Grim Reapers are a popular tattoo design. Being able to draw grim reaper designs from scratch will allow you to make custom designs for your clients.
If you’re not sure where to start, keep reading. In this article, we’ll be breaking down how to draw a grim reaper step by step, including:
The Easiest Way to Draw a Grim Reaper
If you have a few designs made, the best way to make your flash sheet look more professional is to add a border around your designs.
Step 1: General Shapes
Just like any other tattoo design, you’ll want to start by drawing your base shapes. We recommend using a red sketcher brush.
The main elements you’ll want to map out for a grim reaper design are:
Pro Tip:
If you’re working on an iPad and you’re running out of room on your canvas, you don’t need to erase your whole design. Instead, just scale down what you have so far to make more room.
Facial Details
The facial features of a skull “cave in,” so you’ll want to make sure to draw circles for the eye sockets. Since there’s no nose in the profile, you’ll also draw circles in that area.
At this stage of mapping out your design, you can place line work that shows indentations in the skull. This is still a sketching layer, and you don’t need too much detail yetScythe Details
The scythe’s blade is meant to be in the shape of a crescent moon. Feel free to turn your canvas to make sure you can draw a smooth curve more easily.
Visually, you’ll need something that connects the scythe’s blade and its handle. In the video, Brandon uses rope to show that the blade and handle are one connected piece. You can also add extra details, like a spike at the end of the blade.
Step 2: Sketch Out Your Design
Once the basics of the design are mapped out in red, turn down the opacity. From there, you’ll want to use those guidelines to sketch out your design.
In this second layer, you can still make dramatic changes to your design. For example, in the video, Brandon changes the shape of the scythe. By the time you finish this layer, though, you want to make decisions on where things will go. That way, you can use the final layer as your tattoo stencil.Note:
In this layer, it’s important to make sure your design is going to flow well on the body.
Pro Tip:
Once you get used to drawing skulls, you can pretty much incorporate them with any design, and it’s easy to translate into any tattoo style that you like.
Step 3: Drawing Your Final Line Work
When you’re getting ready to go in with your final line work, you can get rid of your red sketching layer completely. Then, we recommend turning down the opacity on your blue layer.
Because you mapped out your design in the blue layer, all you have to do in your final layer is to go through with a black pen brush and follow your blue layer.
Add Shading Lines and Details
In your final layer, you can add in lines to point out where your shading is, as well as last-minute details, like wood grain in the scythe handle, cracks in the skull, etc.
Using the Streamline Tool in Procreate
The Streamline tool in Procreate will perfect any lines you draw. You might choose not to use the streamline tool for pieces of the design that you want to look more “beat up,” like the handle of the scythe.
On the other hand, you’ll want that perfect line work for pieces like the curve of the scythe blade.
Make Sure Your Line Work connects
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Having a career in tattooing is not only fulfilling, but it’s also the most stable way to make a living as an artist. However, for decades, the process to become a tattoo artist has been notoriously difficult.
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