Plate Armour Resources: My Quest to Draw Armour Better
Hello Fellow Artists! This week Kate has a post for us about plate armour resources she’s found.
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Hi reader!
I’m Kate, and one of my favourite things to draw are mine and my friends' D&D characters and the little shenanigans they get up to. Something I find myself consistently grinding to a halt on, unable to nail down is the plate armour these characters are often wearing.
And it’s not for lack of interest!
I think plate armour is cool as hell, and I’d love to be able to capture the impression it leaves on me someday in my art without having to bash my head through a wall to get there.
I think most of the struggles I have with drawing plate armour come from a lack of understanding. I could find a great reference image of a suit of armour that suits my character perfectly, but if I want the freedom to give their pose more personality than a mannequin, or if I want to design a believable suit of armour of my own, that resource only goes so far.
Some basic knowledge of the parts of that suit of armour, their function, and how they interact with the body would go much further than a static image and guesswork.
In my quest for knowledge, I’ve come across a few useful resources and references that have helped me a lot, and hopefully prove useful or inspiring to you as well!
Let’s get into it.
This video gives a great insight into a bunch of different aspects of 15th-century armour, including how each piece attaches to the body and connects with the other parts, along with explanations about the protection and mobility it provides.
This excellent blog post by Marta Milczarek (perplexingly) breaks down and labels all the different parts and layers of 15th-century armour! I particularly like how they provide examples of alternative options that might have been seen.
Here’s an incredible 3D scan by the Royal Armoury of the Parade Armour of King Erik XIV from the mid-16th century on Sketchfab. I found it very helpful to be able to freely rotate the model around to understand the shape of it better. It’s also annotated with information explaining some of the details!
The museum has also uploaded several helmets, a shield and a sabaton (armour that covers the foot) if you want to have a further poke around!
This but in 3D! Go zoom in and look at all those details!
There’s also an online exhibit from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien displaying a wide variety of suits of armour. I find it inspiring in terms of realising just how much space there is to play in terms of shape, colour and texture while still maintaining believability when designing armour.
One example from the exhibit!
Thanks so much for reading! Do you have any plate armour references or resources you swear by that I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments! I’ll update this post with more resources as I find them on my quest.
Lovely read, looking forward to more of these!