The Fantasy Artroom

So, we’ve looked at drawing in pencil, for sketching and finished drawing purposes, but what if we’re looking to make illustrations for publication? Much of what is going on in the publishing world requires art to be rendered in ink. Cue pen and ink section of this book.

In this section, we’ll be looking at ways to ink your drawing to suit the mood and detail level required. Drawing pens and dip pens are our tools of choice here.

Good question. Inked artwork dates back hundreds of years. The Victorian illustrators (in my humble opinion) made the best use of line work. Artists such as Arthur Rackham employed the humble pen to delineate some of his greatest works; the American artist Franklin Booth created superb line work, which, over time, has influenced countless artists.

Good line work can make a huge difference to a drawing. If rendered convincingly, adding ink can make a good drawing even better, stronger.

The benefits of inking your drawings are (and not limited to): it’s easier to print/scan; it creates stronger lines for colouring; and it can help to ‘stylise’ your drawings.

Okay, so you’ve decided to give inking a go—what to use? The choices are threefold, really. Dip pen and ink, brush and ink and drawing pens. By far the most popular choice nowadays is the drawing pen. For this book, however, we’ll mainly be focusing on the use of the dip pen, a versatile medium if ever there was one (and my personal favourite).

There are three main types of line you’ll encounter when rendering in pen and ink:

History has provided the world with great artists who have, in turn, dazzled us with their greatness... and much of that greatness is available to you and me through the availability of the Internet, galleries and museums, and last, but most definitely not least... books.

With that in mind, I urge you to spend a long time studying the works of these great masters. You will be pleased to know that at some point or another, they started out just like you but utilised time and practised dedication in order to become masters of their craft. There’s simply no shortcut. The good news, however, is that the masterworks these incredible human beings created are available to you to study, and study them you must.

For me, the best period to study is right back to the ‘Golden Age’ of illustration. The age of brilliant artwork included greats such as Howard Pyle, Arthur Rackham, John R. Neill, and H.J. Ford (to name but a few). Many of today’s illustrators wouldn’t hesitate to drop the names of these men as their own influences. The reason I feel it best to go back and study the masters is that many of today’s illustrators, despite having killer technique, pale in comparison. The artists of yesteryear had a far more thorough approach due to their more ‘in-depth study’. It’s also due in part (I believe) to the fact that time nowadays isn’t in such large supply as it once was and distractions are certainly more prevalent (TV, social media and the like). Taking the time to look at and absorb great artwork is a fine way to not only understand what constitutes great artwork, but often without knowing it, you’ll be absorbing the methods and techniques, which will find their way into your own efforts. Remember, ‘looking and seeing’ is often as important as ‘doing’.

fig. 1 India Ink (shellac-based ink dries to a shiny, satisfying finish).

fig. 2 Dip Pen Holder.

fig. 3 White Gouache (for correcting errors, making highlights, etc).

fig. 4 Nibs.

There are many types of paper that will comfortably take pen and ink. The photo below shows a few, ranging from:

For the dip pen demonstrations in this book we’ll be using a Nikko G-Pen; here are a few examples (below) of the kinds of marks it’s capable of. See nibs fig. 4 (top) and pic (below).

Always keep a sheet of paper handy, to test your ink levels first; accidents happen and India ink is very messy!

Be careful not to flick the nib. If this happens too often, it’s probably due to an incompatibility between you and the nib. The G-Pen, for example, is far more robust than the Hunt or Gillott nibs; see bunny pic left/above (which was inked using a Gillott nib)—this required a far lighter and considerably more gentle touch.

With this example, we’re going to go from the initial thumbnail sketch to the final drawing, stopping along the way to pay attention to a few vital steps. Onward! (But beware... These things bite.)

CROSS-HATCHING SAMPLE (see left) For best results, simply follow the directional strokes, step-by-step.

fig. 1 Thumbnail drawing. Settled on this one after having worked out a few designs (always good to try a few ideas out...).

fig. 2 Here we’ve traced over the lines to make a coherent enough reference drawing from the chaos of the thumbnail sketch.

fig. 3 The redrawn, tightened working drawing. This is the stage where everything is worked out, so inking the illustration becomes a much easier process.

fig. 4 Firstly I worked around the dragons using the .1 inking pen, rendering the rocks and grass first, then moved into working on the dragons. I find a good practice to adopt is to draw around the outside of each figurative element (in this case, the dragons) for a couple of reasons.

fig. 5 I’d already decided to keep the foreground dragons a lot more detailed than the larger one at the back, so with that in mind, I set out to ink them first, working en masse. It’s crucial to keep your lines interesting and varied, following the contours of the object instead of ill-thought-out strokes.

fig. 6 The finished artwork. Note the background cross-hatching. Hours and hours should be set aside to work on large areas such as these and should be built up methodically for best results; there’s really no short cut.

In this drawing, we’re setting out to create a sense of depth, but at the same time, we’re going to keep the drawing simple and the details understated.

Having settled upon a satisfying composition, begin inking the trees in the background and gesture in grassy areas of the land in back and middle ground, keep your lines nice and thin as you’ll need the thicker lines for the foreground.

Next, carefully work around the outline of the moon, taking care not to over-render it. We can build this up in stages. Begin working on the wood grain of the fence in the foreground, using heavier strokes.

Finishing off the fence. Pay particular attention to your directional lines here. Draw in the mushrooms, then surround them with clumpy, grassy areas, again using heavy lines. The darks here are in contrast to the large light areas. As always, we’re striving for balance.

***It’s often a good idea to save tricky areas for last, (or at least, areas that require a little more technical dexterity). I believe in drawing some confidence into an illustration by working on the easy parts first; that way, by the time you get to those fiddly details, your hand, your eye and your mind are all in sync with each other.***

Even though the drawing is a rather small one, we still need to keep the lines as interesting as possible. Varying pen marks for each element within the drawing will add energy and movement throughout, producing a much more visually stimulating piece.

Looking at this close up, you can see that we’ve given this drawing a very loose approach. It’s all well and good to have beautifully rendered drawings, but sometimes fast and loose is the order of the day. Energy is often as important.

Varying strokes—line widths, directional marks, etc.—is a great way to achieve visual interest in your work. Without the above, drawings can appear flat, lifeless. Each element, although part of the whole image, is instrumental in telling a story. Learning when to stop drawing is another string to your bow. Developing restraint comes easily over time, you’ll see...

In this example, I’ve taken the ‘Green Man’ and given him my own spin. The interesting thing about this drawing is the textural work that’s involved in its rendering. Let’s take a look, shall we?

For this, you’ll need your Nikko G-Pen nib, Winsor and Newton shellac-based India ink, and a sheet of illustration board.

The finished pencil drawing. As you can see, this has been drawn very tightly and is highly detailed, to make inking far easier. Clean lines mean clean inking.

As always, ink some confidence into the drawing, starting with the simple stuff. The leaves and the berries will do just fine to begin with. Remember, take your time...

Work your way around the rest of the drawing, following the sketch as closely as possible. Keep your lines smooth and simple and always pay attention to directional strokes.

These drawings are very much an exercise in patience. It’s easy to become lost in some kind of meditative state once you get into it though. Roll up your sleeves and commit yourself.

Can you see how this would’ve been overloaded if I added more detail to the leaves? Plan your approach in as much detail as you can muster; it will show in the resulting image. (Good planning here kept the need for random cross-hatched lines at bay.)

Here, a wide variety of textural marks helps to keep the image lively and interesting. A balanced mix of cross-hatching and clean lines guide the eyes around the drawing. Instead of labouring over each and every line, the scales, for example, have been applied loosely.

It’s the little things that often go unnoticed that make all the difference. The heavy line around the dragon’s eye leads your eye right there. His gaze is very important to this drawing.

Make sure you use wider and more elaborate lines for the objects closer to the viewer. This will naturally help the eye to rest on the foreground elements, keeping the background secondary.

Here’s a section of the drawing containing many different textures. Strive always to keep things interesting for the viewer. Don’t fall into the trap of detailing everything for the sake of detail. Remember, the brain can only take so much.

It helps to have a good balance of styles and genres in your portfolio if you hope to make it as a fantasy artist. Both light and dark are necessary to show off your range. With that in mind, let’s try something a little softer...

fig. 1 Here’s the working drawing, having taken the rough and tightened it up. Before you reach this point, make sure that you’re happy with it; once you begin inking, it is usually too late to make changes. See how we’ve echoed the flower theme through the image via the dress, and the antennae belonging to the fairy repeats the theme set by the bee. Repetition and well-thought-out concepts will not only enhance the visual but will also make it more authentic. We’re drawing nature here; nature should be well represented.

fig. 2 With your G-Pen, as always, begin by rendering the outline of the figure, not lingering too long on the details, which come later. At this point, we’re far more interested in a good, confident start and a setting up of line weights and form.

fig. 3 Still working around the image—making sure your lines are clean and fluid; don’t labour too long on each stroke to ensure you avoid your drawings looking stiff, which results in blandness. It’s often worth having a separate sheet of paper to scratch away at to get you used to things before you begin. That way, you go into each piece with more confidence than you otherwise might have had.

Many people have issues rendering hair; the trick is to keep things simple and make sure your lines are graceful and flowing (especially when drawing long hair).

fig. 4 So now we’ve reached a point where the details are beginning to emerge. The flower, the bee and the details are all given equal treatment. Remember, no one area should be more detailed than another and always strive to keep the light even throughout.

fig. 5 To finish off, put on your crosshatching head and go through the image adding darks via cross-hatched lines where the shadows fall. Tighten up any loose areas you might have left and look through the drawing to see if you can improve any areas; there are always areas that can be improved upon. I thoroughly recommend leaving the work for a while and then coming back to it, and checking with new eyes to see if there’s anything you might have missed.

So... You’ve made a sketch and you’re going to ink it. What tools will you use for the job?

You might think that inking is just, well... inking, and of course you’d be right, but the tools you use add a different flavour to your lines. If you don’t like peanut butter, you might like jam—you spread them both on your toast, don’t you? I’d suggest having a play with both drawing pens and dip pens and see what suits you best. I often find myself using both of them within a drawing as they both offer a variety of unique strokes. Then of course there are different types of drawing pens and different types of dip pens...

A good indicator if something has been inked with a drawing pen or not is that the line widths usually aren’t varied at all. Having one or two different pen widths can help counter this. My usual sizes of choice are .01 and .03, and sometimes a .05. There’s enough of a width difference to make the lines varied for interest (and it is of course very important to keep those lines interesting...)

I make a practice of beginning the inking process with the thinner pen and going around and reinforcing the lines that need it with a thicker one.

There’s a reason dip pens are still around, largely unchanged after 100s of years: What could be simpler than a pot of india ink and a holder with a metal nib at the end of it? I love using dip pens; I find the whole thing very therapeutic and the sound it makes as it scratches over the paper is simply music to my ears.

As I mentioned on the previous page, drawing pens AND dip pens both have their place; they’re both quick and easy to use and are both very versatile.

Let’s take a look at this drawing on the right. Having studied the linework, you’ll have noticed immediately that the lines are varied throughout each section, almost ‘random’ in many respects. Great effort is taken to maintain control over the pen but random lines are often a by-product of a shift in attention, hand pressure, variations in ink flow, etc. So maybe the fun of using a dip pen is the challenge of trying to control it?

A dip pen has a natural tendency to lead into and out of the line itself, causing the start of the line to be thinner, the middle to be thicker and the end to taper off thinner again; if handled correctly, this can look great. There’s a reason most of the line art in this book has been rendered with a dip pen.

fig. 1 Drawing pen sample.

fig. 2 Dip pen sample.

Here, I’ve inked the same drawing twice, to demonstrate how different the same image can look when it’s been rendered with both mediums. Do you have a preference?

For this demonstration, we’ll be looking at inking a landscape. I took this sketch from one of my old sketchbooks and thought it’d make a nice example to ink. As with everything else in this book, we’ll focus on keeping things down to a few simple steps. Read on...

fig.1 The sketch has been drawn rather loosely and we’re hoping to keep as much of that quality in the inked art as we can. There’s a time and a place for highly rendered, tightly inked work, but we don’t want that for this particular drawing.

fig. 2 We’ll begin with the clouds. As mentioned previously, keep your lines nice and loose, don’t over-tighten; we don’t want them all stiff-looking. Keep the lines thinner on the horizon and wider as they move towards the foreground. It would also pay to vary line widths and strokes for added visual interest.

fig. 3 Next we’ll focus our attention upon the mountains. Ink the rear mountains with thinner lines and again, make them wider as they appear closer to us. This creates depth within the drawing. If you always bear this rule in mind, you’ll never have an isssue. Remember... thinner lines at the rear, thicker lines in the foreground...

fig. 4 At this point, we’ve pretty much decided that this might make a nice piece to add some paint to. So making sure you don’t over-work them, keep adding inks to the foreground mountains, again, keeping the lines nice and loose.

fig. 5 So, we’ve saved the mountain for last. Although it’s been inked in the same manner as the rest of the drawing, we just need to pay a little more attention to the lines; a higher level of accuracy is required as the shapes are less random here. Always finish off by going around the image and seeing what needs work.

Now we’ve taken the drawing further—made it more complete as opposed to a piece of line art that’s destined to be coloured.

Flickingback and forth between this version and the one on the previous page, the first thing you’ll notice is the inclusion of cross-hatching and more general detail throughout the drawing. When you draw with colour in mind, it’s best to not over-render the line art; in fact, if you ‘under-render’ you can always add more linework after or during the colouring process.

This version has been inked with a piece of black-and-white line art in mind, a drawing for, say, an interior book illustration. The previous version had far too little going on to fit that bill.

A good piece of art is much the same as a story—it should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The most effective way to grab the attention of viewers is to have all your elements placed in such a way as to lead them through the story. The illustration below should serve as an example.

Hopefully this has shown the importance of placing the elements of the composition in anything but a random order. Everything in the image should be singing the same song.

Here’s another example, considerably more complex than the previous one but still built on the same principles...

As the teacher, I feel it’s my place to explain all the concepts in this book, but with this one, having taken all you’ve learned so far, I think it only fair that I get to set you some homework. What I’d like you to do is study the way the panels are all interconnected. What makes this comic page a success? What do the elements within it do to aid its success? What elements help your eye ‘through’ from panel to panel? And just as importantly, Why? Is there a beginning, a middle and an end to this page? If so, where? Follow the lines through from panel to panel—can you feel the rhythm?

Here’s an idea... Study just about every piece of artwork you deem ‘successful’ for a little longer than you normally would, working out in your mind why the image is successful. You’ll be learning far more than you realise and it’ll eventually work its way into (and out of) your own artwork.

This old Squirrel has received a fair amount of interest and I believe, in part, that it’s due to the actual composition employed here. Having a look at the image (above) first, the eye isn’t too overwhelmed with details; the composition has been well-balanced with light, dark and mid-tones. If you take a look at the tonal map (left), you’ll see that great care has been taken to keep the main focus upon the Squirrel himself, whilst framing the artwork using subtle compositional techniques. Let’s take a look...

I’ll admit, drawing water is tricky. But there are ways to handle this seemingly difficult element. The best way (as always) is to break things down into bite-sized pieces, tackling each stage at a time. The demonstration below will help. Remember... SIMPLIFY!

fig. 1 The working drawing. Even though it’s been drawn minimally, the drawing contains enough detail for us to begin inking.

fig. 2 Work around the elements within the drawing, keeping your lines clean and sure. Not going overboard with details, work on the background—the water can wait.

fig. 3 Making ripple marks for the water via broken horizontal lines, we’ll build it up as we go. Gently at first...

fig. 4 Working on the reflections. This is where we begin to pull the whole thing together. Keep to the theme of horizontal lines, it helps the rhythm... (*note* It pays to actually study the way water behaves.)

fig. 5 Still focusing on the water, go through from the background to the foreground, paying particular attention to the directional strokes—where the water cascades downwards, use downward strokes. To finish off, go through the entire image and work on the tonal aspects of the drawing, making sure the light and shade is balanced and the reflections are suitably represented.

This drawing has a nice balance of dark and light tonal work, and heavy and intricate line work. What makes it work so well?

Simplify, simplify, simplify. That’s the key to creating silhouettes. You have to break everything down to the bare basics, letting only the very important elements do the talking. You’re also required to somehow flip the image into negative mode, but with a little practise, this will all become easy. Like everything you’ve come across in this book, it’s ALL about practise.

When tackling silhouettes, it’s often as important to know and understand what to leave out as it is to include...

fig. 1 Once you’re happy with your drawing, tighten it up, ready for inking. Carefully draw around the outside with your G-Pen nib and Winsor and Newton ink.

fig. 2 Block in some heavy black with a brush, avoiding the edges unless you are super-confident.

fig. 3 Work through the entire drawing with the brush, still avoiding the edges. Keep your hand steady.

fig. 4 There will be areas that the brush hasn’t quite reached. If you’re confident, reach for the size 0 round detail brush; then tidy up the fine detail lines with your G-Pen nib. VOILA!

Buildings are particularly good subjects for silhouette illustrations. Strong, tight lines lend themselves particularly well to the task. See how the windows have been picked out? Silhouettes are all about positive and negative; there are no shades of grey.

The Dragon (below) was an absolute joy to work on. One of my first successful attempts, as it happens (and probably the most successful commercially, having been featured in a rather good book about Dragons). It did however, come with a few technical challenges, largely due to the fact that it contained many different textures.

Pulling this off convincingly meant that each and every one of them needed the utmost care whilst rendering; no one area of the drawing (particularly when drawing silhouettes) should overpower another.

The Dragon is obviously hiding; therefore, his body language should echo that. You’ll find that the more you draw silhouettes, the more you’ll begin to realise just how important it is to have strong body language to carry the story.

Even a humble onion has a place in fantasy artwork. Like most effective illustrations, it’s made up of many different textures involving thoughtful pen marks. The example (bottom) takes a stylised approach with a nod at realism. I know, I know... this is a book about fantasy art. An onion? Let’s take a look anyway...

Fig. A

Here’s a close-up of the bottom of the onion. Care has been taken to make each one of those stringy strands as coherent as possible. Cross-hatching has been used to good effect here, representing the shadows tapering off as it moves towards the light.

Fig. B

In this example, things are substantially more complicated. Good planning is the key. A well-thought-out underdrawing is the most important thing.

By the time you come to adding your inked lines, everything should be worked out for you.

The ink work on the Fairy has been kept deliberately simple, so she shows up against all that detail around her. In fact, take a look at the white of the Badger’s head and the white of the Fairy and you’ll understand why your eyes are drawn here...

This network of tangled roots has been created using many directional strokes, avoiding the use of cross-hatching until you get into the very darkest of areas.

The hair on the Badger has been rendered ‘deliberately’ also. Starting from the tip of the nose, the lines run along the same angle as the body, helping your eyes along the body and off at the tail. Pen marks such as these force the eyes to look, and to follow...

Here, great care and attention has been paid to the grass and the things growing from the ground. Notice how the grass is growing off at different angles (to add interest); the flowers are all unique, not drawn like some cut-out and stamped on the artwork.

A good illustration will house many tricks, techniques and strokes that will hopefully encourage viewers to move around it and have enough visual interest to hold their gaze a while longer than they otherwise might have. Let’s take a closer look at this illustration and break things down.

TOP TIP

Vary your line widths

Thinner marks for backgrounds,

thicker marks for foreground, result in

INSTANT DEPTH OF FIELD

fig. 1 The pencil sketch. I based this drawing on an old sketch from my files. It’s handy (particularly when inspiration isn’t exactly forthcoming) to go through old work and see if anything still speaks to you. I always liked this one... Immediate inspiration! (Remember, you can find inspiration just about anywhere—‘Seek and you shall find’.)

fig. 2 Trace and transfer the drawing to your illustration board or sheet of cartridge paper (whatever you use, make sure it will withstand a lot of work). As always, draw some confidence by going around the outside of the image. We’re going to tackle things a little differently here by getting into the detail a little earlier than normal. This is largely due to the need for an ‘organic’ feel. Grow your drawing from the ‘inside-out’, keeping your lines lively, loose and above all... interesting.

fig. 3 It’s important to be aware of the fact that the tree branches are rounded; this look is obtained by using ‘round’ as opposed to ‘straight’ strokes with the pen (I know it sounds obvious).

fig. 4 Go through using vertical lines in between the branches; this is where we’ll begin to make tonal adjustments throughout. Right now, it looks a bit of a mess, bear with it...

fig. 5 Let the cross-hatching commence! Using horizontal lines, keeping your strokes nice and thin, hatch across the verticals in between the branches. What we’re trying to achieve here is some depth—we want this area to be dark—very dark—in order to stand out against the branches.

It’s important to pay attention to the line weights of the branches and not overpower them; otherwise we’ll need to go back in and strengthen them again. The idea is to allow the foreground to stand out against the background elements. Try and keep your lines approximately the same width throughout this portion of the drawing.

fig. 6 So now we’ve established our darks via the cross-hatching of the foliage; it’s time to go through the rest of the drawing and equalise all the areas in shadow for unity.

The grassy areas have been handled with angular directional strokes, purposely leading the viewer’s eyes from the ground up. The strong verticals and horizontals of the foreground branches (via the heavier lines) have framed the face of the tree, nicely putting the focus, quite rightly, upon his expression.

That area of white at the back, due to its lack of detail, allows the rest of the drawing to shine.

*Remember... Balance!*

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

1 x Nikko G-Pen

1 x pot Winsor and Newton

shellac-based India ink

sheet A4 illustration board

(or quality cartridge paper)

For this demonstration, I’ve chosen to ink a version of one of my most popular paintings. It was great to pick this apart and work on it in this manner to see and understand what makes the image ‘work’, all over again.

fig. 1 The sketch has been transferred and simplified. Keep the under-drawing simple and don’t smudge the pencil lines too much; the mess can make the inking process really quite diffi cult.

Great care and attention has been paid to the overall composition—we want our eyes drawn to the lady’s face and to the moon surounding it. The ribbons, the hair, the ‘line’ of her body all help the drawing flow to the main area—her face.

fig. 2 Beginning with the head area, each strand is carefully rendered—don’t rush, keep your hand steady and your lines flowing... scratchy, bitty lines will ruin this drawing. We’re after ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’ here.

From the head, work your way down the rest of her body, paying very special attention to the ribbons—they must be rendered using flowy, unbroken lines...

fig. 3 Now we’ve worked our way through the drawing, The lines are unbroken, everything works, there’s nothing to distract the eye. It’s important to bear in mind that the inked lines should be consistent throughout the drawing until we begin our cross-hatching.

For the dress at this point, we’re only interested in laying in straight lines; the hatching will begin once the whole area has been covered with these directional lines. See how they follow (almost) the same angle through the whole dress? Repetition. It doesn’t distract the eye... For the doves, keep your lines simple.

fig. 4 Finishing up... Carefully draw around the moon using ‘freehand’ strokes if you’re feeling confident. If not, use a compass or draw around something round that’s approximately the right size. Go through the dress and add the secondary cross-hatched lines throughout. Leaving the white areas will ensure we keep the natural look of the material. Always go through and tidy any areas that look ‘off’.

I’ve always been fond of this drawing. It seems to be popular wherever it’s shown. Bearing that in mind, I decided to ink it and record the steps taken for this book. To me, it’s a good example of handling a tricky textural subject and pulling it off convincingly. Read on...

fig. 1

Having transferred the drawing, we begin working on the head of the seahorse. We’ll start here, then move down the rest of the body. Remember to keep it simple for now. We can always add more details as we move along through the drawing...

fig. 2

Work from the outside in—begin inking around the outline as if it were a simple cartoon drawing, then increase the amount of detail slowly, building it up as you go.

fig. 3

Strive to keep the level of detail even and under-render rather than over-render. Pen and ink is a very unforgiving medium to try and correct mistakes you may have made.

fig.4

Here’s a good example of what I was saying in fig. 2. Working from the outline, work your way down from the top to the tip of the tail. Try and develop a working practice for yourself—a set of steps to follow is a great way to make sure you always know what you’re doing; the rest is then just a matter of applying yourself.

fig. 5

That’s the seahorse completed. Now we’ll focus our attention upon the mermaid. From the word ‘go’ we’ll be bearing in mind that the seahorse is dark enough and if we render the mermaid the same way, it’ll end up as a big black mass. Moderation is the key here. Begin with the outline as always, keeping your lines nice and tidy. Strive for elegance.

fig. 6

Working our way down the tail here. Building up the cross-hatching gradually, leaving it almost bare along the central line of the tail to show where the light hits.

(refer to the diagram).

We ALL experience frustration with a piece of artwork from time to time. It doesn’t matter how long one has been an artist, the dreaded ‘This-just-isn’t happening’ boogeyman rears his ugly head and there’s no getting away from him. What to do?

1) Leave your work, go and do something else, then return to it with fresh eyes.

2) Turn it upside down, reverse it in Photoshop—does it look right ‘mirrored’?

If none of the above have salvaged the artwork, there’s a very good chance you need to start again. And remember, there’s no shame in starting over... Think of all you learned from the piece you abandoned. There’s NEVER a 100% success rate and the sooner you understand this, the sooner the frustration factor lessens, making way for more great art! Don’t let a perceived failure doom future efforts.

Not many characters have set their legend in stone (insert groan here) to quite the same extent as this lovely lady. I’ve always found her extremely interesting to draw. Let’s go through and see how it’s done...

Here we see the compositional approach I took to achieve the image. I always had a ‘frame’ in mind; the focus needed to be on Medusa’s eyes, so the snakes were arranged in such a way as to draw attention to them. If you study the diagram on the left you’ll see how many of the snakes point ‘in’ to her face; these aren’t randomly placed however, much thought has been given to their placement.

Never leave your compositions to fate—try and control as much as you can without eliminating the chance of a ‘happy accident’.

Notice how the stark white of her face stands out against the chaos of snakes surrounding her? This is another thing that draws our attention to her face. Not to mention her eyes themselves...

fig.1 Begin with the basic shape of the face. (See, I refrained from saying: “Start with an egg”...)

fig. 2 Squiggly lines and circles to gesture in the snakes. Easy peasy...

fig. 3 Once the gestural lines have been laid down, go around each of them and give them form, paying particular attention to the way they intertwine. Next, begin working on the face, again laying in gestural lines to help guide you.

fig. 4 The rest of the process is largely a ‘fleshing out’ process. See the finished image (above) for compositional tips.

These two drawings are really an exercise in light, and, bearing that in mind, I set about using directional lines to add rhythm and energy throughout. The goal was always to show the beauty of the lady and the grace of her pose as she slept, keeping the focus upon the top half of her body. The directional strokes were purposely chosen to draw the viewer’s eyes to the lightest portion of the drawing, hence the lack of pen marks. Pay particular attention to your line weights, and try to avoid overly cross-hatching, using it only in passing to add depth to certain areas.

Overall, harmony has been achieved by constantly monitoring the balance of light and dark, being careful not to go too heavy with either. her. If you look at both of these drawings, you’ll see that the head area has been left lighter in comparison to the rest of the drawing; the hair acts as a ‘halter’ forcing your eyes to rest here. This has, in effect, led your eyes to the main portion of each drawing, allowing your gaze to settle upon the face ace of our sleeping beauty.

The natural ‘S’ composition, made by the dress and the pose of the he lady is of great help also...