Fantasy Art Drawing: How To Draw An Ugly Troll

Drawing a troll I thought would be quite fun as they seem to quite largely get ignored in favour of the more traditional fantasy characters like dwarves,elves and dragons.

And for the classic inspired way of drawing them I thought of drawing the troll living under a bridge, which places it in context with some old stories of the past of Trolls living under bridges and killing passers by with axes and sledge hammers then eating them, but I've left out the bridge on this occasion to just show the troll!.

Here we have the first sketch of a good solid troll figure, I wanted to make them hugely muscular as I imagine these creatures as such and I've sketched in an axe, which is a more popular weapon,but trolls can have other types of weapons like maces, clubs and hammers so whatever the one you want in your troll picture will do nicely!

 When it comes to adding the ink for the outlines it is best at this stage just to follow everything that you have pencilled out first and add details after that, then you can do it all at once, this way you won't miss the hairs on the trolls right arm like I did and his hairy chest!!

Sometimes it is best to experiment at this stage with certain ink techniques, to get the right textures if there are any to be found on the troll figure, but in this case on my drawing there isn't much texture or varying types of clothing such as fur or anything, but in your drawing you might decide to add them, because here we are more concerned about the inspiration and concept ideas rather than a draw my way kind of tutorial.

Of course depending on the different types of light sources the troll could be in the dark at night so you would have to add more dark areas and place the light source from somewhere such as the moon, I have not added much shadow to the troll so that could imply that it is during the day and he has stepped out of his bridge.

 Adding the shading for me always makes the drawing come alive, it fills in the gaps and adds form to the character, of course you may not want to shade yours, you might want to get the old pencil crayons out and give it the bright and colourful once over, I recommend Crayola coloured pencil crayons as the blendability of these are excellent for creating new colours and blending the grand scheme of things together.

I try to shade against all the lines so that it does create depth and the illusion of form.

Trolls heads can look how you want to, they can have hair or they can be bald, with scars or without, overbite canine teeth or not. The choice is up to you as what your trolls main characteristics will look like, I sometimes like the bald look, but I have been known to draw trolls with long hair too so it's a personal choice.

Just try and make your troll as ugly as you can!

Further reading - Fantasy Art Drawing Books From Amazon