Sketching the Coolest Bad Guy in the Universe!   Kylo Ren: Star Wars Force Awakens

Like many of you, I have always been a Star Wars fan and I am totally stoked about the new Star Wars Force Awakens movie coming out today!   I have always been fascinated by the Star Wars world and the boundless amount of imagination that runs wild when designing these characters.  I know there is a lot of buzz going with the new bad guy that looks to be as ruthless if not even more so than Darth Vader. That is why I found it fitting to sketch out my first Kylo Ren Sketch, the main antagonist(as it seems to be ) in the movie.

I think what you will enjoy about this video, is how this ties nicely into our Ultimate Sketching Techniques Guide. I have a particular example of how line quality can be driven by how you hold a pencil.  In this video, though it is time lapsed, you’ll see how I use the under the palm technique to rough in the overall sketch.  The under the palm technique also allows you to quickly and loosely fill out areas without adding a lot of detail so it sort of sets up the drawing.

There are things that you need to bare in mind when drawing people or using a photo reference.  This will include the following:

Sketch Notes

 

1.  Grid out your page to the reference photo – I didn’t ! Bad on me but the reason is that I decided to star with the head and I sort of measured everything based on the head shape.

2.  Use the Under Palm Technique – to roughly shape the outline before adding details.  You’ll end up covering large areas with pencil(or prismacolor) to define the overall shape and components of the drawing such as the head/mask/arms/saber, etc.

3.  Start adding and darkening up the value with the Under the Palm Technique to start “fleshing” out the drawing

4.  Now you can switch to the traditional writing position and start to add more sharpened lines in the areas where you need detail.  You can see I have added these details to the mask, the cloth wrap on his shoulders and arms.  Notice how important it is to leave the light saber power blade a little “undefined” by not adding any sharper lines to it.

5.  Continue to go back and forth between each technique – add more value in the areas of the picture that appear the darkest.

If you don’t understand, be sure to click on the link below to download the Ultimate Sketching Techniques Guide.  It will go through in a little more detail and explanation as to what this technique is about.

Anyway…I hope most of you catch this movie! Hope you enjoy the drawing.  Until next time! Take care,

Arvind