Pro_747’s Airplane Drawing Guide & Tips
Thanks for stopping by and checking out my drawing guide. I’m not a professional or extremely serious about airplane arts, but I have some tips that would come in handy.
Basic sketch, starting off
- Sketching is all about getting the shape and dimensions correct. If you aren’t completely comfortable with freehanding, use a ruler. If you’d like, you can also print out a picture of a plane and trace it, if you are using standard printer paper.
- A strategy is to use a ruler to draw a simple rectangle, and eventually add the details - nose curve, tail curve, wings, tail, stabilizers, etc, just to get the shape and lines right.
Its not necessary, but certainly makes it easier!
For example:
Detailing
For details, using a regular pencil for the whole drawing is alright, but a 2B-3B is recommended for the smaller details, such as the nose gear, engine, cockpit, etc. It is much better to use a reference picture for detailing, even if you are not drawing the specific airplane from the reference picture. At this point, you should have an unshaded detailed drawing.
Suggestions
- always have a sharpened pencil. Smaller details are much easier with a smaller, sharper tip.
- Try to keep your hand off the drawing whilst doing the tiny details. One smear can ruin the entire thing.
Example of drawing without shading:
Shading (final thing)
For shading, you can either use a regular pencil if desired, 5B-9B pencils are also recommended. Lighter shadows such as the top of the fuselage (if existent) can be used by 4B/5B, and darker shading like landing gear can be carried out by 7-9B pencils.
My Two Favorite Shading Strategies
Strategy A:
Lightly scribble on an area of your drawing, then you can rub your hand or a napkin on that area, and eventually the scribble will disappear and you’ll have an even and smooth gray patch on your drawing.
The downfall of this strategy is that you can’t really do details with it, and its really easy to smear the rest of the paper.
Strategy B:
This strategy is a slightly harder way of doing it, however the end result should be a lot better and look cleaner. For this, you simply use a pencil and color in areas with dark/light shadows. The great part about this is that you can make a fading effect on the shadow by pressing in on the pencil to create a darker tone of black, and then gradually making it get lighter by pressing softer.
The only downfall of this is that it takes a long time and often gets annoying.
Final Results
These are just a few examples of drawings that I have done. Practice makes perfect, the more you practice, the better you draw. Of course it takes a long time to get the skills right, but overall its possible and easier if you spend time on it and don’t rush it.
Image 1:
Image 2:
Image 3:
Image 4:
Image 5:
And that’s all for now, leave questions comments suggestions as desired down below :)
