Learn How to How to Draw Swords Digitally!

Here is where you learn how to draw swords in this digital art lesson. Specifically, the drawings of swords are an attempt to create various different types of short swords!

Why should we create sword drawings? It's because a lot of fantasy characters will have a class of occupation that will depend on fast close ranged weaponry!

It's all about creating variety in your fantasy world.

Let's get started!

1. Draw a sword with gesture sketches

Unlike a broad sword, a regular sword is shorter. There is a rule of thumb that a sword and a dirk are about three handles long (or less) while a broad sword is three handles long (or more).

Having this in mind, start a new layer and create a simple sketch outlining the length of your swords. Do not worry about details at all. You are just giving it proportions in this step.

The best way to create variation is to try different hilt styles as you learn how to draw swords. Try angling it upwards or downwards instead of the standard horizontal hilt.

Also try to play around with the shape of the blade. In other words, rather than make the blade straight, add some bumps here and there to make it look unique.

2. Draw a sword that is symmetrical

To make this easier, clean up your gesture sketch a bit. Estimate the overall shape of your dirk or sword to make sure all the proportions are correct.

Then, you will need to duplicate your sword layer and flip it over. Once it is flipped, correctly align it to form the other half of the sword and then merge it into one layer.

From there, preserve the transparency of the layer and start working on the details.

Think about how dark or light your blade is compared to the handle and the hilt. Think about the overall design.

It's best to work on a rough idea of the designs on one side of the sword as we are going to flip the design again to form a symmetrical design.

Having said that…

Even though your swords are symmetrical, you can go ahead and make it asymmetrical by erasing or recreating the blade to your liking.

3. Draw a sword with symmetrical designs

As you have probably guessed, go ahead and duplicate your sword drawing thus far. One more, align it to where it will fit properly.

Instead of merging the layers right away, set the current layer's blend mode to ‘lighten.' This should reveal the layer underneath immediately.

Just take a quick look at the overall design and then merge the layers into place.

You can continue to refine the designs to fit what you like with smaller brushes. If you want it to be exactly the same, go ahead and repeat the flipping process until you are satisfied.

Just be careful about asymmetrical designs. You have to erase the parts of the sword that you don't want to create symmetry before you merge the layers together.

4. Draw a sword convincingly

Now that you have all your designs finished, this last step will involve making your sword drawing look a bit more realistic.

To do that, you need to glaze where the light will hit. Always preserve the transparency of your layers to make sure that the glazing doesn't go out of the object's boundaries.

Remember that the sharpest parts of the blade have a lighter color than the rest of the blade.

When it's all said and done, you will have a realistic sword drawing!

Moving forward, you can manipulate it to fit into your character's hand or place it somewhere like a weapons rack.

Using this simple lesson, you can create multiple and countless designs that you can show off to your potential clients as well!

I hope you enjoy this lesson on how to draw swords. If you have the time, please submit your artworks to this site's gallery as I would love to see what you come up with.

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