How to Draw Medieval Weapons

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jay French from jayfrenchstudios.com, and I'm going to show you how to draw an medieval weapon. Now we're going to start of course with a sword, and a good way to start with a sword is with a straight edge. You don't have to, but it's a good thing to have at least a few straight edge lines underneath to give you a guide. Okay, so once we have where the center point is, good thing to remember about swords is that the handle is much narrower than the blade. Unless you're talking a rapier where it maybe about the same size. A pommel is a very important element, which is the very end of the sword opposite the point. A very important element actually, because it gives balance to the sword. So you want something solid. The bigger the sword, and we're going to do a nice good medieval great sword here, then the bigger you want the pommel to be. The weightier you'll want it to be. So, it's good to have some symbolity to your medieval weaponry. Hand guards are broader again on bigger swords. You'll notice they're smaller like on shorter swords like Roman swords. We're just going to give this one a basic straight cross guard. Now you've got your straight line for your blade, but maybe you don't want a straight blade. So at that point what you might do is just follow the same time on each side, we wanted it to come out here and then maybe broader again, and then have a nice curved tip. But because you had your center line you knew what to follow. There's your basic on a sword. Your handle can be wrapped leather, just do a zig zag, a good easy way to cover that. A little shading on it, make it darker than the rest. Now let's say you wanted a northern battle ax, don't have to worry as much about your straight edge there, because it's not as long generally a handle goes inside of the thick metal chunk at the center, which again is your weight that is put behind the force of an ax blow. Get some nice shine in there. A few just diagonal lines, darkest away from the light source, very good way to get that effect. Often a medieval ax, especially a fantasy ax will have a nice thick spike on this end. And perhaps an armor piercing point on the opposite side. A good way to make something look nice and used is to wrap some leather straps cross crossing around it. Make sure you show them wrapping here, and then have them tie off, show the straps going. Then we can have a leather wrap, if you make these angles slightly curved, it gives them a little more depth. And that's a basic first lesson in how to draw a medieval weapons."