Welcome to another drawing tutorial. In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to draw Darth Vader in 2 different ways. Our character of interest for this tutorial, Darth Vader is a fictional villain in the Star Wars Movies. He is often referred to as Anakin Skywalker and in the Star Wars Cinematic Universe, he plays the role of the father of the protagonist, Luke Skywalker
We have made the tutorial pretty easy to follow, with a step by step guide for each of the 2 tutorials. We are going to start with a dummy which will serve as a base for our final drawing. So let’s get started on our first tutorial.
FIRST TUTORIAL: HOW TO DRAW DARTH VADER´S HELMET
For the first tutorial, we are going to just capture the head of our character. We will be drawing a full frontal view.
• STEP 1 – DRAWING THE HELMET´S CONTOUR
First, we will start by drawing our character’s helmet contour. This will be represented by two straight vertical lines drawn to meet an arched line on top, uniting both. Below two diagonal lines will open from the bottom of the vertical lines we drew before. Finally, we will draw two short curved lines, followed two short horizontal lines that will bottom the helmet´s wing, covering the neck and the sides of the head.
• STEP 2 – DRAWING THE INTERIOR OF THE HELMET
As shown in the illustration above, for the second step, we will draw the interior border of the helmet. As you can see, the helmet will have two arches on top of what will become the lenses covering the eyes( we will draw the lenses in future steps). Coming down from the sides of the arches, the borders of the wing covering the sides of the head will be drawn visibly thick and continuing under the wing.
• STEP 3 – DRAWING THE HELMET BROWS
Next, we will draw the brows on top of the arches. This will help give more 3-dimensionality to the forehead area, giving the impression this part is protruding a bit forward, hovering over the eyes. We will draw two curved lines on top of the arched borders.
• STEP 4 – DRAWING THE MASK
At this point, we already have most of the helmet drawn out, to complete the drawing, we will draw the contourn of the mask covering face and neck.
• STEP 5- DRAWING THE MASK EYEHOLES
For the fifth step, you will draw the mask eye holes. You can draw the eyeholes as you see them above. Two big curves bottomed by two small curves will be enough to draw the eyeholes. You can draw the border of the eyeholes by drawing two curved lines inside the eyeholes.
• STEP 6- DRAWING THE MASK´S DETAILS
Next, you will draw the mask details on the chicks and around the nose. The mask is divided into 3 clear planes. The upper part of the bone chicks, near the eyeholes and facing upwards. The lower part of the bone chicks facing towards the viewer, and the sides of the mask.
• STEP 7 – DRAWING THE NOSE AND THE MOUTH RESPIRATOR
We will now draw the nose details and the respirator grill. The nose will be ended in a flat and curved shaped triangle. The respirator will be a big triangle with two circles, each one located on the two lower vertices of the triangle and the nose´s triangle being the upper vertice. Inside the triangle´s respirator, you should draw 5 vertical openings with a criss-cross pattern inside them, simulating the filter grill of the respirator.
• STEP 8 – DRAWING THE FINAL LINEART
Once the elements of the helmet and mask are fully drawn you should draw your final lineart on top of your rough sketch( drawn in red in this tutorial). The purpose of doing so is to clean your drawing.
• STEP 9 – PAINTING THE BASE COLORS
Next, we will paint what we have drawn thus far. Paint the whole mask and helmet with a dark-grey blue color. This will serve you as the base color of your helmet.
• STEP 10 – PAINTING THE LIGHT
Next step will be to paint the lights on top of the base color. The light color will be a light grey-blue. You will paint the upper right side of the Helmet with this light color keeping the borders soft and blending with the base color.
Also, we will paint some hard reflections on the helmet. We will use the same light grey color, but we will paint these reflections with hard edges.
• STEP 11 – PAINTING THE SHADOWS
Shadows help to bring a sense of three-dimensionality to images by creating the illusion of volume and depth. When it comes to this step, I would recommend painting over the area using a darker tone of the local color. For example, as you can see in the image, I shaded around the jaws, eyes, and interior of the helmet using a darker tone of the grey dark blue which is the base color.
• STEP 12 – PAINTING THE FINAL TOUCHES
This last step will be divided into 2 parts:
- The first part will be to add the remaining highlights, one in each leans and the last one on the right side of the helmet, starting on the corner of the brow and falling down along the winged side of the helmet. You can check the result in the image above.
- The second part will be to enhance the already existing highlights by brightening them. You should use a soft brush so you can achieve a glowing effect. If you are coloring in digital, painting this highlights in a Color Dodge layer will be a great idea.
If you are interested in more free step by step drawing tutorials similar to this one, feel free to visit the Drawing Tutorials section.
SECOND TUTORIAL: HOW TO DRAW DARTH VADER FULL BODY
For this tutorial, we are going to drawn Captain America in comic book style.
• STEP 1 – DRAWING THE TORSO
We will start by drawing the torso. Draw a curved line across the chest to separate the pectoral muscles from the rest of the torso. Then draw a vertical curve line across the torso to help put our drawing in a 3/4 perspective. For the hips, ( you should check the image below ) I like to draw it in such a way that it looks as if our character is wearing some sort of male underwear. Remember to draw your ellipses on top of the torso to represent where the right side of the character to show where the right arm will go.
• STEP 2 – DRAWING THE LEGS
Next, we will draw the legs of our character. The thighs will be represented as massive tubes which become thinner towards the knees. The calves and shins will be represented by convex curve lines connecting the knees to the ankles. The knees will be represented by ellipses and I recommend drawing the feet with simple geometric shapes.
• STEP 3 – DRAWING THE ARMS
Just like the thighs, the forearms will be drawn as tubes which become narrower as they approach the wrist, where they are connected to the hand. Ensure that the wrists are aligned with the crotch area and use a rectangular shape to denote the hand which is folded in a fist.
For the hand on the left, we will draw only the thumb and the index knuckle.
• STEP 4 – DRAWING THE HEAD
The head will be represented by a sphere slightly squared on the sides and bottom to give a somewhat rectangular shape. Draw a vertical line and a horizontal line across the face, this line will help in the placement of the facial features in later steps.
• STEP 5 – DRAWING THE OUTFIT
Once we have gotten the outline of our Darth Vader character, for the fun part, we will now dress him up like the Sith Villain he is. Using the dummy we created on the previous steps, we will draw the helmet, chest plate, shoulder plates, belt, gloves, and high boots.
• STEP 6 – PAINTING THE CAPE AND LIGHTSABER
The cape will be drawn coming from the shoulders and opening flying towards the sides of the character. The fact that the cape will be drawn this way will help us give dynamis to the character, even if the character is an static position.
The lightsaber will be drawn in the left hand, with the pommel ending in a laser blade.
• STEP 7 – DRAWING THE FINAL LINEART
When it comes to drawing the final line art, I recommend keeping it simple. Excessive detailing may end up complicating the final image. Draw your final line art on top of the dummy you created on the previous steps.
• STEP 8 – DRAWING THE SHADOWS
Shadows bring a sense of realism to drawings. With shading, you can create the illusion of depth and volume to bring a sense of three-dimensionality to the drawing. There are many shading techniques you could use, I particularly like shading using the hatching and cross-hatching techniques.
Hatching is quite simple, all you have to do is draw a series of parallels lines along the area you need to introduce depth too.
I use the cross-hatching style if I want to darken an already shaded area. This technique is quite similar to the hatching style only that in this case, when I’m done with the hatching lines, I go over them with a similar set of parallel lines in a different direction.
If you wanna get more familiar with these techniques, you can check my tutorial on “How to shade with a pencil” where I explain in detail the best shading techniques you can use when drawing with pencil.
If you wanna learn which are the Art supplies we use for drawing and painting you can visit the Recommended supplies and Recommended tablets sections.
