How to Draw Titanic

The Royal Mail Steamer named Titanic collided with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, on a Sunday. What is so sad is that over 3,000 people were aboard and over half died due to a small number of lifeboats. A few other factors played in this tragedy. But moving on, this ship was grand! To top it off, those four smokestacks made a statement. Three of those funnels functioned, the last one was for design.

To sum this up, this tutorial was the most challenging for me. I have never done a ship before and I hate using a ruler. But I’ve learned so much about this ship, even learning certain terminology. I’m also really happy to have met this challenge. I hope you’ll enjoy this tutorial and learn along with me. Please let me know, vote, comment, or just say hi! Love & peace to you.

I framed the picture so you can see where it is on the page. Sketch the main parts–Main mast, smokestacks, bridge, and hull.

Seriously, I’m not good with curved or straight lines. So don’t get upset if your lines are a little crooked. Go ahead and add detail to the smokestacks, deck, superstructure (the higher level above the deck, bridge (the small structure in front of the smokestack, but on top of the superstructure).

Make sure you get those portals (windows). Draw a straight line with the ruler for the bow (front part of the ship). Please don’t feel I’m talking down to you because it was challenging for me. To say the least, I’m helping myself to remember those ship parts.

Draw in the smoke, the lines from the mast & smokestacks, add more details to the bridge. Two anchor holes and portals need to be drawn on the hull. Also to add a nice touch, give a nice bubbling water effect from the ship moving in the water. My peeps, you are well on your way.

This is the original penciled outline for my pastel full-color picture. The darkness is due to the blue color-tinted charcoal paper. To make those lines from the mast & smokestacks, I used a regular and flexible ruler.

Before we go to the shaded pencil version of the previous picture, I wanted to take a moment and put a plugin on the supplies I used to make this humongous ship! I used pastels for the full-color picture. Prismacolor hard pastels and Rembrandt soft pastels. That’s what brought out such brilliance in the picture. Prismacolor pencils give a waxy texture, making it seem like you’re doing oils… great stuff!

Then for the penciling outline are the flexible ruler (snake-looking thing), a 12-inch small plastic see-through T-square and triangle… a dream for straight lines and edges. Of course, the paintbrush represents painting with acrylics. You know, those stars, lit portals, nice reflective lights, and lights on the deck are all due to acrylics… they are lifesavers! Now we can resume.

This is with some shading. I’d call this drawing a sketch, giving me some background on how my picture should look.

This is how the full-color picture looks turned to black & white. I normally turn color pictures to black & white if that is how I will draw it. It gives you more realism and greater knowledge of the values and tones.

Remember, the reason everything looks so smooth, so detailed is that this is done on larger paper and brought down to a smaller size. With this kind of smooth coverage, work on larger paper and use charcoals, pastels, or large pencil sizes.

You may be curious how in the world did I do that drawing or painting? Well, since I did use pencils, I’ll give you some information. Just click on this Step 8 picture and you’ll see the products I used.

Here’s the full result. I want to say, I used the pencil in some really life-saving ways for this picture. The shadowed blue on the side of the superstructure (where the lights are (not the hull). I used it in some darker areas like the top of the smokestacks, the hull, and anchors.

Oh, I used pencil shading in the reflection of the ship on the water. To help you out, I used the pencil shading after I put the pastel colors down. To close, I really hope this tutorial was helpful to you. Please let me know.

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