Daily Sketching - Monster Creature Draft Ideas

Monsters are a favourite of most artists to draw and it's the imagination I suppose that really helps to create some cool looking monsters and so here I have drawn some rough looking monster designs and they have been inspired by other monster types, can you guess what they are?

The monster below is a typical example of a monster with one claw arm and the other a couple of monstrous tentacles and I wanted the design of the piece to be structured as a convincing monster. the sketch may need some work later down the line, but with this quick ink sketch, you get the idea.

When drawing a monster it is perfectly natural to try and make it scary looking, but how do you do this? Well you can look to really simple photos and pictures of insects or animals for inspiration, you can use what you want out of these reference pictures and I like to use a variation on different things, such as a dogs head shape makes a great werewolf, but then if you place that dogs head on a horrible mass of tenteacles and a slimy blog, you have created an original and unique monster, so just go for it!

Now I just mentioned the blob idea, now take that idea and run with it, the quick sketch below was just a quick idea and I didn't think much about it, I just started to draw big hands and then a blob monsters with a tooth loaded mouth and there we go, ideas can just come and you can draw some quite cool stuff if you put your mind to it.

Edit: 19/05/2021 - It's interesting looking back on this post because the way I used to draw back in 2010 to now is way different and my art has improved a lot. Here is a monster sketch I did this morning to show that it is worth sticking with drawing if you love it and get better at it over time.

Daily Sketching - My Zombie Hand

Daily Sketching continues now Yay!

Today I thought I would do something classic that I'm sure all of us have done at some point at school or when we was younger or you have probably done it recently and that is to draw around your hand, in the drawing below I drew around my own hand and then started to shade in key areas on the hand and a part of the wrist and then I thought what if I darkened the finger nails and really made it a scabby zombies hand.

And that's what I did, maybe I could have added more skin hanging off or a few bones poking out, but I'll leave that to your drawing and imagination to do, would love to see what you come up with!!

I uploaded the original pencil image and then the added charcoal drawing of my zombie hand too, although you can hardly see the pencil drawing one...oh well!

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.