Every Captain needs a boat. And every boat needs an anchor!

Here we have the Two Young Captains‘ beat-up anchor. It is late and my original intent was to draw something simple. This started out simple, at least.

Then I decided it needed some texture. Small, random, odd-shaped dots give the anchor the look of pitted metal, and the seaweed suggests that it was recently at the bottom of the ocean.

I started out with straight and smooth lines. I thought it looked too polished for the Young Captains. After adding the pits, I thought the edges could use a little refining. So, I carved out some randomly-shaped cuts and grooves along the edges. I added some shading and, voila! An achor that looks like it has been abused on the high seas!

I drew the whole thing with my handy HB mechanical pencil. I took a picture of that with my iPad and imported it to Photoshop Touch where I cropped it, ran it through a filter to make it black and white and even a little more weathered. I then cleaned up some extraneous marks and shading (artifacts from taking the picture) and called it done.

What do you think of the black and white weathered effect? I’ve done it to a couple of these sketches and I think I like it. I’ll bet you’ll see this as a central style for all of the inside pictures for Two Young Captains vs. a Pirate.