Fossfor's Laboratory

Photoshop Mega list from Fossfor's laboratory

2010-10-29T19:45:00.044+02:00

Tutorials:
http://psd.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/
http://www.emagzin.com/featured/photoshop-101-beginning-photoshop/
http://www.edesignerz.net/tutorials/photoshop
http://speckyboy.com/2010/02/22/a-round-up-of-50-fresh-photoshop-tutorials-and-techniques/
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/
http://www.psdvault.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/photoshop/
http://www.tipsquirrel.com/
http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/
http://www.tutorial9.net/category/photoshop/
http://tinyurl.com/33vpmjz
http://machoarts.com/17-best-photoshop-cs5-video-tutorials

Brushes:
http://www.brushking.eu/
http://dzineblog.com/2008/10/45-sites-to-download-photoshop-brushes.html
http://www.blendfu.com/
http://www.noupe.com/freebie/ultimate-collection-of-photoshop-brushes-actions-and-styles.html
http://josweb.co.uk/blog/2010/10/latest-free-high-res-photoshop-brushes-collection/
http://acrisdesign.com/2010/11/750-free-watercolor-photoshop-brushes/
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tools/brushes.html
http://www.photoshopbrushes.com/
http://www.brushdirectory.com/

Patterns:
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/photoshop-patterns/
http://www.brushdirectory.com/patterns/

Shapes:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/11/the-ultimate-collection-of-photoshop-custom-shapes/

Gigantic list of tips from users:
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2010/10/photoshop-tips-from-photoshop-fans.html

An enormous list of Photoshop sites:
http://www.noupe.com/photoshop/the-ultimate-photoshop-toolbox.html

Or if you hate Photoshop and think it costs the earth try one of these instead!

Art blogsTwitter series Roundup: 21 - 40

2010-08-31T10:51:00.018+02:00

#coolartblogs 21 to 40

40http://benmauro.blogspot.com/
39 http://dc-concept.blogspot.com/
38 http://leontinegreenberg.tumblr.com/
37 http://www.lewistrondheim.com/blog/
36 http://www.travislouie.blogspot.com/
35 http://cameronstewart.blogspot.com/
34 http://karinjurick.blogspot.com/
33http://www.creaturespot.com/
32 http://www.tomgauld.com/
31 http://www.antoniocaparo.com/
30 http://nathanfowkes.blogspot.com
29 http://www.sketchwich.com
28 http://www.sarahmensinga.blogspot.com
27 http://www.conceptsofalex.com
26 http://armandserrano.blogspot.com
25 http://mattiasa.blogspot.com
24 http://sparthconstruct.blogspot.com
23 http://dan-may.com
22 http://www.allisonsommers.com
21 http://www.mattstewartartblog.blogspot.com

I am still on the lookout for more artist blogs for the next series on Twitter. If you have an art blog or would like to suggest a good one for my next series, leave the link in the comments here or tweet me on Twitter @fossfor66

Francis Vallejo - Ink Techniques video

2010-08-27T10:35:00.002+02:00

Art blogsTwitter series Roundup: 1 - 20

2010-08-09T10:03:00.007+02:00

Fosslab is on a break: follow me on Twitter

2010-07-09T15:53:00.001+02:00

This blog is on an extended holiday. I seem to get a lot more feedback from Twitter where I post links on the same lines as here. There is so much useful info to be found there!

You can follow me as fossfor66 at http://twitter.com/fossfor66
My latest series of tweets is #coolartblogs
Hope to meet you all and get tweeting about art...

Silhouettes and Tangents

2010-04-28T12:03:00.009+02:00

These two articles talk about a couple of important things to remember when you are designing characters or setting up enviroments and scenes.

Silhouettes:
'The reason silhouette value is important is because it's a great aid to "foolproofing" the clarity in your drawings - it helps make sure that everyone can tell exactly what your character is doing at all times.' This article is from a series titled ' a Kick in the head' on Mark Kennedy's wonderful blog Temple of the seven Golden Camels which is about drawing, storyboarding and animation.

Tangents:
'If silhouette is desirable, tangents are not. Tangents occur when lines or shapes begin to collide hap-hazardly, usually right on the contours they are describing.' Will Finn is a colleague of Mark's and writes about tangents and why to avoid them in this article on the Small Room. This is something most pro artists do instinctively but sometimes it gets overlooked.

Mark McDonnell's sketchbook

2010-04-26T16:46:00.005+02:00

This video is related to my last post on watching people work: Mark McDonnell has a nice Youtube channel with videos of him sketching. I like this one where he shows one of his sketchbooks, with great animals and characters.

He says this sketchbook is a Cachet, earthbound recycled sketchbook , ISBN # 1-56152-416-6, and it's great paper that can take a bit of punishment with wet media. He draws with Prismacolor markers and pencils. The black is a Gelly-Roll pen.

Process: seeing how other people work

2010-04-21T12:30:00.010+02:00

Work In Progress: is a great place for processes. They are also quite large so you can get a good look at how they are done.

Slam Blogsma: this blog by Sam Bosma has loads of thumbnails and sketches and shows how he goes from these to digital colour and texturing in Photoshop.

The Unreachable Itch is a blog by illustrator Jonathan Burton. He also posts character sketches, sketches to line work and colour finals.

Wheel of Time - Lord of Chaos Painting by Greg Manchess

2010-04-05T15:34:00.002+02:00

I loved watching this video. I'm not even a fan of the Wheel of Time series but it's amazing the way this guy paints!

The Art Center: get some advice from the experts

2010-03-12T11:07:00.010+01:00

'The Art Center is a brand new place where Artists will share Ideas, Tips, and Tutorials. It will quickly grow both in content and artists from all the different art mediums. The Art Center will be a sister site to the Character Design blog'
This is a relatively new site but already has many fascinating posts full of advice about drawing and design written by pro artists. You can follow this blog on Twitter to be sure not to miss any great tidbits.

WE book illustration: Process

2010-02-24T14:28:00.023+01:00

I had the basic idea for the composition in my head and then made some thumbnails in Photoshop to see what it could look like and chose the image on the left as it has better balance.

then I drew a large detailed sketch on paper with a blue col erase pencil and scanned it. It also got flipped along the way. I put the line art on the top layer set to Multiply, this allows you to preserve your line art and paint on a white layer underneath.

I often start off painting with the gradient tool set to Radial and use it to paint. This is a really fast way to get some colour down. For this piece I made selections of the cosmonaut, mountains, planet and sky and then made alphas or masks of each one on other layers for easier selecting and painting later on

Then I lay down the basics with a large round brush set at 75% opacity, when I'm more or less sure of my values I take the brush opacity down to 50% . I used to paint a lot with watercolors and use the same sort of technique here. I gradually use a smaller and smaller brush to do details

As a rule I'm not keen on using special brushes, here I just used a stippled brush shape for the stars and the airbrush for some texture on the planet. I also used various layers set to Screen and Overlay modes to get the halo around the planet.

For the visor on the helmet I made an alpha layer to use as a texture with the 'Lighting effects' filter to make the relection look more spherical as it was too flat. Then I flattened all the layers and noodled around a bit to get a more unified look.

Coolvibe: digital art to inspire you

2010-02-23T11:18:00.004+01:00

Bobby Chiu

There is a great collection of digital art on this site. I especially love the first pic by Bobby Chiu of cute beasties on a branch!

Imagine FX new issue out now

2010-02-09T11:35:00.011+01:00

The latest Imagine FX mag has some good stuff this month.There's an article on how to make up a good portfolio, some interesting workshops including 'paint smarter, not harder' and another of their series of development sheets for game concept art.

An article titled' Photoshop vs Painter' takes on this endless argument, which I think is a futile one since they are both useful for different purposes. Anyway the contest ends in a draw here which makes sense. It is worth reading this article though if you are not familiar with one or either of the big P's, as they use 10 good examples to show how and when to choose Photoshop over Painter or vice versa.

3 Art podcasts not to miss

2010-02-01T17:57:00.006+01:00

I am a podcast addict and recently came across some really good art pods via Twitter:
Escape from Illustration island podcast
Chris Oatley artcast
Art and story podcast

the guys who do these podcasts also have super sites so have a look at them while you listen to their pods.

Art Rage 3 is here

2010-01-21T12:10:00.006+01:00

I have been trying out the latest version of Art Rage for a few weeks now and am really pleased with it. I have the Studio Pro 3 version as it has the most features. They have improved the interface which was pretty good to start with anyway. Now you can scale the panels and also drop them on a second screen if you have one, to end up with an uncluttered workspace.
There is a 'canvas puck', a little navigator a bit like Photoshop has, but here you can use it to instantly rotate the canvas which is one of the most useful features of Art Rage.
New tools include Watercolors, the 'heavy bleed' setting gives realistic paint deposits, I was really surprised when I tried it out. They have also added Inking pens, and an auto smoothing setting on the pens and the pencil which means you can get that smooth vector-look similar to drawings done in Flash.
Other new stuff: the Gloop pen is good for trippy unexpected results and the Sticker pen which is like the image hose in Painter.
More really handy things are the Fill, Selection and Text tools and a straight-line function which do make life much easier even if they are not strictly drawing tools.
Anyway I definitely think Art Rage has grown up now, the Pro version is more expensive, but I think it's a match for some of the other big fat graphic apps out there!
link to comparison PDF

Imagine FX magazine #50

2009-10-27T11:58:00.006+01:00

The 50th issue of ImagineFX magazine is a real smasher. On the DVD you get a demo of Manga Studio EX 4 that has no time limit, this alone is worth the cover price. There is also an article on Craig Mullins, just about the best digital painter ever, a sci-fi workshop with James Gurney and a list of the 50 best living artists. This is an interesting list but I don't agree with a lot of it, and why did they leave out Alan Lee??
I'm really chuffed because my beloved sweetheart has got me a subscription to this mag, so I shall be reviewing it a bit more often on this blog!

Mike Dutton One Swoop Fell video

2009-10-21T14:00:00.006+02:00

One Swoop Fell is a fantastic webcomic made by Mike Dutton. It is one of the best webcomics out there by far, really well drawn with beautiful backgrounds. The story is poetic and sometimes dreamy but also funny and exciting. Something about it reminds of Miyazaki so I was not really surprised to read that he took part in the Totorro Forest Project
There is a film on Vimeo of Mike drawing an episode, I especially loved the inking part of this.

Drawing with a brush in Flash MX

2009-08-20T18:13:00.007+02:00

Bob Flynn is a cartoonist with a great blog called Drip. He writes about using Flash MX to paint and draw. His line work looks very clean but also really natural and hand drawn.
He starts by sketching in a lighter color and then inks making use of the onion skin feature. Flash is quite a fun app to draw with and using the same techniques in this post and quite a bit of patience you can achieve quite a natural line even though drawing with vectors. Read the articles here and here.

Comic tools blog

2009-08-12T14:42:00.002+02:00

Comic tools is a great blog. This guy is very generous with his time and knowledge. Although the title is aimed at comickers this blog has loads of useful info for anyone who draws. I really like his anatomy tutorials, he has some really good tips and tricks for inventing characters and getting them to look right.

Brushes and Colors: digital sketchbooks

2009-07-17T12:02:00.010+02:00

There has been a bit of a buzz lately about Brushes, an app which turns your iPhone into a mini sketchpad. Apparently even David Hockney uses this! I have not tried Brushes but I do use Colors, another little app for the iPhone and Nintendo DS.
Colors is a great app, I use it on my DS lite with a chunky kid's stylus. One of the things that make it so great is that it takes advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the DS lite, just as if you were using a real Wacom or Cyntiq, but pocket sized. I'm not sure if Brushes has this feature but I don't think so.
To put Colors on your DS you have to buy a flash cart for homebrew apps. I use a R4 Revolution for DS. It is quite easy to set up, there is a good walkthrough on joystiq.

Brushes gallery

Colors gallery and my page

Make your own sketch pads

2009-06-30T17:05:00.003+02:00

Instructables is a great site if you like to make stuff like I do. As I tend to hoard paper to draw on and had a ton of loose paper lying around I was pleased to find this Instructable : make a duct tape scratch pad.

This works really well and is perfect for making sketch pads, any size or paper type you want. I added cardboard covers to mine and folded the duct tape over the top to make them stronger. And if you do use thicker paper you need a lot more glue.

I made three sketch pads with this method and am running out of paper now so time to start hoarding again.

Nic Klein Takes Us Inside His Process

2009-05-10T13:36:00.007+02:00

Nic Klein shows his process for painting Viking, a new series for Image comics in this interesting little article. He must work really fast to do two of these a month. I really like the mixture of an acrylic monotone base and digital colours.
I wrote about Nic a while ago on this blog.

Sketch magazine

2009-04-27T14:39:00.003+02:00

Blue Line Pro art supplies have a magazine called Sketch about all things comics, they have some good articles on drawing amongst other things, although I think they have too many adverts.
There is also a very good forum with sections on pencilling , inking, colouring and Tips & tricks.

Kevin Chen demos on ConceptArt

2009-04-27T13:48:00.003+02:00

There is a quite an old thread on the Conceptart.org forums chock full of demo drawings by Kevin Chen. These sketches are amazing, you can learn alot about drawing the figure just by looking through this series. There are 3 pages: Page 1, page 2, and page 3
Kevin Chen is a top figurative teacher and concept artist, there is some of his other work here. I wish I had a teacher like this!

New hub page

2009-04-23T18:49:00.007+02:00

I have written a new article on Hubpages called 3 Essential things to do if you want to learn to draw well

Hobbit paintings by Justin Gerard

2009-03-04T16:13:00.006+01:00

Justin Gerard is an illustrator I had not heard of before I came across his blog where he has some fantastic paintings illustrating the Hobbit. He works on paper with watercolours and then continues the pieces digitally. I think he manages to get the best of both techniques this way when you see the great results.
He has posted the process of the Battle of the Five armies and explains why this scene is so exciting to paint. If you are a Tolkien fan like me you must see these paintings and even if you're not they're still stunning.
There is also an interview on the excellent Tor Sf and fantasy site.

Right or left brain quiz for artists

2009-02-20T17:19:00.002+01:00

This quiz made me chuckle as the some of the questions seem a bit obvious, but I tried to answer honestly and got a score of 70 % in favor of being right brained. This was surprising as I thought it would be the opposite, so maybe it's quite a clever quiz after all.
Have a go and leave me a comment with your score, I would like to know what sort of brains read this blog!

Aviary online applications : vectors

2009-02-20T15:51:00.003+01:00

the Aviary online graphics suite have just released a new vector app called Raven. You can read about it on their blog. If you have no idea what I'm talking about read my previous post about Aviary here.

Work process by Alon

2009-01-05T12:53:00.003+01:00

Alon's Art Work blog has a very interesting process of how he painted this fantastic Waterfall castle. He shows how he to use photocomposition, 3D models and matte painting to bring all it all together.

Create a Cute Vector Monster from a Pencil Sketch

2009-01-05T12:31:00.008+01:00

Blog.spoon grahics has a quite detailed tutorial on creating a character from scratch using vectors. It's well explained even for those who haven't much experience drawing with vectors. When you've made a monster you can then learn how to create a scene to put it in. They use Adobe Illustrator for this one. I aslo quite like to use Flash to draw with, but if you have a tight budget and prefer free software you can also use Inkscape

Conceptual Art tutorial in Photoshop

2008-10-26T12:25:00.012+01:00

There is a good tutorial on painting an enviroment with Photoshop on the idrawgirls site. He shows you how to start with a large brush in b&w and and then refine your shapes and add colour and a bit of detail without losing sight of the whole picture as you go. This technique is very useful as it enables you to work really fast and I work like this a lot. Here are few of my sketches made this way:

2D Artist online magazine

2008-10-23T13:41:00.003+02:00

2D Artist is a downloadable PDF Magazine on concept art, digital and matte-painting. It is full of articles on techniques, tutorials, interviews, galleries and a lot more. You can download a 'lite' version for free or pay for the full one which is $4.50 or €3.24. This is pretty good value. I wish there was a print version, although it would probably be very expensive, and I suppose you could always print out the bits you really like.

How to Use an Angle Finder to Correctly Draw Lines in Perspective

2008-10-21T11:12:00.002+02:00

I saw this article by Dianne Mize on the Emptyeasel site. It is a trick for measuring the angles of perspective lines and training your eye to get them right. I find it best to first lay down your horizon line and vanishing points before you start sketching, but this is a useful way of finding the correct persective lines once you've done your grid.

Dan Blomberg

2008-09-19T14:13:00.007+02:00

Dan Blomberg is a concept artist who lives in Spain. His sketchy style and vibrant colours remind me of Goro Fujita and Craig Mullins. There are some fantastic images on his website, and be sure to visit the sketches section.

Artzmania: Free e-zine n° 9

2008-09-18T17:20:00.003+02:00

There was an issue of the free e zine Artzmania in July that passed me by, but happily you can still download all the back issues here. These zines are packed with interesting images, issue 9 has 478 pages.

David Kassan

2008-09-12T11:43:00.004+02:00

I recently started seeing references to this artist all over the place. His work is amazing, I like the drawings even more than the paintings, especially this self portrait. I think it shows how hard this man must work, he looks exhausted.
There is also a video of a 3 hour drawing condensed into 7 minutes. It is low res but still gives a pretty good idea of how he works. Have a look at his website and blog to see more.

Making fairy tales on Youtube

2008-08-07T12:12:00.003+02:00

Pj Lynch is an Irish illustrator who has an interesting Youtube channel. I especially liked watching 'Making fairy tales part 2', in this video he shows us how he paints a very nice fire -breathing dragon, from the sketch to the final watercolor.

Kristin Elder : demo

2008-07-11T17:22:00.007+02:00

Kristin Elder paints beautiful intricate watercolors. She has posted a work process on her site so you can see her progress from a doodle to this amazing finished painting.

Aviary online applications

2008-07-08T12:41:00.006+02:00

Aviary is a suite of rich internet applications for artists. They have tools for everything from image editing, 3D modelling to audio and word processing for creative writers. All the applications are named after birds.
I have been trying out Phoenix and Peacock.
Phoenix is an image editor similar to Photoshop with layers, filters and blending modes . The brush tool is bit awkward to use and I don't really think it's meant for sketching, but just painting really slowly and precisely. One thing I really like is the liquify tool which is much better than the Photoshop version as you can use it directly on your image and see the effect in real time.
Peacock is a pattern generator but you can do alot more with it than just create patterns. It uses a node system which takes a bit of getting used to if you've never tried it before.
Photoshop also have an online application, Photoshop Express. I have tried it but I think Aviary is alot more powerful.
I have 3 invitations to give away for Peacock and Phoenix. If you would like one, leave me a comment.

Color vision and Art

2008-06-17T17:58:00.003+02:00

Color vision and Art is a site about color theory and the way we see and respond to color. It is fun to read and concise without being simplistic. There are also interactive examples so you can experiment with certain effects for yourself. I wondered who wrote all this and then found a credits page with art historians and neuro biologists. It's well worth a visit.
This site led me to another interesting one called Causes of Color. this goes into detail about why things are a certain color. Some of this involves a lot of physics which gets a bit complicated (well for me, anyway) but it's still fascinating.

My Drawing day favorites on Flickr

2008-06-15T19:31:00.006+02:00

June 7 was Drawing Day. These are my favorite entries from the Flickr site. My effort is the monkeystack at the bottom! Click on the images to go to the artist's Flickr galleries.

Moira Hahn

2008-06-03T18:15:00.010+02:00

I love the paintings of Moira Hahn, particularly her series from 2006-2007 which seem to combine many of my favorite things. They are watercolors that resemble Japanse prints with fantastic animal characters, cats, tigers ,fish , owls and many others. The colors are glowing and very beautiful. This one is called 'Food Fight'.

Drawing day 2008

2008-05-30T21:00:00.006+02:00

On june 7 it's Drawing Day.
Drawing Day is a worldwide drawing event encouraging everyone to drop everything and draw for the sake of art. The internet is an open canvas. Help create 1 million drawings online this day and boost online art communities.
I shall join in and post something on Flickr. If you intend to draw something leave me a comment and I'll post links to my favorite Drawing Day art on this blog.

Pentel brush pen

2008-05-15T11:29:00.003+02:00

I came across this pen on the Cool tools blog. I've tried various brush pens in the past and wasn't very impressed, but this one looks really good. It seems to be more like a real brush than a pen pretending to be a brush! I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has tried it.

Kim Cogan

2008-04-24T18:28:00.005+02:00

Kim Cogan paints beautiful cityscapes of his native San Francisco and New York City.
What I like about these images is the way some parts are sharp and others blurry which is often the way you really see a busy street or buildings. When you look at a scene with so much detail you can't take it all in so most of what you see is out of focus and only parts will be clearly detailed.
The various types of light are also very well done, the contrast of neons and bright windows against the glowing night skies of a city.
Kim also has some good photos on his blog. He also has a website.

Patchblox art links

2008-04-15T20:19:00.009+02:00

Patchblox is a mosaic of art links. You can add your own links if you have a little avatar or banner. It's fun because it changes every day, so you never know what you will find. It's sent quite a lot of traffic my way so far, so I would recommend putting your link up.
See if you can find mine:

2D painting from A to Z

2008-04-13T11:57:00.004+02:00

This tutorial by David Revoy is really interesting. It sometimes gets a bit dense as the original was in french, but it's worth the effort. He talks about Painter, Photoshop, The Gimp, Daz studio and Artweaver. The last three are all freeware and can replace the others if you're willing to learn them.
The Gimp is open source and similar to Photoshop.It can be a bit tricky to learn,but some people love it.
Daz studio can be used intead of Poser. You can import Poser figures and models into Daz and also other freeware figures such as Apollo Maximus.
Artweaver is like a cross between Photoshop and a stripped down version of Painter.

Karin Jurick

2008-04-05T15:28:00.004+02:00

Karin Jurick is a member of the Daily Paintworks site. Many daily painters seem to do still lives but Karin seems to paint lots of people which I find more interesting. I particularly like her series of museum visitors looking at paintings, they are funny in a way but make you think as well. Have a look at her blog.

Goro Fujita process video

2008-04-05T13:52:00.004+02:00

Click on the image to visit Goro's tutorial painted in Photoshop. This video shows you how to start painting really loose and sketchy and to add just enough volume and detail to make it look great without overdoing it. I have another post with a link to Goro's website here.

American Artist: Drawing highlights

2008-04-02T18:01:00.005+02:00

I just got this 'Drawing highlights' collection of articles on drawing from American Artist magazine. It is packed with advice and good examples, mainly on figure drawing. The articles by Dan Gheno are well written, interesting for beginners and more advanced artists alike. It's also very thick -176 pages- so I think it's good value.

Joe Bluhm

2008-03-26T13:40:00.003+01:00

I enjoyed watching these process videos by Joe Bluhm. You can watch all 4 of them on his You Tube site.

Asian Art

2008-03-20T14:18:00.005+01:00

Startdrawing.org is a website that showcases Asian art. I love the imagery and color of Hong Kong and Korean cinema so these these paintings by Zheng Wen caught my eye.

He is a Taiwanese comic artist, you can see some more of his art here. If anyone can tell me more about this artist or knows any sites with some english info I would be grateful.

Lackadaisy painting tutorial

2008-03-19T11:47:00.005+01:00

There is a painting tutorial by the author of the fantastic Lackadaisy comics on her website. This is a fun tutorial to read as the cat doesn't appreciate her efforts and answers back!

Easy colour palettes: Pic2color

2008-03-07T13:41:00.008+01:00

Pic2color is a neat little app that lets you create colour palettes from any image on the web or from your own images. You can also apply the colour scheme of one image to another. There is probably a way of doing this in Photoshop, but this is faster. They have a widget version to add to sites and blogs.

Anthro horses video tutorial

2008-03-07T12:15:00.004+01:00

To continue the horsie mood here's a nice video on DrawFurry.com. The drawing tutorials on this site are good too, the characters are all part- animal part- human, hence the Furry bit.

Horses

2008-03-03T17:04:00.006+01:00

I love to draw horses but always have to use reference to get them looking right. I came across this neat little horsie tutorial from Droemar. It really helped me to understand the body and neck shapes better and my horses are starting to look a bit more dynamic, before they looked really wooden and stiff . In the second page of this tutorial she shows how to draw trotting and galloping and common mistakes people make when inventing horse poses. This is also really helpful.
Here are some pages from my sketchbook using these tutorials, a bit wonky but but encouraging even so.

Painting tutorials

2008-02-27T10:33:00.009+01:00

There are lots of digital painting tutorials on 3Dtutorials.com. These were done with Photoshop but can be applied to any sort of painting. Click on the images to see the tutorials.

the first one is a painting process by Daarken

this one is a speedpainting by Levente Peterffy

An Jung Sik :concept artist

2008-02-24T19:24:00.008+01:00

An Jung Sik also known as Ziro, is a concept artist from Korea. The character paintings on his blog are amazing, the lighting is so realistic I thought they were in 3D, but it turns out they were painted in Photoshop! I would like to know a bit more but his blog is in Korean which is beyond me.

link via Startdrawing.org

Scribble

2008-02-22T23:04:00.004+01:00

I liked this video by art teacher Matt Archambault. He talks about warming up if you're a bit rusty by drawing from photo reference. He has several interesting videos on YouTube and a website where you can find his DVDs. If you join the mailing list you get a drawing tip every week, I have joined to try them out.

Photoshop painting tutorials

2008-02-15T10:57:00.004+01:00

There are some very good painting tutorials on CG Arena. They are meant for Photoshop but the basics can be applied and combined with other graphics software programs. The 2D gallery on this site is very impressive as well.

Anatomy flash movies

2008-02-06T13:08:00.000+01:00

In my anatomy course at art school we had to do exercises that consisted of putting tracing paper on a photo and drawing the muscles in the right places. This takes alot of practice and is not as easy as it sounds, well it wasn't for me anyway! These flash movies by Rey Bustos are basically the same idea. What I really like is that you can fade them in and out at your own speed, to get a good idea of the positioning and movement of the muscles. He has also made movies of model skeletons on turntables which you can view from all angles, these are useful for sketching poses.

Friday Eve

2008-02-05T17:34:00.000+01:00

Steve James is a texture and concept artist in the video game industry. His blog is Friday Eve, he has lots of great portraits and other art on there, and seems to have a thing about shoes! This one called Captain ahab is my favorite.

Color wheel masking

2008-02-04T11:14:00.000+01:00

James Gurney has a fascinating article about choosing a color schemes on his blog. He uses a color wheel and a mask to select limited color palettes. He then goes on to try out various mask shapes to get different moods. This is a great idea! I don't know if he invented this but I've never come across it before and I can't wait to try this out on my latest batch of work.
You can download a digital color wheel PDF file here from Tobey Sanford's site.

animated work in progress

2008-02-02T19:45:00.000+01:00

I liked this post on the creation of several characters with step by step animated gifs of the painting in progress. It's great to be able to watch other people's work processes. The milkmaid who becomes a centaur is particulary interesting.

link via Gorilla artfare

Nic Klein

2008-01-31T18:06:00.000+01:00

Domo Arigato mr Roboto

There are some great illustrations and paintings on Nic klein's website. I really like his style, good old fashioned illustration mixed with comics and a very personal twist.

Become a better artist

2008-01-27T18:45:00.001+01:00

Imagine Fx is a monthly magazine about creating fantasy art. Even if you're not into fantasy it's full of good advice for painters and illustrators. On the Imagine FX site you can consult some of their articles and tutorials, they call them 'workshops', and you can download them for free here. I liked this article called 'become a better artist'with 40 tips from various artists, some of them are really useful. And if you're wondering : is this a not so thinly disguised advert? Well, no it isn't! I really do like this mag and buy it, although I think the price is a bit steep.

Draw like a Ralph

2008-01-23T18:47:00.001+01:00

this little comic sums up character design in a nutshell and it's also very funny!I hope he does some more of these.

Pose mainiacs

2008-01-23T11:58:00.000+01:00

If you want to try some figure drawing and don't have a model handy, why not try Pose mainiacs ? this is a really useful site with daily poses requested by users, random poses, negative space, and even 30 second poses. You can also turn the model 360°to get a complete view.
What I like is the random element which just does not happen if you have to set up everything first in a pose program for yourself. Another great thing is that even in real life a lot of these dramatic forshortened views would be nearly impossible to get.

Random pose sketches

negative space sketches

Ken Wong

2008-01-18T20:39:00.001+01:00

I love this guy's work, his website is well worth a visit. His work is really inventive and original, be sure not to miss the Illustration and Character design sections.

Photoshop Hubpages tutorial

2008-01-17T16:11:00.002+01:00

I have made a new Hubpage with a basic coloring tutorial for Photoshop Elements.

Artzmania: Free e-zine

2008-01-14T14:33:00.000+01:00

Artzmania is a free e-zine you can download here. All the issues are packed with art and design, issue 7 has 490 pages! It is presented in a browser called Spotbit which has a handy magnifying tool so you can look closely at the details. It's a great source of inspiration, especially if you can't afford expensive art magazines.

How to Draw what you See

2008-01-13T11:41:00.000+01:00

I found this tutorial on emptyeasel.com. This seems like a good site, mainly aimed at traditional materials and a bit of Photoshop. It is well set out and and easy to read. The idea of drawing what you see reminded me of this excellent article about drawing clutter on the Temple of the seven golden camels blog. I have quite alot of clutter, so when I sit down to sketch stuff the problem of how to get a decent drawing out of it all occurs frequently

The secret of glowing watercolors

2008-01-12T17:35:00.001+01:00

This article on watercolour is fascinating. It goes into a lot of detail about the physics of paint and the way it interacts with paper, some of this is a bit hard to understand but I really learnt alot from it. The whole website is very informative and really worth exploring if you use watercolours.

Little goat tutorial

2008-01-10T17:30:00.001+01:00

there are loads of tutorials on this site I Draw Girls
this guy is really generous! Despite the title, he doesn't just draw girls but all sorts of subjects in styles ranging from realistic to cartoon. Try out this neat little goat.

Goro Fujita

2008-01-10T17:02:00.002+01:00

I only recently discovered this artist,

have a look at the amazing work on his website

My new blog

2007-12-13T12:44:00.000+01:00

This blog will be devoted to painting and drawing. I shall write about techniques and advice, resources and and examples. Some of my own invention and some borrowed or begged from others! Although it says 'experimenting on pixels' in the title , I still like to use real messy paint. My brass steampunk Wacom pen image is a mixture of trad and digital, and this blog will attempt to cover all sorts of materials. I shall also post about other artist bloggers and sites as well, there are so many out there I admire.