Drawing Ancient Weapons

I got the chance recently to create some drawings of ancient and medieval weapons for an RPG project. So I spent a good amount of time browsing reference images of authentic weapons from history.

I started with small blades, picking a few interesting examples ranging from the Viking age to the Renaissance. I began working on these after a break from drawing that had lasted a few months, so my first attempts were a bit rough and uncertain, but as I worked I a better sense of how to render them with my desired level of realism.

I then moved up to a higher level of detail but still somewhat unfocused in the composition. I drew whatever popped into mind. As I drew, I got the urge to be more systematic and focus on small collections of similar weapons.

At this point I began investigating historic weapons more seriously, trying to get a clearer idea of weapon terminology and answer certain questions. For example, what is the difference between a longsword and a broadsword, or a bastard sword and a claymore? This search helped to inform me a bit about how historians understand the weapons of the past.

This info appealed to both the history geek in me as well as to my inner gamer. Plus, despite what I thought was my fairly extensive familiarity with historic weapons, I discovered several weapon types that I hadn’t previously known.

Browsing images from medieval manuscripts showed me several lesser known weapons, like warbrands, featured frequently in the Maciejowski Bible.  Though the most interesting weapons were godenaks, a strange “chopper” that I’d never come across before.

By this point I felt a strong urge to cover all possible weapon types, doing several drawing of each. This exploration proved interesting and quite satisfying. So continuing in this direction, curved blades came next.

Technically, these weapons offered a greater challenge due to the need for so few straight lines. With straight blades, the use of  rulers are an easy shortcut for clean lines. But curved edges require much more freehand work, which is troublesome for the level of precision that I prefer with these drawings.

After exhausting most blade styles, I took a whack at axes. (pun intended)

Afte

After focusing on metal textures like reflections or tarnish, drawing wood grain was an interesting switch. Both are fairly amorphous but wood grain is a bit more patterned so requires that strange combination of form and chaos.

Maybe the best part of doing this series was the frequent satisfaction felt at the end of drawing each weapon.

Dancers & Musicians

Possessing neither grace nor musical talent myself, those who do have always been  fascinating to me. The notion of producing beauty in real time is, to me, an alien concept. The closest I can come is trying to capture their art on my page, which I am frequently inspired to do.

Above is my first attempt at a dancer. The folds and textures of flowing cloth are hard enough to render but adding the subtle skin tones of a moving body makes it so much worse.

The above drawing was my attempt at using a looser style to capture some sense of movement.

The Violinist

This recent work really took me back to my early years of art lessons and laborious sketching drills, when the art teacher would stack up random objects then throw some striped cloth over it. We had to draw the chaotic amorphous patterns that we saw. At the time, having the attention span of a teenager, I found it all quite tedious.  But such practice then pays off now. I was inspired by photos of a particular musician at a Medieval Faire that I happened upon online.

 

The Zombie Challenge

A friend and fan of my art asked me one day why I had never drawn a zombie, given that the genre is a long time guilty pleasure of mine. I couldn’t think of a reason and immediately took it as a challenge. So I set out to find inspirational reference images and started sketching.

At first, sketching went quicker than normal since jeans and a tank top are so much easier to get right than the armor and medieval garb I usually deal with. However, when I got to her face I started to realized that it would be challenging in ways I hadn’t previously considered. As with most horror, if you fail to make it scary, it just looks comical. This was my biggest worry.

I kept imagining a face with subtly unnerving, lifeless eyes, so milky opaque pupils seemed fitting. To add to the lifeless quality, I tried to make her mouth slack, without any human expression. Next came some some deep bites and the resulting smeared, dried blood.

Lastly, just the vaguest background.

Deviating form my typical genre proved challenging and enjoyable. Certainly something I need to do more often.

Drawing Portraits

I’ve always considered portraiture a good method for keeping up on technical skills when I’m not feeling particularly inspired, or if I need to take a break from another drawing but don’t want to put the pencils down. Despite the compositional simplicity of portraits, they can pose challenges and not only in terms of technique. The elusive element in a portrait is whether the artist has “captured” the subject. Years ago, a friend of mine said something that has stuck with me. He said that a good portrait should make you care about a stranger. Since then, I don’t think I’ve attempted a portrait without that idea lingering in my mind.

I recently finished a little portrait series based on a trio of sisters who I’ve known for a few years. I used simple snapshots as reference since I much prefer their raw, candid quality to something more posed.

Despite the old rule that drawing from life is better, I haven’t found it to always be the case. I’ve drawn a lot both from photos and from having a model in front of me and the results have varied widely. Such disparate end products can result from many possible reasons, of course.

This reminds me of a recent conversation I had with another Asian friend. She told me about a portrait of her which she had purchased from a street artist while on holiday in Paris, a portrait which, though she liked it, she had always felt had not quite captured her accurately. She felt, in fact, that the artist, who was a frenchman, had made her look too “western.”

My friend wondered why this might have occurred and whether it was because western artists have difficulty, or at least less experience, rendering Asian faces. I admitted that I hadn’t really considered it before but it certainly got me thinking. I thought back to very early drawing lessons learning about how strange and difficult it can be to capture the human form due to all the unconscious psychological influences and how symbolic the human face is. It made me wonder whether an artist’s sense of identity might make certain art goals more problematic than others. Did this french artist have a harder time capturing an Asian face because he wasn’t Asian himself? Or is a simpler explanation more likely, namely that he just needed to improve his technique. I have a hard time buying the simpler explanation since I saw the portrait in question and I thought it was impressive , though I agreed with my friend that it just wasn’t quite “her”. Can the old rule of “draw what you see,not what you think you see” overcome such an odd unconscious influence? It’s something I’ll need to think more about.

Keeping with the Asian theme, I recently finished a quick drawing based on a production still from the Marco Polo TV series. I saw the image and immediately wanted to see how well I could render it on the page. Admittedly, it was the first time I’ve tried to draw the surface of a flowing river. I kept it pretty crude but the end result was fairly decent.

 

Shadow, Darkness and Gloom

Like many artists, I began my first forays into drawing at a very young age using little more than your average #2 pencil and lined notebook paper. At that age I learned to draw lightly in case I made any mistakes, which of course I did.  Drawing dark lines and shapes required some commitment, and therefore some risk. Due to youthful lack of skill, many drawings turned out not so great because I’d drawn too dark too soon. Even as a boy I was a perfectionist about my art. The result of this has tended to be a reticence to make anything too dark. But what nearly any art fan can tell you is that dark looks amazing! It is so much more dramatic and evocative. Dark sits heavy as granite on the page. Entire genres of art have been based around the use of deep shadows. Dark is the artist’s friend.

Patience (2007)

The drawing Patience is an early attempt to fill the frame with shadow.  I chose a night scene with all the light coming from on direction, casting heavy shadows on everything. The snapshot narrative is of a roadside brigand awaiting his prey, keeping still until the perfect moment.

The Ritual (2005)

An earlier exploration of light and shadow around a story element. This one required a lot of photo references to get the light and shadow on the gothic arches just right. 

Totems (2011)

For a long time I’ve had a fascination with distant abandoned places, whether it’s an ancient graveyard or a remote castle. The places seem to hum with history and in that sense could be called haunted. Whatever the reason, spooky places are evocative and memorable. I’ve tried capturing that feeling often. The above drawing Totems is mostly from my imagination. I used some photo references for the trees and the stone texture but the overall feeling is imagined. I tried to capture the ethereal gloom of a place where spirits dwell.

Forest Tomb (2014)

Collaboration can be quite a satisfying endeavor. Artists can’t, nor should they, work in isolation. My author friend Daniel Ionson recently published his novel, titled After Life in which my drawing Forest Tomb appears. The novel describes The Darkland a realm where light shines only dimly, seeming oppressed by the darkness, where shadow and gloom dominate. After reading the manuscript I had a strong sense of how it could look and tried to capture it on the page.  You can find info about Daniel’s novel at:

http://www.danielionson.com

You can also find info about another artist friend of ours, John Madison, who did the cover art for After Life.

http://www.johnmadison.com

 

 

Drawing Armor

It’s impossible to do ancient, medieval or otherwise historical artwork without staring at a lot of photos of armor. Armor, especially when it’s well polished, can be immensely complicated to draw. Just like drawing stone, armor can be quite a mixture of geometric and organic forms. Additionally, my love of realism doesn’t really allow me to be satisfied unless I make the final image as realistic as possible.

Many years ago, one of my oldest friends asked me to render his long time RPG character. At the time I’d done a few drawings that incorporated metal armor, but I’d never focused heavily on detailing it. The above drawing, titled Gildaedren, was, up to that point, the largest drawing I’d tried as well as the first time I’d focused on creating realistic reflections on metal surfaces. Like most large drawings, it took a great deal of time and mental energy, not to mention several pencils worth of very dark graphite.

As if the reflections on polished metal weren’t complex enough I also decided to  tackle the eye-straining intricacy of maille armor, something I’d learn to love/hate doing in the following years. The above drawing, titled Walls of Daegruna, incorporated much of what I most enjoy drawing; armor, stone and women warriors.

Speaking of warrior women, this drawing began  with the intention of something simple but turned into one of the darkest drawings I’ve done, hence the title Darkness. The real challenge was trying to render the light of a flickering fire. Not sure I captured it but I’m mostly satisfied.

I did the above drawing mostly from memory with a bit of imagination. Years ago I’d seen a few photos of some rather unusual Russian armor which had left a big impression on me. Sadly I couldn’t find the photos again to use as reference so I decided to see what my memory could dredge up.

My most recent attempt at armor, this time a full suit of gothic plate. With the complete background, it took about as long as it appears. It is titled Prayer Among the Stones.

For a quick look behind the scenes, here’s the drawing unfinished.

 

How I work…usually.

The imagery that I find most inspiring, most compelling are images of people. Expressive, realistic depictions of faces and bodies can keep my attention like no other art can. When I begin any art where people will be part of the composition, I will almost always begin drawing the faces first.  It’s really important  to me to get that right from the very beginning. I can forgive myself for mistakes in the scenery, or some part of the background not looking just right.  But if there is a flaw in the focal point of the drawing, then I have to call it a failure. At which point I normally start over. My perfectionism about my art allows me to do nothing else.

The drawing I am currently working on (though embarrassingly slowly) is a medieval fantasy illustration. I try to make these drawings look like a brief moment in a larger narrative, almost like a single frame of a film.

I used a snapshot of a couple of friends as reference for body position and facial expressions.  At this point I usually haven’t fully planned out the details of how they will eventually look. Rather I’m still worrying about making them look like they are in the scene and not just on the page.

A few more details begin to fall in place. Balance is very important in my characters. I want them to look like they are standing naturally, that whatever they are carrying hangs naturally upon them. I had a bit of trouble with the hefty axe. The first time I drew it, the angle was off, making it look more like he was clenching it in his fist rather than holding it loosely in his grip.  It took me two or three more attempts before it looked believable. It’s really important to notice these details when I’m stilling dealing with lines, rather than when I have begun to fill in the darker values.

At this stage I’m usually filling in more shades and details, polishing up ideas and constantly considering whether what I’ve done is good or not. In that respect I am not really a very intuitive artist, rather I think at length (perhaps overthink) about whether certain details are in fact right for the drawing. I sometimes begin a small idea and after spending a little time on it, realize I don’t like it and decide to abandon it. This can slow down the process considerably, causing me to get bogged down in minutia, something I try to avoid.

As the figures near completion, I have to begin thinking about putting my ideas for the background onto the page. Often I’m still mulling over a couple of different notions, trying to decide which is best. With this one I had always imagined them emerging from a forest, looking into the distance.

Sometimes getting a detail wrong, can be a lethal mistake. As my figures come closer to the ground I begin to think about how their feet should look obscured by grass and underbrush. Since it’s in the foreground it’ll be more noticeable, which makes it not a minor detail. I would notice that in a drawing so I must assume my viewers would too. So worrying about something like that, often makes me put off finishing it. Which is what I’ve done here.

It is really important to me to create the illusion of depth. So I can easily spend too much time trying to find the perfect reference images to fill in my background. Sometimes I must force myself to draw more freely, to let the central figures really be the central figures, to let the background be a little hazy and unclear. In the end, that is a more realistic view anyway.

This drawing is done on a 14 x 16 page but for some reason is taking me longer that some bigger drawings I’ve done. In fact I’ve started and finished another drawing while still slaving away at this one. But I’ve often felt like each artwork kind of has a plan of its own. Some works seem to flow out onto the page while others arrive as slow as erosion. Sometimes, despite being the artist, it really doesn’t seem to be up to me.

After an era of blood and tears the drawing has finally reached completion. The background proved frustrating because I continually asked myself if it was enough. Should I draw more rocks or logs or bushes…ad nauseum. In the end it turned out pretty well.

Drawing Stone

A subject I’ve found surprisingly satisfying to draw is stone built architecture. Old walls, vaults, castle ruins and cathedrals certainly fit into the medieval theme that occupies much of my artistic efforts. But the act itself can be quite enjoyable.

An appealing aspect is the combination of organic and geometric forms. It tends to be grandly symmetrical on the large scale yet wildly amorphous in the details. I really enjoy this range. It creates all kinds of possibilities for texture.

The above tower is a sketch I did from my memories of architecture in Prague. I didn’t use any photos for reference, just my recollections so it’s more a  distillation of the style than any particular building.

I’ve spent many an afternoon wandering the halls of centuries old monasteries and they always left me pensive and inspired. The above drawing is my attempt at capturing some of their quiet atmosphere.

This crumbled statue, titled Forgotten God, was inspired by a photo of a hellenistic temple ruin in Turkey. With it I learned a lot about drawing texture.

These two statues, inspired by Persepolis in Iran, were pretty quick works, again trying to learn the how-tos of stony texture, cracks, breaks, jagged edges etc.

 

A few details from other works highlighting the stonework. Something that I found it really helps to remember when drawing stone is a lesson that artists ought to have learned early on. That is, when going for realism, be sure you are drawing what you actually see. Rocks and stones, even sculpted ones, can be pretty amorphous and if you aren’t careful will end up just looking “blobby,” or worse, cartoonish. I’m especially pleased with the detail I managed to get in the first picture, the grass covered low arch. The rough face of each stone turned out pleasingly detailed.

An early drawing of another stone doorway, one of my first such attempts. A bit simple compared to what I would later learn to do but I am still happy with the perspective and the detail of the inner door frame.

Another stone doorway, this one taken from a photo I took of Marksburg Castle in Germany many years ago. The photo was high contrast and I wanted to try and get a similar value difference in the drawing, so lots of dark pencil! I really fell in love with deep shadows while drawing this one.

That feeling carried over into several other drawings. With this shadowy crypt, inspired partly by my friends novel After Life (which you can find here: http://danielionson.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/muses-and-monsters/) I tried to take the shadows to an even deeper level and really used the dead space (no pun intended). I really like the heaviness of it.

In the same vein, another shadowy, crumbly ruin.

Lastly, quiet dusty cobblestone passages under  the  dim evening sun , far from the madding crowd, with only aloof cats for company…who doesn’t love that?

Influences & Inspirations: Expressionism and the Pre-Raphaelites

I find it difficult to talk about my artistic influences, mostly because I am not entirely sure how to define “influence.” Much of the art that inspires me has little stylistic effect on my own work. Is influence defined by emulation?  I certainly have an emotional reaction to a lot of artwork and in turn hope to make art that is equally or at least similarly impacting.  Like any artist, I am emotionally very connected to whatever I create. I somewhat buy into the notion that all art is autobiographical though perhaps not to the extreme claimed by some proponents. Looking back ,though, at my early work, some patterns are noticable given what art I was exposed to at the time. Perhaps then, influence is only noticable after the fact and, unless one is intentionally copying another’s style, remains unconscious to the artist.

Like a lot of little boys who are interested in drawing, most of my youthful subject matter was typically boyish stuff, from robots and tanks to dragons and castles. At the end of my teens, after starting to learn about a bit of art history, the first genre that really had an effect on me, that I really came to feel compelled by, was Expressionism, especially of the German variety. 

Death & the Mother – Käthe Kollwitz

the Mothers – Käthe Kollwitz

Calling the work of Käthe Kollwitz “dark” is needless, obviously. Her subjects epitomize the oppressive, the nightmarish, the bleak. Had she not concentrated so heavily on human suffering, depicting anguish in nearly every artwork she put her hand to, the aesthetic qualities alone would inspire sorrow and dread.

Expressionism came into being at a time when the new art form of cinema was starting to develop. As anyone who’s taken an Intro to Cinema course can tell you, some of the earliest, most interesting films were of the German Expressionistic kind.

Still from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – 1920

Still from Nosferatu – 1922

What most appealed to me at the time was the strength of the emotional impact compared with the simplicity of the style and composition. The most noticable quality is the contrast. Stark blacks and whites with the occasional grey make up the majority of  what’s in each frame. I love the efficiency of it.

Sadly, (or perhaps not) little of my early artwork survives so I can’t offer too many examples here. Most of my work from high school has long since disintegrated or otherwise drifted into obscurity. The only piece that I still have (which I don’t even remember what I titled at the time) is a small, simple series painted on handmade paper, only in black. It’s nothing I’m terribly proud of nor does it cause me embarrassment like some of my later work (It wasn’t bad for a 17 year old). But it does show some of what I was influenced  by at the time. The contrast and the solitude of the figure are right out of the expressionist rulebook.

A few unfinished sketches remain, excavated from some dusty portfolio. The two here seem to show that early influence of expressionism but more in terms of subject matter than aesthetic (that and maybe one too many Nine Inch Nails videos). Being sketches, I can imagine that they might have blossomed into dimmer, more shadowy finished works. But as is they are simple line drawings.

Neither of these images are compositions I’d be interested in now. There is entirely too much teen angst in them, which is ancient history for me. But I admit that the dreamlike quality still appeals to me on some level.

The last examples  of early Expressionist influence are a couple of paintings from my early twenties. They certainly embody the heavy shadows and solitude so often seen in the genre. I framed them like a medium shot in film, hoping to capture some feeling of confinement in deep shadows. I chose dramatic colors, partly for the emotional impact but also because I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate subtlety. By this time though, I was beginning to move away from the surreality of Expressionism and into more realistic figures, as illustrated by their faces. This kind of high contrast interior space would continue showing up in my work for the next several years.

Gothic Arches                     No Exit

As I mentioned, by my early twenties I had become more interested in realistic depictions of the world. And given my aforementioned love of narrative art, naturally I gravitated toward more classical genres, one of which was the Pre-raphaelites. The Pre-raphaelites get a lot of love and a lot of hate, depending on who you are talking to. I won’t engage in that debate here. Rather I’ll just say that I love the genre for the two reasons I’ve just stated, realism and narrative. Capturing a moment in a story was central to painters like John William Waterhouse and John Everett Millais. Their interest in history and mythology is something that I came to share, the older I got. These three drawings (the first two by Waterhouse, the third by Millais) cause me to feel uncomfortably convicted, seeing how good they were in mere sketches. Yet despite my initial jealously/discouragement, they do inspire me to work harder to reach that level.

A contemporary of Waterhouse, though not a Pre-raphaelite, was John Singer Sargent. His work is another source of inspiration, again simply for the realism of his figures. Many years ago I managed to catch a Sargent exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington DC which left me deeply moved and motivated.

Many years later, I would find myself coming full circle when I discovered Czech Expressionism. Though far less known than its German neighbor, Czech Expressionism is, in my opinion equally deserving of attention. What I find especially appealing is that the Czech version is far more realistic in its figures yet still contains the moody darkness that is the signature of the genre. One of the best is The Black Idol by František Kupka.

Sketches and Unfinished Works

Most artists would admit that inspiration and motivation are problematic. I, for one, feel motivated to produce work nearly all the time. The question, and really the problem, is why do I find myself not doing artwork when I clearly have the time and energy to do so? What is stopping me?

It isn’t an inspiration problem. I’ve never experienced the artists’ equivalent of writer’s block. But distraction is the bane of any creative effort and I’ve found that I’m at least as distractible as the next person. So it seems like a good idea to make producing artwork into a habit, into a tendency, something that you gravitate toward doing, almost without effort. If you don’t feel inspired to produce something of quality then make up for it with quantity. Sketching seems the best way to do that.

Sketching works for me in a couple of ways. On the practical side, it’s often necessary to sketch in preparation for a larger work. Any artist can tell you this. Make the mistakes and figure out the problems on the cheap paper and not on the larger work that you’ve poured a bunch of heart and soul into. Few things are more frustrating to me artistically than realizing I’ve made a bunch of unfixable mistakes which essentially render the work unworthy of finishing. But more on that later.

The second way that sketching works for me concerns the aforementioned motivation problem. Quick sketches take little effort and have a fairly high pay off in satisfaction. This alone creates motivation and allows, I think, inspiration to have a stronger effect. Admittedly it is something of a trick I play on myself but it’s done to counter some of my less than desirable artistic work ethic, so I use it.

Lastly, sketching is a good idea for the sake of keeping up your skills. I’ve been drawing long enough to recognize the physical side to putting pencil to paper. Artistic skills become cold when unused, little different from intellectual or athletic skills. In that respect, feeling uninspired is a double blow. Not only are you not producing new work, but your abilities to do so in the future are waning. This brings me back to my earlier point about quantity when quality isn’t possible. I really believe that producing any art, no matter how uninspired, is better than nothing.

Sometimes I begin a sketch with no intention to make it anything more than that. It is simply done for all the reasons I’ve just listen. Above is an example of something I never intended to be more than just a sketch. I drew it while laying on a beach in Turkey after touring the ruins of a roman city. So inspiration was not at all a problem and what better to do under the Mediterranean sun! Yet when I stopped sketching that day, I had no intention of going back to it. I did it for practice and enjoyment.

Oppositely, this drawing above was intended to be a completed work, something I wanted to put a lot of effort and polish into. I’d hoped to create a particular mood and hopefully elicit certain feelings from viewers. But as I worked I found myself dissatisfied with it. It just didn’t seem right to me. I continued working on it for a while but eventually I was forced to admit it was unfinishable. Continuing would have been wasted effort. This brings up an issue that I am sure a lot of artists deal with, the question of whether to stop working on something because it’s not going well. I’ll admit to being wrong about something I’m working on, in other words it seems to not be progressing well but I continue the struggle and end up producing an artwork that I’m more than happy with. I’m not sure how to answer that question. The best I can say is de facto keep working on it. Don’t make giving up your go-to reaction. But be willing to throw in the towel when the truth of the situation becomes clear. Where to draw that line, so to say, is up to the artist.