Personally, I divide tribal design into 3 types:
1. Gothic tribal
2. Celtic tribal
3. And what I call, the general tribal.
First, let’s start with the general tribal, you must
first know the most basic stroke, as shown in
the pic,
As you can see, it starts and ends with a sharp
point, most tribal designs consist of variations
of this kind of stroke.
Here’s how you usually draw it,
1st
,
2nd
,
Then, it is recommended that you fill it up using
GIMP program later on instead on coloring with
your pencil.
GIMP is a freeware which we recommend,
because it’s free, the software size is not large,
and it can perform most function that Adobe
Photoshop can perform. But if you have any tips
on using Adobe Photoshop, we welcome it.
You can download GIMP either by typing gimp
in Google, or you can click the following link,
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
We posted tips on editing your picture using
GIMP, it is simple and fast. ( I am not sponsored
by GIMP ) You can get the tips on the GIMP
tutorial that I posted.
So, back to the tribal, using the basic stroke just
now, you can add other strokes to it, for
instance,
And also, you can do some changes to the
strokes,
Again, it is advised that you fill it in using GIMP
software, don’t worry, it is easy to install.
So, to create a simple tribal design that looks
like this,
You just combine a bunch of different variations
of that basic stroke. I drew it by first starting
with a giant ‘S’, then as a general rule, I made
sure it begins and ends with sharp ends, then
you just crisscross a few types of that stroke
over each other, then finally rub off the
intersections.
So, with this general tribal stroke, you can
create animals and creature designs, such as
those shown in the pics,
The first few tribals I drew took quite some trial
and errors but as you get used to the strokes,
you can do it without wasting any papers.
As you can see, for animals/creatures, you can’t
use only that initial stroke, occasionally, you
need to draw out the shape of the head,
claws…etc. There is no simple trick for this, the
only tip I can give in this is, visualize… or take a
real picture and imitate the shape.
In animal/creature tribal, the outer shape is the
most important, usually, I take real life pictures
as reference ( not the dragon ). As long as the
animal picture is in the position you wanted,
just draw out the basic shape first, then fill in
the shape with strokes such as these,
Of course there’s no fix rule in this, you can
create your own type of strokes as long as you
like it.
Oh, before I forgot, here’s another tip,
sometimes, you can imitate the skeleton
structure of the animal, such as this,
So, if you have any other tips to share, I really
welcome it.
Here’s an example of Gothic tribal.
As you can see, Gothic style tribal designs rarely
have separate strokes as the general tribal.
Gothic strokes usually end with a malevolent
style, with strokes such as,
Also, in a lot of Gothic designs, symmetry is
important, this can be done by first folding your
paper in half, or using a graph paper to draw
your design, then later trace is out on a white
paper the scan it into the computer.
Here’s an example of Celtic tribal,
As you can see, celtic design consist of a lot of
crisscrossing strokes, the most popular celtic
design is the ‘Triquetra’, which looks like this,
You start with something like this,
Then you add in the ‘thickness’ and make them
cross over each other.
If you search in Google Image, you can find a lot
of versions of celtic tribal designs, basically, you
just cross them over each other. I recommend
you overlap the lines first and complete the
whole design,
Then only you erase a little off the overlaps to
create the space in between, you can do that
using GIMP. It will look more natural that way.
If you have any tips to share, please please
share it at my facebook page☺.
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