Table of contents for Fantasy Art Essentials 2 in Fantasy Art Essentials

Whether you love or loathe his darkly stylised art, if you’ve the slightest interest in digital art, the chances are you’ll recognise at least some, of HR Giger’s work. From the 1970s onwards he transformed himself from an obscure Swiss surrealist to mainstream Academy Award-winning artist for his iconic work on Alien. Commonly combining themes of elemental eroticism with an aesthetic that involves biomechanical mixtures of machine and alien flesh, his unique style has inspired countless artists. 1998 saw the creation of the Giger museum, at Château St. Germain in the ancient walled city of Gruyères, south-west Switzerland. With this venture Giger signalled a change in his attention towards sculpture and architectural design, which he studied at university. Giger retired in 2008, and put painting to one side in favour…

Frank Frazetta, the artist who defined the Golden Era of fantasy art and brought about new respect for the genre, sadly died of a stroke on 10 May 2010, in Fort Myers, Florida, US. He was 82. To say Frank was an inspiration is to understate his impact, not just on art, but on popular culture in its widest sense. His visions of barbarians, fantastical creatures and the female form brought a new realism and boldness to fantasy art that cast an influence as far wide as books, comics, film and music. He mixed art theory and tradition with fantasy and drama. The man himself was more humble. Of his career and his art he told ImagineFX in issue 28, back in 2008, that, “I’m not pretending I’m a great…

One of the many highlights in Brian Froud’s career was his work with Jim Henson for the movie The Dark Crystal. Cited by many artists and fantasy lovers as an inspiring film, it could easily have been called The Dark Chrysalis. “Fairly early on, he (Henson) had this idea of…well I didn’t know quite what, because for a long time I was drawing these ‘crystals’,” says Brian. “He kept saying crystals and we did that and I said, ‘It needs more drama.’ So, I suggested ‘dark’ because that’s a dramatic name. He thought it was great. I was drawing and drawing, and after a while he said, ‘What’s this crystal?’ And I said, ‘That’s what you said. Crystal.’ He said, ‘No, I said chrysalis.’ He was thinking the film was…

For more than 30 years Rodney Matthews has been one of fantasy art’s defining figures. The style he characteristically downplays as “slightly organic, spiky stuff” has been used on countless book covers, record sleeves, posters and, in recent times, animation and video games. He maintains that his success is all down to fate: “Somewhere in the universe there’s a stone pillar and chiselled on it is the legend, ‘Matthews will be a fantasy artist’.” Today, unflaggingly enthusiastic, Rodney is planning an assault on the world of animation. SOMERSET BORN AND RAISED Rodney was born in Somerset in 1945. A sensitive youngster, his parents encouraged his obvious artistic streak. Rodney recalls being a huge fan of cartoons, and of Disney in particular. “As a child I used to try and draw…

Feelings like sadness or solitude are pretty strong and even violent,” enthuses Mélanie, who works under the moniker of Eskarina – a name taken from a heroine in one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. “It’s the story of a little girl who wants to became a wizard,” she explains. “It’s a kind of tribute I make to that author.” Mélanie is well known for creating otherworldly portraits that are mysterious and often emotionally charged. Images with titles such as Madness and Lost in the Darkness show her attempts to try to capture the power of these feelings on a digital canvas. “I try to re-transcribe what I am feeling when I have an idea, and to paint them I often contrast colours,” she says, describing the starkly juxtaposed reds and…

This was the last image I produced for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess – a brutal, bombastic and horrifying role-playing game set around the time of the English Civil War. The brief was simple and visceral. The violent, blood-splattered musketeer Alice would single-handedly take on an entire Spanish terico, with the soldiers in her path enduring a number of horrible wounds. 1 THUMBNAILING I pulled some reference of Spanish tericos and their soldiers, and began thumbnailing. I always thumbnail in pencil first, and usually I try to be clean about it, but this was a special case. The scene is so chaotic, with so many moving parts, that a looser impression of the values was my early focus. 2 SKETCHES I sketched some basic values in Photoshop and settled…

Dan has more than a decade of experience in painting licensed products. His client list includes DC, Marvel and giants of fantasy gaming like World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering. The need to paint within strict style guides has some good and bad points. “There are going to be style guides and established characters and settings with just about any licence you work on, so it’s part of the territory,” says Dan. Some commissions have strict guides, but some offer wiggle room to be creative. “As an artist, you want to be free to create your own vision for an image,” Dan says. “There are other times when it’s fun to portray an established character everyone’s familiar with. Not having to design a character can make the painting go…

Talking to John Kearney, it’s clear that John’s somehow managed to unearth something really and truly remarkable within himself; a natural ability that has enabled him to create work that ranks alongside the very best fantasy art. “I remember reading about the artist’s ‘First Fire’,” he enthuses, “a sudden flash of inspiration that all artists experience at some point. It’s a moment of crystal clarity and vision, a tantalising glimpse at something exceptional in your subconscious. Whatever it is, it’s important to try to capture the essence of that intensified moment of perception by sketching down all you can before it’s gone.” QUICK LEARNER While this kind of inspirational epiphany might be a common stage in artists’ development, what is unusual in the case of John is how quickly he…

The starting point of every illustration is the story, which needs to be told as objectively and clearly as possible. In this case, it’s a timeless fantasy scene, which made choosing what to draw fairly easy. I took the classic ingredients – a pretty and gutsy heroine, her trustworthy companions and a stalking, insidious evil – and combined them in an exciting setting. At first glance, the beast has the advantage, hiding in the darkness of its lair, preparing for a surprise attack. However, the selflessness and strength of the heroes should enable them to gain the upper hand – unless one of them makes a mistake. I try to emphasise the calm moments before the storm when I put the characters in an environment. For example, the danger present…

In this guide, you’ll learn how to draw characters engaged in the activities and poses that relate to a mission or quest, such as walking, running, climbing, riding, exploring and resting. We’ll show you how to express the tiredness of a long trip, how to portray tension and rest in your drawings and how to draw these poses to convey character and correct muscle structure. You will learn to clearly show the activities that your characters are engaged in, but also to compare characters based on their behaviour and the small details that make each personality unique. This works in terms of their physical structure, personality and storytelling. To illustrate these poses we’ll use some classic fantasy characters like halflings, dwarves, elves, magicians and warriors. Every character has distinctive physical…

The various options offered by today’s painting software are not only making it possible for digital artists to recreate all of the effects of traditional media, but also enabling them to create their own brushes of a kind that were inaccessible to the Old Masters. Such custom brushes – made manually or extracted from photographs – are a wonderful and innovative way to add texture to paintings and have now become a standard tool among digital artists. In the first of this three-part workshop, I presented various useful brushes for painting characters. In these pages I am going to look at costumes and the brushes that might be useful for creating, or for speeding up the process of painting various elements of clothing and accessories. I created the custom brushes…

Custom brushes play an extremely important role in today’s digital artist’s craft, and while understanding them and how they can best be used was once just advantageous, now it’s a basic requirement. In this three-part workshop, I’ve tried to lay out the general rules and custom brush settings as well as show some tips and tricks on unconventional ways to use them. The first part was devoted to painting characters, the second described painting textiles. Now, we have come to the third and final part, which will be devoted to enhancing landscapes and everything that you might find useful for painting nature. The majority of brushes described here are photograph based for the sake of realism and have been created in Photoshop. However, where possible, I am also going to…

The Peruvian prodigy Boris Vallejo, a professional artist since the age of 16, was amongst the core number of artists that defined the ‘classic’ fantasy art of the 1960s, making his name with his illustrations of Tarzan, Conan The Barbarian and Doc Savage. In the 1990s bodybuilder, model and painter Julie Bell married Boris, and since then they’ve produced a prolific body of hyperrealist fantasy art, that celebrates the fantastical body beautiful with dynamic heroines and mythical creatures galore. With a slew of art books and calendars to their names, the couple continue to push each other on, working together for a variety of commissions, from ad campaigns to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell 3 cover. www.imaginistix.com “We very much inspire each other, our minds work similarly in all…

Although brandishing the technical skills of a hyperrealist, Spaniard Luis Royo classes himself squarely as a fantasy artist, saying: “I’m not looking for reality… My goal isn’t to reflect today’s environment or real life.” Luis honed his craft as a draftsman then entered the world of comics in the 1980s, but he is perhaps best known for his 20-odd art books. From the 1990s onwards, he has released ‘best of’ compilations, as well as erotically charged collections, and also project-specific books, like Dome, which documents his commissioned painting of a huge fresco in a Russian castle. Seduced by the aesthetics of the female form, nearly all of Luis’s art involves the depiction of women. And although his immersive approach to art doesn’t involve digital tools, he remains an inspiration to…

I don’t know a single fantasy artist who isn’t influenced by the art of Frank Frazetta. A combination of his innate sense of movement, the energy, the raw pulse of life he put in his images, and his skills in anatomy and storytelling propelled him to the top of the illustrators’ pyramid. I’m going to show you my way of interpreting the legacy this artiste extraordinaire has left us. Many have tried to steal his magic potion, but no one has been able to give their art even half the power that Frazetta could. So my goal isn’t to copy Frazetta. Instead, I ask myself what elements of the great man’s production I like, and see if I can incorporate them into my own workflow. And what better subject could…

Painting wings is quite similar to painting hair: the first time you do it seems impossible, but in fact it’s not, and there are little tips that can help a lot. Before I start painting, I always do some photo research; in this case I looked at a lot of bird pictures to understand the feathers and decided what kind of design I wanted. Then I did a little concept sketch to test out a few colours. When I paint wings, I think of them as a block; I never paint feather by feather, always as a whole element. I add in details later, once the lighting and the shape are okay. Working on them as a block helps to unify the wings and stops you getting too wrapped up…

I’ve always loved a good story, and I’ve come to appreciate just how enjoyable, important and difficult storytelling can be in visual art. I think it connects to the viewer more than something that may simply be beautiful. A glamour shot of your favourite fictional character is fun, but an illustration with a story enables you to journey through the image, to live in the space it creates. I’m also a strong proponent of clear and memorable design. So much design today tends towards clutter – packing as much detail into a design regardless of whether it serves a purpose or not. We can measure this, too: if I asked you to draw an Imperial TIE fighter or the Starship Enterprise, chances are even if you’re not a sci-fi fan…

This image, called Superman Majestic, was painted by Dan for a series of puzzle tins for DC Comics. Dan was part of a team of freelance artists commissioned to paint images based around the Justice League of America, with Dan landing Superman. “I do like Superman,” says Dan. “He’s the ultimate good guy and such an iconic character that it’s a lot of fun getting to paint him. I tried to make him come across as majestic, powerful and just, which may be why I chose to have one fist clenched and the other open.” This piece was one of three commissioned – the other two showed Superman in action against his arch villains, including Doomsday. Of the three we’ve seen, Dan’s Superman Majestic truly captures the hero’s core nature,…

Of all the surfaces an artist can paint, skin is traditionally one of the hardest to get right – and it becomes even trickier when your character is not human! Through experience, I have realised that there are no gimmicks, tricks or Photoshop hacks that can be used to make life easier when it comes to painting convincing flesh. I believe the key to improving is investing some time and effort into the subject matter, so that you can gradually train your eye to solve problems without reference. It may be worth doing this in the hope that when the stabilisers come off your bike, you’re able to ride it without falling off. Luckily, there are some things you can do to help improve your ability to render skin; it’s…

Every muscle, every vein, every line of force is pure expression. So, starting from there, you might ask how we can make a fighting scene both expressive and alive, so that all of that compiled energy in it is apparent to the viewer. The first key element is muscle structure. As this is extremely important it would be better to gain some knowledge of human anatomy, which can then be easily applied to any figure you might want to draw, such as human beings, mythological creatures or even mythical monsters. Knowing muscle structure and its correct representation will enrich your images and make it easier for the observer to read the drawing and all of its elements. Tissue characteristics will also add expressivity to the structure. There are hard tissues…

Thanks to painting software, artists are not limited to traditional brushes any more, but are encouraged to create their own. In this three-part workshop I will be describing how to use custom brushes to create characters, costumes and the environment. While this workshop is mainly designed for Photoshop users, I will also share tips for Painter users to achieve similar effects. Artist PROFILE Marta Dahlig COUNTRY: Poland Born in 1985, Marta Dahlig is a young and talented artist who has been working with Photoshop and Painter for years. She’s currently a freelance illustrator. http://ifxm.ag/m-dahlig Ragged Hard Round brush PHOTOSHOP Opacity: 100% Flow: 100% Spacing: 10% Other Dynamics: Opacity and Flow, 0% Smoothing: checked PAINTER TINTING Basic Round Opacity: 5-15% Grain: 0% Resat: 20% Bleed:100% Jitter: 0% This is the first…

Material patterns PHOTOSHOP Opacity: 100% Flow: 50% PAINTER Unavailable This is a set of three stamp brushes that I frequently use to create floral patterns for my characters’ dresses. There are dozens of possibilities for interesting patterns, as long as you keep resizing and rotating the brushes. By experimenting with layer modes you can create semi-transparent patterns for lace (I use Soft Light or Multiply, depending on the colour) or a nice basis to paint embroidery upon. Embroidery PHOTOSHOP Opacity: 70-100% Flow: 50% Spacing: 50% Shape Dynamics: Size Jitter: 0% Min diameter: 0% PAINTER PENS Thick And Thin Pen Opacity: 100% Resat: 100% Bleed: 0% With its sparse spacing this brush looks a bit pixellated, which is a great means of achieving a realistic thread effect. Start off with a…

For this workshop I’m painting a beautiful manga character. My go-to tools are usually traditional media. I’m most comfortable working with ink pens, pencils and markers, and so I’m learning a lot when I’m painting with digital tools. I have no idea what the end result will look like, so I’ll make sure to share in this workshop every important step and my thinking process, as well as why I make certain decisions that affect the final appearance of the character. While painting colour concepts and experimenting with different palettes in the sketching phase, I was listening to music and believe it or not, the final colours of this illustration were inspired by a song. I heard the line, “Day gives way to night” and that’s when the deep red…

Don’t believe everything you hear about faeries. They aren’t always cute and kindly like a Disneyfied Tinker Bell. They’re not made-up, fluffy nonsense that should be confined to the nursery. Instead of living in faerieland, they’re inhabitants of this world, part of its fabric and spirit. If you’ve had the chance to take in the artwork of the great Brian Froud at any time, you might have an idea of what we’re getting at. For more than 30 years, this British painter has made himself an expert conduit between faerietale creatures and human beings. Faeries, trolls and goblins are some of his favourite subjects and he has a keen understanding of their characteristics and their meaning. STRONG IMAGINATION Brian has many books to his name – The Land of Froud,…

Paladin in Hell. Talk about setting a scene. Can you imagine being the only paladin in Hell? So much butt to kick, so little time to live,” says Jon Schindehette. He’s referring to an iconic line drawing by David C Sutherland III, which appeared on page 23 of the Player’s Handbook in 1978. A glowing knight in platemail hacks at a spike-tailed demon with his sword, while numerous other denizens of darkness close in around him. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, versions of this image and others like it were doodled in countless school books as thousands of young players took up Dungeons & Dragons. Not only did it set the scene for a worldwide craze in gaming, it also formed a starting block for a whole generation…

Jason Rainville is thinking about how to describe his art. The fantasy and sci-fi illustrator begins with the render: he likes to emphasise form – a soft image is an unsuccessful one – so he lands on the word “chunky.” Pose and lighting help dramatise his work. It could be a drama that’s quiet and understated or a drama that’s loud and bombastic, but his work must be dramatic. In short, Jason makes tough-looking art that also tells a story. Behind the scenes, Jason follows a strict regime. Day by day, he builds discipline, builds up a pattern, improves slowly but surely. This regime applies to both his art and to his everyday life. “I love character moments and emotion,” the Canadian says. “Nothing holds a viewer’s eye like something…

Chances are if you love fantasy gaming you’ll have thumbed through hundreds of dragons, druids and decomposing corpses painted by Dan Scott. He’s he man trusted by the planet’s elite fantasy publishers to make their worlds spark into life; just check out his speed dial list: World of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer. Dan’s depictions of classic fantasy have inspired a fanatical following among many role-players. “I was completely surprised and a little flattered,” says Dan, as we raise the spectre of two devoted fans. “I’ve had people ask me to personally design a tattoo for them, but these guys actually got tattoos of art I’d already done for game products.” Dan reveals that the first man had a full-colour image of his art from the Magic: The Gathering’s…

The ImagineFX team contacted me to ask if I’d like to do a cover image focusing on Dungeons & Dragons imagery. I’m a big fan of the magazine, owning every published issue, so I was excited to work with the team. I was comfortable with the subject matter, having played my fair share of D&D through the years and painted several interiors and covers for D&D products. The art brief was for a female Elf Ranger in a snowy setting with some sort of red and green colour scheme, because this was originally for an issue coming out at Christmas. My main goals were to make her beautiful, powerful, confident and hopefully have some connection with the viewer. I also know that a red-green colour scheme could easily look garish…

To those who instructed Svetlin Velinov in his formal art studies, the fact that he creates graphics on a computer is pure heresy. Yet the Bulgarianartist, whose comic art and distinctive fantasy artwork has been wowing fans for years, now says that he uses nothing else. “My professors, educated in the staunchly academic tradition, felt that painting is all about getting dirty with paint and materials,” he says. “However, for good or for ill, I knew my own mind and followed my own path.” Instead of indulging in his early aptitude for painting and continuing his education at the National Academy of Arts, Svetlin chose instead to study animation in the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. It was here that he was exposed to then new digital techniques and discovered…