How to Draw Papua New Guinea Art

What You'll Need

• •Heavy paper, illustration board, or thin wood panel for a sturdy surface
• •Graphite, charcoal, black ink, and bamboo or round brushes for construction lines and bold contours
• •Natural-looking pigments such as ochre, clay red, charcoal black, cream, muted green, and dark brown; acrylic or gouache can imitate them safely
• •Craft knife, modeling paste, cardboard, string, or thin wood strips for raised, carved, and inlaid surface effects
• •A drawing tablet with pressure sensitivity and software such as Krita, Procreate, Photoshop, or Clip Studio Paint
• •Scanned paper, wood grain, woven fiber, or handmade brush textures for digital finishing

Step by Step

1. 1

   1. Set a respectful visual brief

   Decide that you are creating a contemporary piece inspired by selected formal qualities, not reproducing a sacred object or claiming a single national style. Gather references from reputable museums, cultural institutions, and community-led sources, and note which forms are architectural, domestic, decorative, or ceremonial. Avoid copying restricted insignia, funerary imagery, or identifiable clan designs without permission. Write a short brief such as: “frontal guardian figure, layered house-like bands, warm earth pigments, handmade surface.”

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   2. Build a strong frontal silhouette

   Divide the page with a vertical centerline and place the head, torso, and major ornaments symmetrically around it. Use a tall, compact figure with squared shoulders, an elongated face, large almond or circular eyes, and a firm, mask-like expression rather than a naturalistic portrait. Simplify hands and feet into carved geometric shapes, then exaggerate the head and shoulders so the figure reads clearly from a distance. Keep small asymmetries for later instead of making the initial construction messy.

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   3. Design the architectural frame

   Surround the figure with stacked bands resembling a decorated façade, gable, lintel, or woven panel. Sketch parallel borders first, then divide them into repeating triangles, hooks, diamonds, stepped forms, and short vertical marks. Vary the width of the bands so the composition has a central hierarchy rather than a flat wallpaper effect. Let some shapes overlap the figure to make it feel integrated into a built or carved structure.

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   4. Add controlled scrollwork

   Create Trobriand-style-inspired scrollwork as flowing pairs of curves, spirals, leaf-like hooks, and mirrored curls placed in open areas and border bands. Begin each spiral with a confident central curve, then add a second contour that follows it without touching until the endpoint. Repeat the motif at several scales, but interrupt a few patterns with small wedges or geometric joints so the design feels constructed rather than mechanically copied. Keep the scrolls subordinate to the face and central silhouette.

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   5. Construct relief, carving, and inlay

   On paper, glue thin cardboard, string, or wood strips under selected borders and facial planes, then cover or paint them so they read as shallow relief. Alternatively, press modeling paste into the background and drag a blunt tool through it to create incised grooves. Add small light shapes inside dark channels to suggest shell, bone, bead, or painted inlay, but use them sparingly around the eyes, chest, and architectural bands. In digital work, separate the base color, raised areas, grooves, and inlay onto different layers and offset highlights and shadows by only a few pixels.

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   6. Apply the rainforest earth palette

   Start with charcoal black or deep brown for the strongest contour and recesses. Add clay red, burnt orange, ochre yellow, warm cream, muted leaf green, and a small amount of blue-black, keeping saturation uneven as if pigments were mixed by hand. Reserve the lightest cream for eyes, inlaid marks, and raised edges, while using dark brown under the chin, inside grooves, and between bands. Test the palette in small blocks before covering the whole piece, because too many bright colors can weaken the ceremonial focus.

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   7. Reinforce the carved graphic language

   Use thick outer contours and narrower interior lines to separate the figure from the patterned frame. Make contour weight change slightly at corners, around incisions, and where one plane overlaps another. Add short gouge marks, uneven pigment breaks, tiny edge chips, and occasional doubled lines, but place them intentionally rather than scattering random noise everywhere. The goal is handmade visual irregularity within an organized structure.

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   8. Balance, age, and finish the piece

   Squint at the work or reduce it to a small thumbnail: the face, shoulders, and main vertical axis should remain immediately readable. Correct pattern bands that compete with the figure, then introduce a few deliberate deviations in spacing, color, and line thickness to avoid sterile symmetry. Add a restrained matte texture over the surface and deepen selected recesses, but do not cover the inlay or flatten all relief with an equally strong texture. Sign and title the work as a contemporary study, and record the regional references that informed it.

Going Digital

Work with a limited palette and separate layers for sketch, silhouette, pattern bands, raised forms, grooves, inlay, pigment, and texture. Use a pressure-sensitive brush with a slightly rough edge for contours, then multiply a dark brown layer beneath raised shapes and add a low-opacity cream layer along their upper edges. Create architectural patterns with guides or mirrored duplicates at first, but rasterize or edit some repeats afterward so spacing becomes subtly handmade. Overlay scanned paper, wood, or fiber at low opacity, mask it inside the forms, and vary texture scale so it supports the carving instead of looking like a generic filter.

Common Mistakes

FAQ