How To Draw A Grim Reaper

Drawing a grim reaper is like any other type of character, you have to build up the figure first from scratch to see if it will work on paper and then develop that initial sketch into something more. The classic image of a reaper is with a long flowing robe that could look ragged and with a hood to go on the robe that covers the head which is often drawn as a skull and the grim reaper is always depicted as a skeleton underneath.

In the 18 minute drawing video below, you can see that drawing the grim reaper is like working on a sculpture, loosely sketching bits at a time is the best approach and you can quickly get good at drawing this way if you practice drawing regularly and don't ever give up.

Draft sketching is what I like to do a lot of and at the very beginning of this video drawing tutorial that's what happens, to draw in a sketchy way is to really take a crack at drawing something challenging and try to come up with a good result and so drawing the outline is what you must do to start the process. Think back to when you was maybe at school and you started a drawing off by trying to get it right first time without doing any slow draft sketching to trial your ideas, you usually found out that the drawing would look lopsided or not quite right.

Once the figure has been drawn roughly we can expand upon our first pencil marks and really start to flesh them out by sketching the folds in the robe and making them tattered looking and I decided in the drawing video to just show one full arm holding the scythe whilst the other arm is tucked away somewhere in his robe, this wasn't planned, it just happened this way, the drawing took on a life of it's own.

Shading the Reaper now we can shade along the folds in the robe and start to create more of a darkness on the grim reaper to make it look more authentic and real with again more detail added to the skull face under slight shadows in the hood. What happed though by the end of the drawing video was that I went a bit over board with details on the skull as Death itself looks old with age, but still effectively cool to look at