Ballpoint Pen Sketchbook Tour – Fantasy & Fan Art Studies
In this post I’m sharing a look through a small A5 sketchbook I completed a little while back, filled entirely with ballpoint pen drawings. The sketchbook features a mix of fantasy-themed artwork, character studies, and fan art inspired by movies and games. I will include some more details of what’s included, and the materials used further down this post.
I’ve filmed a full sketchbook tour video where I flip through every page and talk about the drawings, materials, and my approach to sketching with ballpoint pens. If you enjoy sketchbook tours, traditional drawing, or fantasy art, you might find this interesting.
View my full fantasy art, ballpoint drawing sketchbook tour video.
Materials used:
Generally speaking I tend to work with black ink biro pens for drawing, because of it being neutral in colour and providing good contrast on the pages, so typical ones such as the bic round stick and the Cristal original biros come to mind. However in this case the majority of this sketchbook was done with papermate inkjoy fun colours as I wanted to play around with the different ink colours – sometimes it just makes it a little more interesting for looking through. Plus the sepia colour ink looks great!
The sketchbook itself is just one of those small (A5 size) 20 page sketchbooks with some sort of kraft paper on the outside, usually a brown or black cover, with some texture to the page. I got these at Hobbycraft here in the UK, but honestly you can buy these anywhere as they seem to be a staple at any shop that sells art supplies. You know the ones, often available in packs of 3 and 5 too. Here is a link to the same kind online.
The above links contain some affiliate links, anything you buy through the link helps to support the artist in a small way.
Click to see the materials list (affiliate link)
What’s inside this Sketchbook - Fantasy & Fan Art Studies:
The sketchbook contains a wide range of fantasy-themed drawings and fan art studies. I enjoy studying existing characters / designs from movies and games as a way to better understand costume and character design. For those who don’t already know, I’m a massive Lord of the Rings & Star Wars nerd, which you will see reflected in my art.
Fantasy warriors, heroes and villains: I start the sketchbook with King Thranduil, because I couldn’t resist an epic Hobbit movie design in here of an elven warrior! I generally stick with this style of fantasy throughout, for example, finishing the sketchbook with the fearsome pale orc leader ‘Azog’. But I also have some Marvel superheroes in here for contrast too like the hulk – a great excuse to test out the green coloured pen.
Creatures and monsters: I would say this makes up the main bulk of my sketchbook, covering lots of the creature designs from The Lord of the Rings movies (Moria goblins, cave trolls, orcs and even a Balrog and Fellbeast) all the way through to the magic creatures inspired by Harry potter designs. As well as these fantasy beasts, I also included some real animal studies of some horses from various angles too.
Dragon designs: Okay so this could have been included as creatures and monsters above, but dragons definitely deserve their own mention. What would a fantasy sketchbook be without them? There are a couple of dragons and similar throughout the sketchbook, and my favourite are the Harry Potter design I studies such as the Hungarian Horntale and the Ukrainian Ironbelly.
Armours and weapons: From Commander Lin Maes iconic blue armour from The great wall to the savage Uruk-hai helmets from the LOTR movies, I just had to include some of this in here to improve my visual library.
Dinosaurs: Pretty self-explanatory here, but I decided to get some T-rex and Triceratops reference to draw them and their skulls from various angles, some of these sketches are my favourite throughout the book.
video games fan art: Whilst searching for cool armour designs, I found a character in some dark assassin like armour that I decided to sketch, it wasn’t until later that I realised this was an image from Skyrim, showing the Nightingale armour. I’ve included some Deathclaws from the Fallout series, as well as some portraits from the mobile app Raid Shadow legends, which has some of the best fantasy character designs I have ever seen.
The sketchbook cover:
Okay so, it’s only a rough sketch, so maybe this doesn’t deserve it’s own section, or to be called a cover image. But if you own a lot of sketchbooks like this, or plan on filling alot of them in your art career over time like I hope to, then they are all going to start looking the same when closed, so knowing which is which might become tricky. For this one I tried to distinguish it by adding an illustration to the front that matches the theme of the rest of the sketchbook - a ballpoint pen sketchbook filled with fantasy inspired drawings, with a heavy focus on my favourite movie, The Lord of the Rings.
For that reason I opted for a black biro sketch of Aragorn from the Fellowship of the Ring - Strider sat in the Prancing Pony smoking his pipe, one of my favourite scenes. What a great way to start a sketchbook tour!
Plus did I mention that I have a timelapse drawing video for this cover? see the video below!
Strider at the Prancing Pony fantasy Lotr sketch
Video: Lord of the Rings Strider at the Prancing Pony timelapse drawing.
If like me you enjoy seeing fantasy drawings and doodles like this, give me a follow on social media which is the best place to see more regular content like this. My Instagram and Facebook page are probably my most active places, but you can find all the links below.
My fantasy art shop:
So you can probably tell by now that I am a fan of Fantasy art, and the fact you found this page, and made it this far, means you probably are too. So if you want to support me and view some of my fantasy art produced into products I will link a few of these below.
