My trio of Viking ship sketches is done!
⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖
Here they are in a small gallery / thumbnail view.
Sketches
I’ve included some notes and thoughts on each piece below.
1. Viking Ship (from DK Eyewitness book; 2022)
About the Ship: I copied a small drawing from this DK Eyewitness: Viking book.
You can also view an older cover version via Goodreads (this older version was the copy I had).
What I Explored:
I was curious about Viking ships, and thought it’d be fun to draw the humans on the ship as well.
At the time, I was trying out a cheap set of marker pens. I didn’t really like the full colored version, so I fiddled around with digital filters and preferred this duotone look.
I thought this prow was a bit ambiguous looking (it looked mildly like a dragon, and more like a horse 🐴), so my next two Viking ship sketches leaned more towards dragon prows.
2. Modern Sketch based on 10th Century Medieval Manuscript (Nov 2025)
About the Ship:
“A viking ship with a dragon prow depicted in a 10th century Anglo-Saxon manuscript from Northumberland.
The Vikings were seafaring north Germanic people who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries.
The Vikings employed wooden longships with wide, shallow-draft hulls, allowing navigation in rough seas or in shallow river waters.
The ships could be landed on beaches, and their light weight enabled them to be hauled over portages.”
– Alamy
The 10th century manuscript:
What I Explored:
I was curious about the shape of this prow, and realised after I started sketching that it seemed to be like a lion-dragon hybrid prow.
I changed the pencil sketch a few times, as my first two versions looked a bit too rigid.
My second pencil version looked a bit too much like a unicorn, so I erased a few parts of this 🦄
The version below is a bit more serpentine.
I wanted to try a minimalist, modern style of the original medieval design.
This was done using Prismacolor pastel markers (very nice), with digital filter to smooth out the tones.
Here’s a more muted version, as I liked the seascape colours of it.
3. Sketch of Hugin Viking Ship (Dec 2025)
About the Ship:
The Hugin, a replica Viking Longship, is on permanent display on the Pegwell Bay cliff top at Ramsgate (in eastern Kent, England).
It sailed from Denmark to Thanet in 1949. This was to commemorate the 1,500th anniversary of the A.D. 449 landing of Anglo-Saxon chieftains Hengist and Horsa at Ebbsfleet, and the betrothal of Hengist’s daughter, Rowena, to King Vortigen of Kent.
The ship’s arrival in 1949 was met by huge crowds.
There is a picnic site and cafe close by today, and viewing is external only.
What I Explored:
Since my first two sketches were incidentally of more hybrid versions, this 3rd attempt was a decidedly more draconic prow from the start.
I tried out my 6-piece Marvy Le Plume II Watercolor Marker pens set (also very nice).
For my next sketch, I would like to return to ballpoint pen as that was what I started off with, and I kind of miss using it.
I’m halfway through this Domestika course by Ricardo Macía Lalinde (which is focused on ballpoint pens), so I’ll see what I come up with for that.
⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖