How To Draw A Pirate Ship

Hi, I'm Simbie Yau. I'm an illustrator, I graduated from University of Lincoln. Today, I'm just going to be showing you how to draw objects.

Okay, I will now demonstrate how to draw a pirate ship. I've just drawn very lightly in pencil a rough guideline of a pirate ship. But I will be explaining to you generally how, you know, to structure it and the shape of it and the components that add to it.

I'll start with the base of the ship. Generally, when you're looking at a pirate ship, there's always kind of a, you know there's so many different ones like you can characterize it but you know, I've been looking at them and I noticed that they're kind of narrow at the front and wider at the back, and so I'll just demonstrate. Using a thick pen, generally you know, that would be the shape of it.

You can go around with it you know, if you want it longer, thicker or anything, just you know, it's quite organic really. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable, and I'm just going to add just an extra line. And generally, if you are going to draw this, I have sectioned the ship with the mast in three sections and there would be the main one in the middle.

Let's just draw a simple line through the center and one on either side. I would get the second one a little bit shorter compared to the main mast and the third one slightly lower than the second one, so it wouldn't be symmetrical and it looks quite effective. So if I just draw the sails of the mast, I will draw three of the sails on the main mast, and then four on the second, and then two on the third.

So it's just kind of uneven and it makes it kind of you know, realistic, so it doesn't look symmetrical. When you're drawing the sails, you want it to be angled a little bit, not too much. Starting from the top where you've marked the sail base, just make sure the sail is a little bit natural you know, there's no real way or wrong way of doing this.

So let's just create a curved shape and at the top of the mast, at the top of those, draw a flag and a crew's nest where you know, if the pirate does stand on top. Make the pole join and then go down, and join the sails together using the line that you've drawn as a guideline, and that would be the main mast. To make it really pirate-y, let's just draw a general skull in the middle with some you know, a general pirate symbol.

Obviously, this is a very fun one and that's a pirate symbol. Well, you can draw it on the flag or you can draw it on another sail if you want but I'm going to carry on with the other mast. Generally, if you want to color this in, I would apply on some watercolour or colored pens within the lines and things like that but how I would do it, watercolors on the pencil lines and draw over the top because you know, colors bleed in outside the lines and this is absolutely fine which makes it quite nice and effective.

I've decided to add a small climbing rope. And now, add a bit more detail on the bottom. I've decided to draw the captain's cabin on the end because that's where it is placed, draw some windows just to make some diamond-shaped windows, so I'm just going to draw these diagonal lines across and then add an effect to this window.

Well, this is just a preference that I've decided to do. I mean, there are different types of windows on a ship. With the pirate ship, you would always have to have canons.

I've just added them here and just place them here. What I have done is draw a line halfway across the ship, so it gives you a guideline on where you'd like to place them. I'm at the moment using quite curvy lines and I'm not using such straight sharp lines you know, to make it look quite harsh.

You know, curving lines a little bit can make it look a little bit more fun but if you're trying to do a serious ship, then I guess you can experiment on your lines and stuff. I'm just going to do the frames on the windows and then the canons in the middle. They're just simple circles and th