Drawing Tips - Nature Photograph Studies

I feel that nature is one of the greatest forms of inspiration for creating artwork. Even a few studies from nature photographs can completely change how I draw. Doing studies continually is one of the best ways I have found that brings new shape language and a touch of realism to my artwork.

Here are a couple of digital mountain studies from photographs that I did before creating a drawing based on what I learned.

From here, I can design something based on what I learned from these studies! Here, I wanted to create a suit of armor with similar forms and shapes to the mountain studies. I'll take aspects from the study I've done and apply it to the drawing in some manner. In this case, I wanted to bring the textures and shapes from the mountains into this armor set. With the forms and shadows on the photograph studies to work from, I was able to create armor and cloth designs that were similar. I especially had a lot of fun designing the cloth shapes for this armor!

If you'd like to try this, pick something you'd love to draw from nature, do a few studies, and incorporate this into anything you'd like to draw like a creature or a character. I hope you have fun with this exercise!