Tribal design toturial

Personally, I divide tribal design into 3 types:

1. Gothic tribal

2. Celtic tribal

3. And what I call, the general tribal.

First, let’s start with the general tribal, you must

first know the most basic stroke, as shown in

the pic,

As you can see, it starts and ends with a sharp

point, most tribal designs consist of variations

of this kind of stroke.

Here’s how you usually draw it,

1st

,

2nd

,

Then, it is recommended that you fill it up using

GIMP program later on instead on coloring with

your pencil.

GIMP is a freeware which we recommend,

because it’s free, the software size is not large,

and it can perform most function that Adobe

Photoshop can perform. But if you have any tips

on using Adobe Photoshop, we welcome it.

You can download GIMP either by typing gimp

in Google, or you can click the following link,

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

We posted tips on editing your picture using

GIMP, it is simple and fast. ( I am not sponsored

by GIMP ) You can get the tips on the GIMP

tutorial that I posted.

So, back to the tribal, using the basic stroke just

now, you can add other strokes to it, for

instance,

And also, you can do some changes to the

strokes,

Again, it is advised that you fill it in using GIMP

software, don’t worry, it is easy to install.

So, to create a simple tribal design that looks

like this,

You just combine a bunch of different variations

of that basic stroke. I drew it by first starting

with a giant ‘S’, then as a general rule, I made

sure it begins and ends with sharp ends, then

you just crisscross a few types of that stroke

over each other, then finally rub off the

intersections.

So, with this general tribal stroke, you can

create animals and creature designs, such as

those shown in the pics,

The first few tribals I drew took quite some trial

and errors but as you get used to the strokes,

you can do it without wasting any papers.

As you can see, for animals/creatures, you can’t

use only that initial stroke, occasionally, you

need to draw out the shape of the head,

claws…etc. There is no simple trick for this, the

only tip I can give in this is, visualize… or take a

real picture and imitate the shape.

In animal/creature tribal, the outer shape is the

most important, usually, I take real life pictures

as reference ( not the dragon ). As long as the

animal picture is in the position you wanted,

just draw out the basic shape first, then fill in

the shape with strokes such as these,

Of course there’s no fix rule in this, you can

create your own type of strokes as long as you

like it.

Oh, before I forgot, here’s another tip,

sometimes, you can imitate the skeleton

structure of the animal, such as this,

So, if you have any other tips to share, I really

welcome it.

Here’s an example of Gothic tribal.

As you can see, Gothic style tribal designs rarely

have separate strokes as the general tribal.

Gothic strokes usually end with a malevolent

style, with strokes such as,

Also, in a lot of Gothic designs, symmetry is

important, this can be done by first folding your

paper in half, or using a graph paper to draw

your design, then later trace is out on a white

paper the scan it into the computer.

Here’s an example of Celtic tribal,

As you can see, celtic design consist of a lot of

crisscrossing strokes, the most popular celtic

design is the ‘Triquetra’, which looks like this,

You start with something like this,

Then you add in the ‘thickness’ and make them

cross over each other.

If you search in Google Image, you can find a lot

of versions of celtic tribal designs, basically, you

just cross them over each other. I recommend

you overlap the lines first and complete the

whole design,

Then only you erase a little off the overlaps to

create the space in between, you can do that

using GIMP. It will look more natural that way.

If you have any tips to share, please please

share it at my facebook page☺.