Friday 23 July 2010

Tips On Drawing Horror

Drawing horror is something of an expertise for me, because I like to draw this kind of stuff all the time and in doing so I do often neglect the nicer things in life such as fairies and other fantasy creatures and characters that are quite innocent. ah well on with the show.....!

There are some tips that I can really help you with drawing horror stuff, first, you need to be in that frame of mind to draw some horror art and there is no better way than to watch a few horror films to get into that mindset of horror and depression(well ok maybe not depression!)

Once you've watched a few horror films, then try and draw what you might have liked, maybe there was a creature or zombies in them movies and you fancy a go at drawing one of them or an imaginative version of what you just watched.

I recently re-watched The Evil Dead, because I love that movie and so here are a selection of drawings and sketches inspired by this film, which are mainly faces of the dead....




Also reading horror stories or comic books with horror stories in them are a great way of becoming inspired and can help you to draw some horror stuff, I find drawing a mix of characters and atmospheric buildings a great way of setting up stories within pictures, sort of like when an artist draws and then paints a painting you can see that it tells a story.

Side note: Been checking the features of my scanner and the drawings you see here are just pencil sketches and I've found out how to optimize the values to make it appear darker on the drawings and I just thought I'd share that with you, because I'm not a technical whizz or anything and I figured it out Yayyy!

Now here are a couple of horror sketches that I've left as they were in pencil...


A demonic horror face drawing.....





So when drawing horror art, it is a good thing to just sketch some ideas out and see what happens!

Update: 02/06/21 

Wow, looking back at the way I used to draw over 11 years ago, I shall cringe, just a little bit lol. The way that I sketch, draw and ink my horror art now is much more improved and the way I draw skulls now has become better, but that's what this blog is supposed to show, a progression, a way of viewing the art of yesterday right through to today's art that I am creating for clients and customers all over the world.

Here is something that I created for a client over on fiverr back in 2019 or there abouts:-

Pirate Skull Ink Drawing



Tuesday 20 July 2010

Draw Figures Quite Easily With Stick Figures

Using stick figures helps you to quickly see how a figure will move, when you draw a collection of figures it is the most useful thing to do by drawing a collection of stick figures to see which one you could use.

Sometimes a variation of different stick figures can make a superb figure in motion, in the following drawing video I draw a rough figure from scratch and then show you a page of quick stick figure drawings of which some of them helped me to draw the figure that I draw in this very video.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday 19 July 2010

Demon Art Ladies Tank Top

A Demonic style design on a ladies tank top with the phrase Lick It just for fun. This demon design I did awhile ago and it is a favourite of mine, just because of the design that I coloured in with felt tips and the phrase that wen with it.

You can buy this or in fact have this design on many t-shirts that are available at Zazzle.

Pencil Shading A Drawing - Watch The Video Example

Pencil shading drawings help to add depth to a flat drawing and if you have drawn a design or a drawing of something with a black inking pen, then it will look slightly flat, so shading it could be a good idea and so with the following video I wanted to go through this process of shading a drawing and what to do to determine your light sources so that you can create effective shading on your art.

In the drawing video I do tend to ramble on a bit, but I hope I explined myself clearly about the important process of shading with pencil tone ranges. The drawing example is of a demonic creature that I inked with a fine liner gel ink pen and rubbed out all of the old pencil sketch lines as I didn't want them interfering wih the pencil shading.

Effective pencil shading is achieved when you build up from the darkest pencil grade (B) right up to the lightest (H) so really doing this in stages is the best way of shading any drawing.

Watch the video which shows you how to shade a drawing.....

How To Draw A Warrior Soldiers Helmet

Drawing a warrior soldiers helmet really just takes a small amount of effort and imagination, of course looking at real life historic helemts of old will give you better ideas, but this is a drawing video that I did and it shows you how to draw a simple looking fantasy warrior or soldiers helmet, I used a HB pencil to draw this helmet and I had fun drawing this one and I think in the video it reminded me that I need to draw a skeleton warrior which is coming up soon!

So, watch the drawing video and see how to draw one possible soldier warriors helmet.

Drawing Weapons, Swords And Spears

Photo Image By One Lucky Guy

Weaponry in the fantasy world are very common, in particular swords and spears are my favourites to draw.


Swords are those finely crafted decorative hilts of the sword that make them highly desirable to draw, you can have variations of the sword, Samurai, broad sword, kitana blade, machetti, bayonets to name a few hand collection of popular sword makes and blade types. most times we know that swords can be part of the characters we draw, so we tend to make them a focus, just like armour and shields, it's part of the actual characters profile and should be included in the original profile sketch.

A sword can be started off with a simple cross and then from there the exact details are brought out and a sense of depth and structure are realised to achieve the overall power of the swords blade. When I draw swords I usually tend to draw them last so that I can make a feature of the sword against the stance of the character.

The handles of the swords are often personalized or decorative too, but is often covered by the grip of the warrior or swordsman you create. But as with anything to plan the design is to draw it whenever the need arises.

Below is a quick illustration that shows you the 3 step drawing process I use to simply draw a sword, it's quick and that suits me best by finding easier ways to draw stuff is the way to go.




Spears are also very easy to draw and you can decorate them however you like. A simple pole and a spike is all that I do to draw a spear, see below.

I do also like to draw variations on the spear and not to make them the same in almost every spear design, I could alter the spear head or the handle design to suit whatever design I need to do, don't feel too rigid in ever trying to draw the same way, drawing is fun so go with whatever the mood takes you.

Below I drew a few spear variations to give you an idea, but really though weapons can either be one of two things, historically accurate or just look damn cool.


Drawing weapons of any kind is always easy if you have a reference photo on hand and something to copy to get the idea of drawing a sword or a spear and oce you've got used to drawing a weapon in general, you can get better at drawing one by adding your own designs into the mix. Go on, Try it!

Friday 16 July 2010

Demon Wolf Drawing Head Studies






Demonic wolf drawings

These demon wolf drawings of the heads of demon wolves are a quick study, because I am preparing to draw a demonic wolf and do a video whilst drawing it as there was a request on Hubpages to create a drawing video to show how to draw a demonic wolf on my YouTube channel to draw one.

And so I've been practicing drawing werewolves and drawing more demons to get into the spirit of drawing a demonic wolf....look out for the video soon.

Drawing A Jumping Figure

Male nude by Annibale Carracci, 16th centuryImage via Wikipedia
When drawing a jumping figure it is best to have a look at the many comic books at your local comic book store as these have lot of great designs and art to draw a jumping figure that leaps out at you or off the page and that's what I try to describe and sketch in the following drawing video.

Figure drawing can be quite complex, but then it all starts to fit together as you practice the art of figure drawing and how muscles relate to one another.....

Watch the video to draw a jumping figure....


Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday 15 July 2010

New Flaming Skull Keyring Keychain

I just finished creating this flaming skull design and I uploaded it onto a few Zazzle products for now and one of them was this collectible keychain, I like how this piece of skull art turned out as I originally did a half finished felt tip drawing of this skull on fire and then I had scanned it into my computer and just forgot about it and so the other day, I thought hey why not give it a color make over using Gimp!

And that's what I did, I thought about the red and a few oranges and yellows for the flames and just blended them all together with the smudge tool.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Demon Art Drawing - An Old Demonic Design

This demon drawing which was a quick tattoo design, although quite sketchy at the time with the black biro I used, I drew it on the back of an envelope and found it quite recently amidst the chaos of my rubbish filing system that really needs tidying out.

The demon itself, came across almost alien like in it's final phase of sketching and although I did draw the bottom jaw too thin, it does serve as a drawing that I can still use and improve upon. Drawing a demon is what I've always done, drawing them as tattoos for friends and to sell on Ebay on A3 sheets with numerous other demonic art variations.

This demon drawing brought back memories at the time of me being bored out of head in a 4 day first aid training course, I drew others too, except when I was doing the practical side of the course I couldn't do any drawing, but I sure did when I was being talked to by some first aid expert who had a monotonous voice that drilled through you like a dull grey thunder storm that actually is a sweaty and unamazing fart!

I like the contrast of the envelope showing through when scanned as the black drawing of the demon just sits there, looking all evil and scary.....

And here is the demon drawing without the envelope background......

Monday 12 July 2010

IDrawGirls.com Creates A Fantastic Warrior art tutorial

Just found a cool drawing tutorial from IdrawGirls.com and you can see a fantastic image of a warrior being coloured through computer and you can view it right here! - Character design concept

It's nice to see other stuff by different artists who approach art with professional tools and this has inspired me to check out Gimp - the free art computer software.

Wizard Drawing Books

There are many Wizard drawing books available to buy on Amazon and they don't cost that much, especially if you buy them second hand or from a third party seller, which is what I usually do to get a couple of cheap books.

Drawing Wizards can be fun and is one of the more popular fantasy characters that you can draw, along with Witches and Dragons, a Wizard is often tought of as an old man with a beard who wears a long flowing robe and has a staff that is used for walking but also doubles as his magical staff that could shoot energy bolts of out.

Here are a selection of books that I think you might find useful, when deciding on a drawing book to buy, always read the reviews, because people who have actually read and gone through the book may be able to tell you some other information that the standard Amazon book description does not.
















The above books are some of the best books for drawing wizards and even witches and some even show you how to draw other fantasy creatures or characters too, which is a bonus.

Also you might be interested in.....

Saturday 10 July 2010

Figure Drawing: Drawing Movement In Figures

Wooden Mann on my headphonesImage by Frosted Peppercorn via Flickr
Today, I thought I would start a blog series of posts on drawing movement in the human figure, because not only is this a most asked question online, I've had a few emails about this recently too, so I thought I would address this issue of drawing dynamic figures. Although I am an artist who draws in a comic book style, my art style still needs to have and show movement in any figures that I personally draw, so here we go....

Learning to draw figures is easy when you have a tool called an artists wooden mannequin which I always have in my work studio space, as it provides you with ways to view the figure in relation to a scaled down version of the human figure and you can move the arms and the legs and the top torso and head too and so it gives you ideas on how to draw different poses.

The following video gives you a loose idea on how to draw figures based on an idea that you may see or a thought that you may want to try and sketch out....
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday 8 July 2010

Art/Artists Forums To Join

If you have a serious interest in art, then perhaps you might want to give these art forums a try, some are useful for learning, whilst others are great for networking with other artists, I'm a member of a few of these forums and you'll see my name in some if you look and what is good about forums is that if you want to get the word out about your art and your website, you can link to it from your forum signature when you are posting new forum posts.

It is best to join though at first with a sense of community and get to know other members and interact with them.

Here is a list of the top arts forums on the Internet, so do join some as you may learn something new.

Fantasy art forums

Enhanced by Zemanta

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Weekly Drawing: Drawing An Old Hag Witch

Drawing an old hag witch is fun, especially if you can imagine what an old hag witch could look like, fortunately there are many images and stuff floating about for old hag witches, to draw a witch it is recommended that you practice a few drawings first just to get it right and that's what I have done below, a quick preliminary sketch of the full figure and a quick sketch of the head to start which makes sense to understand the form and how you are going to progress next in the drawing stage.



Now again like other drawing tutorials we take those intitial sketches and try and work on them a bit more to flesh them out,sometimes I use a lightbox, other times I don't, I my just use another piece of paper and quickly redraw an idea a bit better, to see how it will turn out, being experimental is what I like about drawing and as you can see I settled quite early on the short hag witch here with curly witch shoes.



Ink the drawing quickly to get an idea of the permenance of it all and there we go, instant hag witch drawing with a close up of her ugly mug without her hat, see that wart with a few hairs coming out of it...ugggh! get a rat to gnaw that off mrs!!!, although this hag witch is not perfect, but nothing in life ever is is it?


Have fun drawing hag witches, because I know I will!
Enhanced by Zemanta

Sunday 4 July 2010

Zombie Head Stein Available From Zazzle

Another of my zombie designs printed on many mugs and steins available on Zazzle, there are a few different sized mugs available at different prices and I bought one of my own mugs the other day, just waiting until it arrives.

Zombies are still ace to draw, so I may do other zombie products on Zazzle when I have the time!

Thursday 1 July 2010

What Sketch Pencils Do I Use?

I thought it might be a good idea to mention what sketch pencils I use and why I have a stash of cheapo sketch pencils too. For any artist on the go who is very busy like me, then you don't want to strain your feeble brain on too many pencil purchase decisions, because art is what you make it and also some of the better sketch pencils can be expensive, but good to have in your artists tool box.

I'm a great believer in using pencils I am familiar with and often they are ones that I've used at school such as the Staedtler pencils, they come in all the grades and tonal ranges that you would expect and they are just downright comfortable to use, occasionally I do get a piece of blu-tack and wrap it aound the pencil for extra comfort when sketching.

Some of the mechanical pencils that you may see me drawing with in my drawing videos are my most favourite pencils to draw with, because all they require is the lead refills to top them up instead of having to sharpen them everytime, I use the super cheap Roseart Greatgrips, which I can't seem to find on Amazon, but they do exist, so do look for them in art shops as they are a great mechanical pencil to draw with.

The more expensive or branded drawing pencils like Derwent or Faber Castell can sometimes be found at bargain prices on Amazon and I've bought the odd few packs or tins of these sketch pencils with Amazon Gift certificates, but like any artist who is probably classed as a starving artist, then you may opt for the budget pencils to save money and they are just as good and you may find these listed as art pencil value packs