Drawing on black card and then turning it into a keychain is more of an experiment for me and so lets do this!

Black card comes in a range of different sizes and surface texture, but the ones I prefer are the smooth thick black A4 pieces of card and are perfect for drawing on with white ink pens or other similar pens or acrylic paint.

When drawing on black card with a white pen I always try to draw the highlighted areas and leave the black to show the shadowed areas. This looks effective and quite cool looking and plus you can always black out areas you’ve messed up on with a thick black Sharpie marker or something similar.

It’s a good idea to draw the absolute outline of your idea on the paper to get the drawing that you want, then you can move on to the infinite details (as I like to call it!)

One thing with pens of this kind is similar to any other gel pens. They have a tendency to clog a lot and this can be quite frustrating, but it is best to try and plough through it. Try and warm the pens up first beforehand to get the ink a bit more fluid, that usually helps and try not to leave the pen without drawing for more than five minutes to assist with the clogging issue.

If pens aren’t for you consider white acrylic on a thin brush, just be prepared to have patience and a steady hand. Drawing on black card
Using a Sakura White Gelly Roll ink pen, an outline of the concept has been simplified as a basic outline.

I think with these black and white illustrations it is a great idea to establish where the light source is coming from and that is illustrated in the picture below. So everything on the right hand side will be whiter than the left hand side, creating the illusion of more depth and light.

Establishing a light source helps guide you through placing the white areas and leaving the rest black.

The important thing to remember is that, if you want to, you can break the rules of the light source if you wish or add more things to the drawing which we’ll cover later. There are always them Artists out there that will look down on illustrations were you have broken the perceived rules and I say “Bollocks to em!”

Realizing texture of the creature heads can be done by varying the hatching away from the edges of where the light source is coming from.
Don’t worry too much about the white ink dominating the drawing, because you can scale it back with black ink markers or black paint if you wish. It’s better to get all the details down that you want so that everything can be blitzed later with white paint splashes and other dark detailed stuff.

In the drawing now, you can see that a more interesting thing is happening as I go along with the design. I’m figuring out dribbles and other textures of the flesh. Notice how the tentacle parts have a tree branch look to them.

The white color of the ink is making the illustration shine more here now. It’s at this time that I want to start to think about expanding the illustration further beyond the basic outline I did at the start, there is the rest of the black card to draw on.

Having worked on this for over an hour, there is a small issue with finger prints that has been annoying me slightly. I suppose I could wear surgical gloves to avoid greasy fingerprints, in fact that is a good tip, Yay! go me! lol.

This creates a great initial look and I can really see if they will look great when I turn the art work in metal work and make the keychain from my drawing.

I think more experimentation is needed to test out the full capabilities of white on black card…The next thing to do is test out some glow in the dark type pens…now that would look cool.

Now you could take the finished product and turn into a reality either through a manufacturer or your using your own equipment using keychain making supplies like these.

When it comes to creating Manga style keychains you begin with a great drawing and for Manga there is an ebook which always springs to mind when thinking about it, although there are other existing physical books which are far cheaper that might give you a good insight into drawing Manga art. This ebook delivers practical information from the very basic level of drawing manga art.

Other ebooks like the Manga Expert are great as well, but I want to focus on this particular one as I own it myself. The Ebook which comes in PDF format is an instant download after you pay for it and you get a couple of small bonus ebooks with it on drawing hair and Chibi characters which are manga characters but with big heads I’m sure you’ve seen them before!

When Artists teach manga art they try and build up from the very basic level so as not to put you off from drawing. So basic stuff like drawing all the features on manga characters heads such as eyes, ears and mouth are explored and then full figures are introduced later in the ebook to give you an idea on ways to build up your manga character sketches.

The ease of reading and browsing this ebook is apparent and I’m sure when people get to grips with formatting these ebooks for drawing instructions better, there will be more detailed ebooks on drawing manga and other creative stuff which will just expand any beginner Artists knowledge.

Mad About Manga is one of the best instant download ebooks on drawing the manga art form, although I’m sure there could be room for extra page updates at some point or even a brand new ebook which focuses on drawing Mech Warriors or Japanese Demons which would be cool.

Once you nail the art style of Manga and have on paper something that you believe to be perfect you can start the transformation to a live keychain ready for use. Manga is very popular so these will be well liked by many people.

Drawing a Zombie skull is about sketching in a flesh skull that looks more rotten than anything else and here we have a three part video showing you how to draw a Zombie skull in the early sketching stage to the inked stage and coloring stage.

Choosing a nice soft pencil is the first step. I always use a 2B or a 5B for sketching as it always makes for good sketch lines that can be erased should you make a mistake. by sketching in the overall shape of the skull with an oval you can begin to block in the rough features as you go along with the drawing. I much prefer to build on a drawing or a sketch instead of trying to draw it exactly right first off which doesn’t always work.

Working lighter to start with and then darkening the pencil lines you are beginning to shade your drawing ready for the inking stage….

A good ink pen is essential. I however use many different ink pens, but primarily the gel ink ones that are cheap and they do fine for the purposes of inking your pencil drawings. Improving the sketch is paramount at this stage and adding details helps the design too.

Blending and shading with Crayola colored pencils is what I did in the last drawing video below it’s all about knowing your colors and how to blend them and pretty much this can be about trial and error to start out with, but generally speaking the warm and the cool colors can be blended together but mixing and matching the warm and cool colors can work just as well.

Now you have the drawing colored and complete the concept is ready to be turned into a reality. Making the final keyring design is taken up by my manufacturer and this will be going to them for a first model to be made.

How to draw a dragon and take it to the keyring stage is a quick step by step guide with photos of each step to draw a Dragon. Now the step by step photos were added one by one here and you can follow along the drawing steps or just look through and gain a few ideas on how to draw your very own Dragon. The idea is to draw simple lines with not a lot of great detail as you need to create a sense of Cartoon styled design.

In the early sketching stages you are more likely to make some mistakes so draw lightly. By far this isn’t a fully finished drawing, just an idea you can clean up at a later stage, but it gets the ball rolling when you want to create quick cartoon artwork.

Follow through the steps below and see for yourself how to draw an idea as simple as aDragon. I used a Popper pencil to sketch this Dragon, a black Gel Ink pen and some Crayola Twistables to add the color, but you can use whatever art pens and equipment you are more comfortable with.

Sketch the spine of your Dragon.

How To Draw Dragon

Sketch the underbelly.

Sketch in the leg shape which will be in the foreground.

Draw in the tail for your Dragon.

Mark out a rough shape for the neck and top of head.

Draw an eye brow and bottom jaw and mouth.

Define the eye brow and change it’s shape.

Define the mouth shape now.

Draw an eye and finish mouth lines.

Define the chest and belly with classic bubble style curves.

Follow all the way along until the end of the tail.

…..Like this

Define more pencil lines.

Draw in some sharp teeth.

Start to draw sharp spikes on the spine of the Dragon…

….Follow all the way along.

Remembering to the curve the spikes with the shape of the body.

Define the back line to match the shape of the body.

Draw curved lines on the bubbles creating a nice underbelly.

Follow along with this all the way to the end of the tail.

How To Draw A Cartoon Dragon

Mark in the other Dragons foot.

Define the front foot.

Darken the pencil lines and draw in some claws. Try and draw them as if they were huge slippers.

Add a little detail for the impression of some scales.

Separate the toes of your feet.

Add some more Dragon scales around the Dragons mouth. Keep this to a minimum.

Change the eye brow slightly. Fix any details you are not happy with on the face.

Take a look…happy or is it back to the drawing board?

Now ink the whole drawing with an ink pen and erase the pencil lines from your drawing.

Color in the middle of the Dragon with a dark green pencil leaving enough space for the lighter green and some more highlights.

Color with the dark green on the whole of the Dragons body legs and tail.

Use the light green on the underbelly only.

Also use the light green to blend in with the dark green as they go well together.

Now take a golden yellow and color in the white spaces left on your cartoon dragon drawing.

Continue all the way through…

Tail as well….

Until you have a finished dragon drawing idea like this.

Of course that isn’t the end if you want to develop your Dragon idea as you can scan this drawing into your computer and make it look more professional by computer coloring it and we’ll do that at a later date either with Gimp or Photoshop. Once that is complete we can take it to the next stage and begin mapping out or design in 3D so we can begin to make our dragon keyring.