Cafepress, Lulu and Creataspace to name a few that I thought yeah just go for it.

I suppose the last few years I've been fooling myself into thinking that I have to have a normal job, but that hasn't made me happy at all, you've got to have dreams to aim for in life because we are all on a short life lease if you think about it, average age expectancy is around 70 years, but anything could happen in between that time, so do things now to try and do the things that you want to achieve in life and don't worry about rejection and all that scared to get up in front of other people nonsense and shout what you're doing. Just get on with it and see if it works, that's my motto now!

The other projects that I am still trying to get together are a couple of graphic novels and these are coming along slowly, mainly because I am a perfectionist in the art of graphic novel creation and plus I do want to colour them too which will take more time, I did plan to have one of them published by the end of March, but that didn't materialize so I'll just say watch this space....


The above web cam screen shot is of a fantasy world castle scene that I did for a three part drawing video lesson series on how to draw a fantasy world, it is intended as the first part of a three part series on drawing different fantasy scenes and you can view the full article here - Draw Fantasy Worlds with the 3 videos to see how it turned out.

Also if you do read this blog regularly when I update it that is! you'll know that I've increased my Youtube drawing video output as I now do them every week, around four to five or maybe more videos a week, that will hopefull inspire you to draw your own fantasy art stuff and I still welcome video requests, in fact I'll put them to the front of the queue to create, because I'd like to help out with any drawing problems or just to make a video that will inspire you to draw something of your own.

Lastly I would like to know if any of you have drawing projects that you are working on, that you wouldn't mind letting us know of, it'll be nice to know that I'm not alone trying to break into the world of fantasy with my own books and stuff, you can leave your comments below and I look forward to your replies.

Have a nice day everyone

How To Draw A Fantasy Creature Video Drawing Tutorial

Drawing a fantasy creature I did three drawing videos and so here I want to expand on it with more thoughts on the drawing process together with the videos. Drawing a fantasy creature is as much about tapping into your imagination as it is about seeing other artists work and gaing some moments of inspiration from them.

The videos below are in three stages of a drawing, first sketch, development sketch and almost final pencil sketch, the thing to remember when drawing naything is that you draw in stages,nothing should be directly drawn in detail at the beginning, because you should really get into the habit of planning a drawing first and seeing where it goes.

So the first video - First sketch is about laying the foundation of the drawing and seeing if it will work, I like this stage of drawing very much because, you can see how you're drawing and also you are building up the key elements of the art and that to me can be done with quick sketching or a more focused approach. The whole idea of drawing something is so that you'll be happy with the results and that you yourself drew it and can be proud of it, so plan your sketches out and if that means sketching small draft sketches on a scrap of paper beforehand then do so.

Often when I do these videos I'd prefer you to follow drawing them or really just watch to see how you draw them, because when I talk over the drawing process, it's hard to convey my thoughts all in one 3 to 4 minute video, the idea with the first sketch is like a sculpture, building a wire frame of the drawing and you go from there....

Watch the starting video....

Video 1 - Fantasy Creature Drawing



Now the second stage of the drawing process,the development sketch is really to work with what you've got and build upon the previous sketch, I prefer to darkenpencil lines and strengthen the figures or the form and structure of the creature so that I have a clear balance of the creature.

In this second drawing step I usually fill in some more details of the creature, such as muscles and other lines to suggest more muscle form and even other details like skin folds and creases and a slight bit of shading, once this step has been completed, the next part is to shade in the key areas that you want and make the drawing look more clearer.

Watch the second video...

Video 2 - Developing The Creature Drawing



In the last drawing video of drawing a fantasy creature we have to define the creatures form even further by adding shading and darkening the pencil lines even more and I did this sparingly as I didn't want to overwhelm the creature art too much with huge dark areas, you could do what you want with your creature art, but I preferred to have some sort of light source, even though the creature was probably in a darksewer as suggested by the water surround it, almost like it's just emerged from the filthy sewage water.

At the end of the video I'm happy with the result, although it's not a prefecly finished and polished piece of pencil art, the idea is there for finishing another day...

Watch the last video....

Video 3 - Creature Shading



I hope this drawing lesson/tutorial helped you in drawing your own fantasy creatures.

Any other drawing tutorial requests I'd be happy to help?

Tuesday 4 May 2010

Sketchfu - Drawing Online Fun Stuff

Sketchfu is an online software program tool that you can draw some cool stuff online and share it with other people, while it is almost Microsoft Paint basic, it does have a special use that I like about it, and that's to sketch quick random notes or ideas online and share them with people who care.

When I said basic, don't be put off by this, because there are some fantastic examples of Sketchfu and some of them are real masterpieces in their own right, take this Avatar sketchfu, which is just amazing, best to watch it at it's highest speed of 256. Sketchfu has certain given me a real interest in this program as before I'd orginally dismissed it as a basic Microsoft paint program, but what you can do is build up layers of colour to almost sculpt and build  piece of artwork and that to me is truly amazing from a free program.

I highly recommend you check out this free drawing software tool, Sketchfu is amazing and while you are there, take a look at others art, it's excellent!

Go and do some Sketchfu

Monday 3 May 2010

What To Draw When You're Bored

When you're bored, drawing is the best time for your creativity to come out of hiding, because being bored means you have the time or else you wouldn't have got bored in the first place, so if you are at work, then ditch it for an hour and start to draw, lets face it, if your work or real life job bores you, then drawing seems like the better option.

So what do you want to draw? you could draw anything that pops into your head, a fantasy creature,a fairy or a knight in shining armour, it's up to you to entertain yourself whilst sketching away at your desk, so start with what you really like to draw first and work backwards into what you have trouble drawing, trust me this is a great idea as you start off drawing what you are familiar with, you can then start to draw with your beginners confidence on your difficult subjects.

I tend to have trouble drawing imaginary details on swords and shields and that's why I heavily plan intricate designs out well in advance, so that when it comes to drawing the permanent pencil lines in, it looks right, that's the way of the ninja artist!

Also instead of using your imagination, why not use your surroundings as inspiration and start to sketch what you can see, this is a good option as you can draw anything in your room or house that seems like a good idea, I like to draw wooden things like chairs and unites, because often there is the wood grain which I love to draw and have fun with that,similar to drawing trees with all the bark that is like sketching random lines of flaky bark.

The people around you or on a walk about is another great idea, quick sketching like this can really be a boost to your artistic skills, as you are drawing from life you can pick up great body poses and stuff from life that is happening and in a daily motion captured forever in your sketchbook.

Drawing when you are bored can happen any day, not just at work, at home is an ideal option, because you are relaxed and in a comfortable surrounding (usually) I tend to chill out and watch a movie with a sketchpad on my knee to capture and ideas or even listen to some music that will help give my sketches energy and jazz up some new ideas on the paper.

Try drawing when you are bored and see what results you can generate, you'll be surprised at what drawings you can achieve when you put your mind to it.