I love creating creatures and in this post I am creating creatures from shapes. Being able to play is an important aspect of creative development that every artist must love in order to keep their mind together. Most of the time we have specific ways we like to explore and draw inspiration. Sometimes its directly from life, other times it comes out of nowhere and my personal favorite is to scribble or splash random paint and pull from the nebulous result. But with this approach I created a pretty simple linear shape that I found appealing, then pulled a design out of that.
When designing a shapes its important to remember key design elements like straights against curves, big medium small and the most challenging intuitive line. No one said creating creatures from simple shapes was easy, just fun! I originally create maybe 30 or so shapes 5 of which I actually enjoyed and then pulled from the one that I could visualize the best.
The result turned out to be this very strange rhino beast creature wielding a gold war axe. Did I know what would be creating when diving into this, no. Am I happy I did it, absolutely. Letting you mind break the glass ceiling on your skill and creativity is one of the most exciting ways to let your natural imagination carry your art forward.
If you are looking for a different way to create a design or perhaps you just want to practice working with or within line then this is a great way to play. Try it out, I know it really helps me to work with different restrictions and approaches that really get the mind working and inspiration flowing.