It’s great to see the results of hours worth of painting/drawing work – the final rendered piece often draws a lot of praise and in a lot of cases, serves as inspiration for other artists to go off and do something similar. But what is equally as interesting as the finished piece is the method and workflow artists use to achieve these results.
I know we all don’t have the luxury of sitting for hours at a time while the artists makes their forms come to life – but with the help of time-lapse video, you can get the feeling of the artists method in a shorter period of time. With these video clips, you can see a blank canvas appear magically when these time-lapsed hours turn into minutes.
Absolutely incredible work – I hope some of these inspired you. I know I’m tempted to try some of this myself – I’ve always thought about it, but after seeing all this great work, I know I should do a few of these while I work on my comic book!
If you can draw figures and forms easily, the next step in creating a complete composition is to draw/paint an engaging, interesting and believable background for your subject(s). One of the most common ways to do this is through the use of a landscape. I’ve gathered a few tutorials together on how to create stunning landscapes with beautiful colours, details, dramatic lighting and depth. You can apply these techniques to your process to enhance your landscape work and increase the visual interest and quality of your work.
Patrick Keith shows us his workflow method for creating a landscape for this commissioned piece. This tutorial is great since it contains techniques that are not software specific.
Mahesh Bhat over at KalaaLog has a variety of interesting tutorials on digital painting techniques. Here is a tutorial on creating a simple landscape with rock formations – there are some basic color theory tips and light/shadow techniques as well.
Dan LuVisi (commonly known as Adonihs) has created a cloudy sky landscape tutorial for an article in 2D Magazine – his use of painting techniques, blending and muted colour palettes produce a soft painterly effect for his concept work.
Alain Descamps beautiful concept renderings have earned him some huge accolades in the Digital Art world. This tutorial is a simple landscape that can be rendered with such precision and ease. The results are astonishingly realistic. His portfolio can be found at www.adesconcept.com If you can read French, check out his tutorials (tutoriaux) section for some excellent methods on creating visually stunning landscapes and backgrounds.
Shantanu Jahagirdar creates a mystic landscape scene with moody, dramatic lighting using a mixture of painted and photographic pieces. The finished piece is srtiking and intense. Here’s a tutorial on the full process.
Niklas Forsberg has created a painterly waterscape with rich vibrant colors and thick brushstrokes. He has produced a step-by-step walkthrough on his method. This tutorial also includes some efficient workflow techniques (shortcuts, controls) to help you speed up your own work.
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And there you have it – a number of tutorials on creating interesting landscape/backgrounds which should help you maximize your compositions. Try a few of them out and then develop your own techniques in your own style!
We’ve focused on some drawing techniques and tutorials - now we’re going to have a look at some digital painting tutorials so you can simulate the feeling of live painting with your tablet. Here’s some online & video tutorials that show you different methods used to achieve some wonderful looking works of art.
This tutorial shows you how to layer your colours and build up your forms and create realistic looking skin tones from a reference portrait. Its one of the easiest tutorials I’ve seen, and its very effective with a some practice.
Jami Noguchi of Angry Zen Master and Monster Cutie fame delivers a video tutorial on the process involved in creating a fat little monster (but he’s so cute!)
Here’s a handy potrait painting tutorial from TutorialQuest.com. Pay close attention to the tips given, as they are key fundamental things you should know when venturing out into the world of portraiture (Digital or other media).
A majority of tutorials on the ‘net are usually focused on the Adobe suite of products (Photoshop and Illustrator mainly) so here is a lovely walkthrough of Nick Harris’ process for creating a digital painting of a Steampunk Watch-mender Mender (Once you see the image, you’ll know what I’m talking about) using Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro software.
In a later post, I’ll be showcasing a number of speed-painting videos so you can marvel at the artistry of some of the best digital artists out there. Perhaps you could learn a few new techniques on how to layer and build your digital artworks!
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