Fantasy Art

Over time you will have built up several rough sketches and concepts that may get abandoned or that you have no use for at the present time, I prefer to file these away in special folders that I make out of thick card, this helps to keep the sketches clean and free from creases and marks with old laminating sheets taped over the top of some rough sketches that I certainly want to use at a later date.

Often times I include some of my best draft sketches in my main art portfolios and by an art portfolio I mean a collection of your very best artwork.

Whenever I have been stuck for further ideas I always raid my draft sketch files for revisiting old ideas, that I always find of use in some way.

Drawing anything when starting out on a blank piece of paper seems quite hard for some, but not if you know how to approach the subject of drawing something or anything.

A good light source is essential for this technique.

Small imperfections on the papers surface will show up under a bright light source, day light is the best light source, but then also a bright table lamp will suffice, then what you begin to do is draw what shapes you begin to see, roughly sketching and always thinking about what you might see in the lines that you draw.

This is much similar to the looking at the clouds and making pictures out of the ever changing clouds.

Also I ofen start to draw what may be on my mind, which is another useful tip, after not drawing for awhile (usually a few hours with me!) I seem to return to my drawing board refreshed quite often and am able to draw new ideas and sketch out new concepts previously stifled by being stuck at a desk for days!

As in the above sketch I draw lots of busy and quick ideas all on the same page, this helps me to determine what must be worked on and what might fall by the wayside.

Drafting your drawings like this also helps you to build up ideas for a related theme all on one sheet of paper if you wished, and it is a solid method to reference later on in your ongoing concept creation projects.

Luis Royo, what can I say, a top artist in his field, who draws powerful women and paints them to perfection, he also creates other types of fantasy art and works in a unique art style that is most certainly his own with fantasy art prints and posters sought after all over the world.

A spanish fantasy artist whose credits include numerous comic book covers and cd album art and lots of limited edition collectors pieces, also he has quite a few books showcasing his artwork and has had frequent exhibitions of his work throughout his prolific career.

See The Wilkipedia Article About Luis Royo For More Info About This Artist

Luis art also represents some of the best in comic book art, an inspired comic book artist himself, draws frequently through the medium of comic books and has built himself up as a top illustrator of fantasy art.

Like any niche topic, there are forums to talk about your favourite topics in depth, with other like minded individuals, you can talk, private message other members about any aspect of that subject, plus in these forums you can always find out new information or web addresses of other sites that you might not have found yet, because that’s the beauty of the internet, people take their own path and arrive at different places, so you network on these forums and find out lots of new information.

There are some great fantasy related forums out there, and probably will be more to come in the future too, but perhaps the best ones are the ones were you can post your own art in a related art thread, for other members to see!

Or you can talk through your best ideas and concepts and help build up a project, whatever your connected communities have in place as specific forum threads of discussion.

Epilogue.net is a good place to make your own profile page with your art and then join the forum to discuss your art or anyone elses or just chat about fantasy related stuff.

Remember a profile page if you are an artist or writer is one of the best tools of getting your work noticed online, a profile page says a lot about you, what you are interested in and what some of the best links are that you have on the internet, you could have a blog or main website and that’s it, well you would direct people from your forum signature to your stuff, simple as that!

Of course if you wished you could start up related fantasy art groups on places like Myspace, Yuwie, Facebook, Squidoo, Hubpages and many more, the fact that you will create a group that will help others or just to show each others work and get some feedback would be the best method of networking in your niche.

I’d recommend doing a Google search for popular forums based on fantasy art and just network within them to build your profile and build your list of contacts and readers to your blog or website.

One of the most notable fantasy artists of our time is Boris Vallejo, his art has been around since the 70’s and has been the most admired artist for his realistic take on incredible women and body building masculine figures of both genders.

He has perfected the art of blending colours of superb skin tones and gradiations that from a distance his figure work looks like a photo, although most of his fantasy art paintings have been created with photo reference material with models and other people who have posed for his paintings.

He has had numerous commissions through the years on fantasy books, games and in other media in print format.

I’ll be writing a biography here soon of past works and most popular artistic achievements in his fantasy art career, s stay tuned! I’ll be doing this for all the artists in the Top Fantasy Artists category.

A medium in whatever art you create is something you may specialize in with a little time, I always like to draw with pen and ink and then shade my art with a soft pencil, although I do tend to get carried away with felt tip pens on some of my drawings and concept ideas, as they help to bring strong colour to my visions.

Acrylics, watercolour, oils are the top mediums that most fantasy artists create their art with, it’s indeed a personal choice what you use, but I feel more and more that with becoming used to using a variety of mixed media or different tools, paints and materials.

Acrylic painting may be the obvious choice if you want to work quickly with your art, as once it dries it becomes water resistant, or you may fancy your hand at oil paints, they take longer to dry but can be thinned with white spirit or turps and different shades can be created with this medium quite easily.

Or if you prefer water colour, which is water soluble and can be thinned and spread around with the water direct from a pallette, I often like to paint in watercolour as you can apply several washes of colour to glaze an undercolour, providing a rich colour hue.

Finding your medium for your art is as important as finding your own art style, in fact it is all connected!

Today I would like to draw attention to some great ways of generating some quality creature sketches of demons, as this is my favourite creature to draw quite often, the exact process of how to draw a demon is quite fascinating to me.

Method One: Simple Sketching

Starting out with small planned drawings that illustrate your ideas, these are called thumbnails and they serve as a progressional art tool for drafting your designs so that they will look good later on down the road.

Method Two: Developing Your Art Further

When it comes to furthering your arts design, you build on your draft ideas and concepts by thinking of further detail and study of a demons head, maybe making a profile page with a full body sketch and then a head sketch in the right hand corner of your paper.

This serves as a reference for you as the artist to refer bck to, maybe you want to add colour notes and special design notes, so you know what design your drawing need to follow.

Method Three: Form And Structure

This is defined in the colour stage, the area of adding shading or a colour washes to the finished piece of art, I would look at the light sources or where you want the light sources to come from, this will help your drawings or designs have more form to them.

Also if you want to you could ink the outline of your drawing and black in the dark areas to simplify the process of your light source.