Learning how to draw snake scales is an easy and fun process, offering a wide range of creative possibilities. Art and drawing are learned skills, meaning that anyone can develop their abilities with practice. It's important to keep your creative time relaxing and enjoyable so you'll look forward to it.
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Warming Up Your Drawing Skills
Doing some practice sketches is a great way to warm up your drawing muscles. There are other options to warm up as well, which are covered in tutorials on how to do warm-up exercises. If done before working on your actual drawings, practice sketches can be used as a way to work through some ideas for your drawings. Just make sure you're keeping your sketches quick and loose.
Basic Snake Scale Drawing
Learning how to draw a snake scale is really easy. Start by drawing a couple of lines for the body of the snake. Next, we need to add in some contour lines to help with the placement of the individual snake scales. Now you can begin drawing the snake scales. Then, repeat this process in the sections around that first scale, continuing to work your way around the existing snake scales. You don’t have to make each scale exactly the same.
Outlining Snake Scales
Doing a snake scales outline is really easy. You can make your lines any thickness you want, depending on your style. Another option is to use a color other than black for your snake scales outline. Your creative time should include some discovery, which is done by experimenting and trying new things. You can add in some shading with your outlining pen as well.
Drawing Snake Scales with Markers
Learning how to draw snake scales with markers is really easy. First, if you want to be able to blend your colors together, you need to use alcohol-based markers. Examples include Bic, Sharpie, and Copic. Second, you need to work while the colors are still wet, or they won’t mix together. This isn't a big deal. Third, you need to use colors that are similar to each other if you want to create a smooth transition of color. For these snake scales, we decided on making a brown snake. The colors were chosen by testing them out on a piece of scrap paper first. Then, use the mid-tone color to blend where those two colors meet. If you’re working small, this can sometimes be difficult to do. Continue working on small sections at a time using the method described above.
Continuing Your Artistic Journey
Now that you know how to draw snake scales, what is the next step? Art and drawing are skills that anyone can learn. Try to make your creative time part of your daily routine; literally schedule it into your day. It doesn’t have to be hours a day. Try doing a challenge to see how many snake scale drawing ideas you can come up with.
Roshanda is an art education blogger who is on a mission to coach and encourage as many aspiring artists as possible through the use of her blog.