Fantasy Art School

Lesson 13 - Drawing chainmail

Chainmail is pretty easy to draw. It is simple long rows of tiny circles bunched up close together. The pike wielding knight shown here has a chainmail shirt and a chainmail headpiece. One important thing to remember about chainmail is that it is usually not worn alone so often times there would be a variety of armor worn over it so you would only see the actual chainmail between the pieces of plate armor or around the edges.

Before you start to draw some chainmail let's take a closer look at some chainmail.

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This is chainmail. It is simply a long succession of tiny rings all linked together. And when you draw chainmail you kind of do the same things as a blacksmith would do when he was making it.

Now let's take a look at how it is drawn:

A- This shows how easy it is to draw chainmail. You simply draw series of little circles. But knights and their mail are not made of straight lines so...

B- You make the chainmail curve a little bit to follow the curve and shape of the knight and the shape a heavy shirt would have - a little bit of sagging.

C- Chainmail is all the same color but being metal it will reflect light in some areas and be dull in other areas. You should draw over the circles in the dark areas to make them darker. You can see this in my drawing of the knight particularly around the arm and side nearest the pike.

Lets continue on to the next lesson: How to draw action in your figures

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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
23. Lesson 22: A Guest artist discusses pencils, his technique and building a library of images

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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