Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t been stopping by here. I hope you’re still getting a lot out of this thread even when I play hooky.
I just found an series of tutorial images that I made a few years back to share on wetcanvas.org, back before I figure out that nobody there cared about learning the way you guys do. If you’re new to painting digitally, this is one way to go about it.
One small plastic cow, from observation, over the course of about an hour. Color-wise, I stuck with black and white on a neutral background, right up until the end, at which I used a bit of yellow and a bit of blue. Using just a pair of muted colors can turn a b

You know that feeling you get when you look at a picture made by your favorite artist, and you love the image, but it seems like what they have done is impossibly far away from your own skill level, and you have no idea how to achieve similar results? Every artist, even the best ones, have felt the same way about their heroes. Don’t let it get you down or discourage you from looking at the art you love.
Whether you are attending a fancy art school, or you are picking up art skills on your own, you will need to set goals for yourself, figure out how to achieve those goals, and then do the hard work necessary to

Communication – that’s the whole point of illustration. Some examples of communication in illustration: “this is a guy with a sword”, “this book contains medieval romance”, “this dragon’s wings could conceivably bear its weight in flight”, “this is George Bush”, “this is a sleek new car design”, “this is a landscape that invokes sadness”.
Communication in images includes everything from conveying the idea of a material (grass, stone, flesh, etc.) to acting, to conveying a mood through non-representational marks.

******Assignment #28 – Mood, Non-Representational*****
Pick a simple emotional state &ndas

Composition is the art of working within a rectangle (or other shape) with line, color, value, and form, for the purpose of making an interesting non-representational set of patterns.
Composition is non-representational. That is, a good composition can contain representational objects, such as people or buildings or monsters, but it doesn’t have to. It can be nothing but smears of color, and still be effective. A good composition grabs your attention and makes your eye jump to specific parts of the picture. A bad composition makes you want to look away, or directs your attention to the wrong thing.

********Assignment #22 - Studying Exist

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If you don’t have PhotoShop, there are a variety of physical color mediums that you can use in your sketchbook.

Dry Mediums

Colored Pencil This medium is dry and tidy, which is ideal for sketchbooks, but has the unfortunate problem of being a tiny, tiny drawing point.
Caran d’Ache This is a fancy name for crayon. It’s pigment held together with wax, that comes in the form of a stick. It’s not great for details and it works best on a paper that is mid-toned – such as postal paper.
Oil pastel These are sticks of pigments held together with oil. They are vibrant, but have the annoying property of being permanently smear

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There are four ways in which photography can be useful to illustrators: direct copy, inspiration, reference, and inclusion.

Concept art is a subset of illustration.
What is illustration? Dictionary.com says this of the word “illustrate”:
1. to furnish (a book, magazine, etc.) with drawings, pictures, or other artwork intended for explanation, elucidation, or adornment
2. to make clear or intelligible, as by examples or analogies; exemplify
3. 3. Archaic. to enlighten
4. to clarify one's words, writings, etc., with examples: To prevent misunderstandings, let me illustrate.
So, an “illustration” is art that communicates something.
There is much of fine art that falls into the category of ill

 

Concept Art 101

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So you like drawing characters, and monsters, and swords and guns and space-ships. It has come to your attention that there are people who do this professionally for movies, television, and games. You’ve got a sketchbook in your hands, and you are wondering how to get from the sketchbook to the job. What sorts of things should you draw? What sorts of mediums should you learn? Should you draw from photos? From life? From other artist’s work? From imagination?

I can help you with these first steps. My name is Michelle Clay. I work at a company called Turbine, where I make 3D art assets for