pencils

Norbert the Dragon.

/ chrissyturleyartist / 2 Comments

Anyone who knows me, knows I love Harry Potter. I especially love drawing the magical creatures in the movies. My most recent piece that I’ve drawn is Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. It took me a long time to get all the details right. I hope you all like him!

First Stages – sketching out his shape and making sure all the proportions are accurate. I chose to draw him on A3 size 110gsm sketching paper.

The first few layers of the wings were tricky. Using my graphite pencils and my pencil eraser to try to get the texture right.

My next major challenge was the texture in the wood of the table he was on. Inserting the shadows underneath Norbert gives the 3D affect to my graphite sketch.

The final stages are a little tedious sometimes. You can see the end, it’s so close but it’s not quite perfect yet! This stage probably took the longest time to complete.

After approximately 5 hours of work, here Norbert is! I really love him. Now I get to choose another beast to draw! If anyone has any suggestions drop you choice in the comments.

Now, as Norbert isn’t my original creation he won’t be for sale. I do have many other animals, flowers and landscapes available to purchase in my etsy store. Here’s a link to one if my small dragon sketches! Dragon Art Print

If you would like to keep up to date with all my art sketches and paintings please check out my Facebook or Instagram accounts.

See you all soon,

Chrissy xx

My favourite Art tools

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This week the topic is my favourite tools! Learn about what paint brushes, pencils, markers, water colour pencils and ball point pens I love and why! 

Paint Brushes

It’s really hard to find an ethical paint brush when you’re vegetarian. I don’t use any that are made from animal hair. This is something that is really important to me! I only use synthetic brushes. It’s hard to get a ‘rough’ look to your paint with synthetic brushes. So what I do is mess a couple up by scrubbing them hard into the canvas board or tissue paper. It messes the bristles up and you can get a much more natural effect for things like trees. 


Spectrum Noir Markers

Alcohol Markers are becoming far more popular. They give a great deal of colour saturation with very little effort. They are especially good for fantasy art and animae drawings. Blending can be really difficult when you’re starting out with them. Paper plays an important role with alcohol Markers. 

Graphite

This is the sketching set I’m using at the moment. They are fairly good, but next time I’ll be purchasing something that’s a little better quality. I find there isn’t a lot of difference between the hard leads and the softer pencils. This sometimes can make shading very difficult. 

Watercolour Pencils

The below picture is of a print drawn in watercolour pencils. You can lay a lot of colour down to make things very rich and vibrant, or use a very light pressure and just add a wash of colour.  The background in my dragon picture has a light blue wash. 

Graphik Line Markers – My all time favourite Markers. They come in various tip widths and are so easy to use. You do need to be carful when using them with water colours – make sure they are the last layer you put down. They tend to run!

I like to outline water colour pencil and graphite pencil sketches with these on occasion. I also like to sketch little designs with them. 

Cheers,
Chrissy xxx