mcdm
patreon
A quick post from Grace! Painting Chainmail
🕑 Added 2024-07-11 20:04:17 +0000 UTCGrace is one of our senior artists responsible for a not-inconsiderable amount of the Dope Art people associate with MCDM. She was kind enough to write this up and we thought it would be fun to share with y'all.
Grace enjoys drawing a lot of armored fantasy heroes, and that often means drawing LOTS of chainmail, which can be a PITA. Here's how she does it. Obviously this may only be of actual use to someone getting started with digital art, but we think it's just fun to hear from Grace! :D
How to paint chainmail
Just thought I’d share a technique I like to use for painting chainmail and some ways to simplify the material.
In general chainmail consists of a repeating pattern of a row rings going in one direction and a row rings going in the opposite direction.
When painting chainmail I like to treat the material like a very heavy metallic piece of cloth. First I draw the overall shape of the chainmail. Then I draw in the lines for each row of rings. Next I fill each line with the rings themselves (it is easiest to do this with a repeating crescent shaped brush)
Now that the lines are finished I add a layer under the lines and paint in the mid tones and shadows. Then I go back to my lines to add in the shadows that are in the middle of each ring. Finally I make a new layer on top of everything and paint in the highlights for each ring. The small repeating highlights are the most important part since they mimic the pattern of chainmail.
This is how I organize my layers.
Here are a few less tedious ways to simplify chainmail if you don’t need as much detail.
Sometimes I like using a quick chevron pattern made of small dashes to mimic the rows of rings going in opposite directions.
The simplest way I’ve found to do chainmail texture is to just have rows of repeated straight or slanted brush strokes. Ultimately it's mostly the small highlights that are doing the heavy lifting so you don’t actually have to draw out each ring unless you are feeling particularly inclined to kill your wrist.
Here are some examples of very detailed chainmail. My wrist hurt a lot after doing these.
Here are some examples of less detailed chainmail. My wrist did not hurt after doing these.
Hope this was helpful :)
Yay! Thanks Grace!
Comments
M Flores
Completely stealing this for painting minis!
Guy Fool
Had no idea that signing up for the Patreon would also net me art tips, but this is great!
Skepticon
Grace thanks for teaching us how to 'Draw Steel' <3
AmbyNavy
Was this perhaps a meta post about "drawing steel"? ;)
Michael
Love this little spotlight, definitely makes me want to play a dragon knight in Vasloria!
Bryce Anderson
I don’t do digital art, but Grace’s art is dope!
MCDM Productions
https://www.artstation.com/eriopsis
Max R.
Very cool and useful! Does Grace have an art page where she shares her work?
Murilo Trigo
“The small repeating highlights are the most important part since they mimic the pattern of chainmail” That was an Eureka moment for me. Lighting (and shadows) give so much life and depth to illustrations
Nathan Peacock
There is a special little corner of my brain that loves to know how to do cool things from mediums and crafts outside of my usual skillset, and this fits that category perfectly. Really appreciate little posts like this!
Rebecca H
The arty goober in me was super happy to see this. Thanks for sharing!!
mortilus
I was skeptical until i saw the finished pieces and then looking at them, i can see the techniques described but my brain 100% sees actual chainmail with individual links unless i'm *staring* at it
nugetthechicen
Yeah I’ll definitely be trying this out the next time I am feeling art inclined, great post!
Michael McCartney
FWIW, the results of your wrist pain are magnificent, and greatly appreciated!
Cody Rapai
I wonder when doing concepts for posing figures whether you just block out a part of the drawing and say it's chainmail and not bother with the detail. That way if you want to change bit up you can save your wrists a bit.
Daniel Robino
Awesome!
Inge
As an artist who goes for largely a paintery style, and avoids custom texture brushes this is incredibly valuable!
Fey
this is great! Just started getting into drawing armor and especially the not-wrist-hurting option is great as a beginner
Alexander Corsbie
What a talent! Thanks for sharing. Love your art style.
Eamonn McCormick
The number of custom brushes I’ve tried to make to solve this problem 😤 this is so straightforward! Thank you
Caspar Rahm
Thanks Grace! I love to hear from the art team!
Warsmith Painting
Lovely breakdown here! The same principles also apply if you're painting your minis to prep for the MCDM RPG. Non-metallic metal works the exact same way!
Jonny
I would love to see more of this type of content, if possible!
David L
Very cool
Wes Jones
New YT series! "Drawing the Art"
That black guy
Nice
Lagrange0
It’s nice to have posts from all parts of the team, I never really thought about how much time and effort it can take to paint all those details and did not appreciate how much more time and experience is needed to study every single common material and find the most effective ways to recreate them (also those snapshots in the last few images really make me want to see the whole art piece :))
Darth yub nub
Groovy
Grady Culhane
Cool!
Jacob Montague
Neat! I would never have considered this.
