Fantasy Art School

Lesson 11: The importance of doodling and creativity

The focus of these art lessons is on fantasy. And that means that you will rarely get to have a model or a subject to pose for your drawings. After all the drawings will be the result of your imagination! It is difficult nowadays to find a barbarian with a big axe who is willing to sit still for a four hour drawing session!

This is not a serious problem though, you just have to exercise your creative muscles and one of the best ways to do this is to doodle. Doodling is simply taking some time to draw anything that pops into your minds eye. AWhat you do is just start drawing a few lines and then look to see what it suggests and go with it. You will be surprised at some of the great creations that will come out of it.

There is a certain freedom of creativity with doodling. You will be tapping into a tremendous force of mind and you will be exercising muscles that you rarely get to exercise otherwise. this page shows some random doodles I have taken out of one of my sketch books. Can you see how much fun doodling can be. Each picture can be expanded upon and can be developed.

Doodling advice: I recommend you keep a sketch book just for doodling and you should refer to it often. Over the course of time you will build a great resource of ideas that you can refer to. And of course you shouldn't just doodle figures. You can draw anything, try castles, shapes, forms, landscapes, creatures, -anything at all! This is the point of doodling.

With doodling: The more fantastic the better and there is no such thing as a doodle that looks bad. It is after all, just a doodle. Any many times a doodle will give you a great idea that you can develop into a full-fledged drawing or painting. And remember to use all of your techniques, try drawing soft lines, hard lines, shapes, shades, the side of the pencil and anything else you can think of like cross-hatching. Be creativive.

Exercise for this lesson: Spend one hour doodling fantasy creatures or anything else you like. If possible get yourself a sketch pad and devote it solely to doodling. Keep it in a handy place and refer to it often.

Let's continue on to our next lesson - We draw a Medieval Morning Star Mace to learn a little bit about shape and textures

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Fantasy Art School HOME PAGE

Fantasy Art Lessons

1. lesson 1 - Holding the pencil and getting a feel for it and warming up with lines
2. lesson1c how to draw a straight line
3. lesson 2 - Drawing some simple geometric shapes
4. lesson 3 - Understanding and using Perspective
5. lesson 4- foreshortening in perspective
6. lesson 5- Drawing depth and distance
7. lesson 6-Using lines of varying thickness
8. lesson 7- drawing form and shape with a medieval mace
9. lesson 8- Drawing metal - We draw a medieval helmet
10. lesson 9- drawing our first human form
11. lesson 10- Distorting the human form to create fantasy creatures
12. lesson 11 - doodling and creativity break
13. lesson 12 - a Morning star mace - drawing textures
14. lesson 13 - how to draw chainmail
15. lesson 14 - How to convey action in your fantasy drawings
16. lesson 15 - How to draw sword shapes
17. lesson16 -draw an armored knight
18. lesson 17 - Draw a fantasy dagger using the Five-S method
19. lesson 18 - Creating space in your drawings - A Dragons Lair
20. lesson 19 - Practice by drawing dragons
21. Lesson 20 - Drawing from Memory
22. Lesson 21 -Draw a Catapult

Fantasy Art Lessons from Guest Artists

1. How to draw a magical genie using Corel and Photoshop

Art Books & Supplies

1. Art Kits
2. Art Books
3. Fantasy Art Books

Stormthecastle.com
Castlefiction.com
The Telescope Nerd
Epic Fantasy.com
The Medieval Armory
THe Fantasy Guide
The Heroic Dreams Blog Knight-Medieval.com willkalif.com
make-video-games.com

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