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Are you a passionate painter, a dabbler, or just getting started? Whatever your level, we’ll help you improve your art skills and add to your know-how. In this special edition from ImagineFX magazine, top artists share their tips, tricks, advice and techniques to help you master your medium of choice. From animal anatomy to oils, from colour thumbnailing to charcoal techniques, from rendering the folds and textures of different fabrics to getting what you need from a photoshoot, our experts will guide you step-by-step. Want to experiment with a new medium? We’ll show you how get to grips with watercolour, acrylics and gouache, and help you choose the right materials for you. Want to learn from the professionals? You can work along with our artists as they employ a range…

My studio is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and it’s my favourite place to be, because it’s my little world that I can fill up with my art. I try to make a new thing every day, even if doesn’t end up being finished or is just a sketch for a future idea. The way I work begins with a degree of planning – I have certain ways that I’ll approach something new. But once the creative process starts, it flows quickly and instinctively. And it’s sometimes hard to stop – ha! I never see a final picture in my head before the work is finished. Instead, I like to let it take its own natural shape. Also, I’ll tell you a secret: a lot of people think I use…

Drawing animals is not only fun and useful in itself, but also invaluable as a first step towards designing your own fantasy creatures. Nature has an amazing variety of shapes, colours and solutions to solve the challenge of survival, and studying animals will yield exciting ideas for your creature design. Let’s start, though, with drawing them. I always begin with broad gestures and light pencil marks when starting a sketch. I’m only trying to find the animal’s gesture, so I tend to work quickly. This is especially key when drawing from life, where animals move about as you draw. I like to use a harder lead pencil or broad lead pencil, depending on how large I’m working. The harder lead keeps my stroke light. Using my whole arm to draw,…

Drawing believable poses and gestures comes from study and observation of animals in zoos and in the wild. Watching documentaries is also a great way to get a glimpse of animal movement and behaviour. Try to capture your pose in the wireframe skeleton first, and indicate the joints, the pelvis and shoulders. Think about how the legs support the whole body of the animal and where the spine lies in between the back and front legs. Because I’m drawing and not taking a photo, I need to exaggerate those poses slightly to make them feel alive. You’ll notice that if you draw, piece for piece, a photograph of an animal then it can look a little stiff. But if you round out that leg more or push the angle of…

Mancini was renowned for the combination of sensitivity and energy in his paintings, a lot of which had children and women as the subjects. I’m amazed at the way he treated his subjects with softness, yet kept images vibrant and full of life. Most master artists have a certain amount of restraint in the colours they use – in other words, they use a limited palette. Mancini started painting at a very young age, and his work evolved through various stages, from studying under Domenico Morelli to eventually being inspired by the impressionists and their loose brushstrokes. His contemporary John Singer Sargent once famously said Mancini was the greatest living artist. While I think the ability to use a limited colour palette so effectively comes from many years of regular…

Painting from observation with traditional media is one of the best ways to study and improve your sense of colour and light. After 10 years of working in the animation industry mostly with digital tools, I decided to revisit this passion of mine and began painting outdoors once a week, either in the morning or during my lunch break. This not only reinvigorated my passion for painting, but also helped tremendously with my colour work professionally. Oil paint always used to be my go-to medium, but it’s not the most convenient setup to bring to work. So after doing some research, I decided to take up gouache, and really fell in love with it. The medium comes in a variety of vibrant colours; it’s very flexible in its application in…

Painting or drawing from life regularly is an important practice because of the many benefits of having the model present in front of you instead of just a two-dimensional photograph. It really trains the eye to see how the form turns and how light affects the colours on the human skin. It also encourages the artist to work faster and make colour choices on the go, because in most cases the model is available only for a limited length of time. Another important aspect of painting from life is that the human eye is capable of seeing more depth and colour on the live model than a camera can capture or a monitor can display. I usually have a friend or acquaintance sit for me in my studio space, where…

Watercolour is a very versatile and flexible medium that can yield a wide variety of beautiful results. Sometimes also known as aquarelle, it’s a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle. Although it dates back thousands of years, watercolour is a tricky medium to master, but it’s certainly one worth pursuing. When you create a painting in watercolours, light reflects off the white of the paper and bounces up through the colours, giving the painting a luminosity that can be truly magical. Professional children’s book illustrator Alina Chau has a whimsical style that’s highly sought after for art exhibitions worldwide – you can see some of her amazing work at www.alinachau.com. Alina’s lyrical watercolours have garnered her a devoted fan base and the…

Gouache might be my favourite medium. It combines the flexibility and workability of watercolour with the opacity and flow of acrylics. I find it to be the most versatile medium to paint with. Gouache can be manipulated using just water and so it is ideal for working in the field or in a studio, from quick concepts and studies to final full paintings. This medium has been used in the film and animation industries for decades for layouts, concepts and backgrounds. You can layer it light to dark or dark to light and, unlike with watercolour, you can paint in whites instead of masking them off. It can be very affordable, and your setup doesn’t need to be huge or advanced to be effective with it. Overall, it’s one of…

Five years ago, I was a brat who was overconfident about my art skills. I drew the same four poses over and over again, but since I drew them well, it just fed my ego! And then I met one of my heroes, who was kind enough not to throw my sketchbook away, but harsh enough to let me know that I didn’t know how to draw. “Your drawings have no life. You need to feel what you are drawing. Your back needs to ache if you’re drawing someone bending over,” he said. Honestly, I didn’t understand a thing. But it did set me off on a hunt to understand what he meant. Three years later, after having regularly sketched every day, I got the first glimpse of what he…

Chiaroscuro is an Italian word meaning light and dark. As a kid I was enthralled by Disney’s masterpiece, Pinocchio, and the beautiful chiaroscuro invisibly woven into the art. The Disney artists understood the power and magic conjured by a pool of light. It was my first sense of light as composition and even though I didn’t understand it yet, it left an incredible impression. The fact that our eye is drawn to dramatic light is a powerful hook, but the light must also contain a captivating image. When painting The Sentinel I imagined the sound of the dragon’s tail dragging slowly along the arid floor. To dig a little deeper I used allegory and symbolism. I chose the ageless allure of Beauty and Beast to engage the viewer’s imagination. The…

Red Sugar is a 48x60-inch fixed diptych in oil and 23K gold leaf, on two canvases. It’s a very personal work that was shown at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York City back in 2015. The painting explores the ideas of sensuality and surrealism that have been central themes in all of my work since I made the shift to gallery work in 2011. I drew the artwork in graphite and powdered graphite and water over canvas, which had been gessoed and sanded multiple time to achieve a smooth surface. I then worked in oil to complete the final piece. I wanted to convey the sensuality of the embracing figures in a dream-like environment while depicting the weight and the gravity of the metallic in the gold. Thus there…

GET YOUR RESOURCES You’re three steps away from Practical Painter’s resources… 1Go to the website Type this into your browser’s address bar (not the search bar): http://ifxm.ag/practpaint2 2Find the files you want Search through the list of resources to watch or download. 3Download what you need You can download all of the files at once or individually. Watch these videos Wet on wet with gouache Watch over Bao Pham’s shoulder as he paints wet on wet using watercolour and gouache – it’s the next best thing to being there! Get in touch with nature in oils Follow Justin “Coro” Kaufman as he paints and learn how to work in layers to create a striking, realistic oil painting of a large tree. PLUS: sketches, wips and final art Download the images…

Sergio Lopez LOCATION: US WEB: www.themainloop.com EMAIL: sergiolopez@themainloop.com MEDIA: Oils “I enjoy discovering new vistas,” says Sergio. “Setting up my easel. Creating a piece on the spot. There’s no better way to discover the truth and essence of a scene than by standing before it and studying it carefully.” The Santa Rosa based artist is equally enamoured with the female form, his still-life oil paintings alive with colour and swathed in light. A compulsive sketcher, Sergio’s work is a compelling mix of observation and imagination. He’s exhibited paintings throughout California, around the US and in numerous publications. 1 ANGEL FACE Oil on linen, 22x30in “This painting was shown in Sarasota, Florida, for the American Masters Invitational Show. I was really proud to show alongside some big names in the fine…

Now that we’ve warmed up with our general to specific animal drawing lesson on the previous page, we can move on to understanding the structures and systems underneath an animal’s skin. Skeletons are the structures that help keep us and all other animals together. Vertebrate anatomy is centred on the spine. From this structure stems our scapula, our pelvis, our arms and our legs. The more we draw skeletons of other vertebrate animals, the more we realise how similar we are and how, really, it’s just the proportions that are exaggerated between species. Using a harder lead at first helps keep initial skeleton gestures light. This is important. We want to only map out our basic shapes and posture. I’m constantly comparing sizes and shapes. Sometimes skulls are almost as…

Nature is full of amazing adaptations and traits. Bright colours, fluorescent patterns, tusks, horns, dewlaps and much else – traits used for camouflage, attracting mates, intimidation, battling rivals or finding food. These details can make your animal drawings pop. I start by finding the structure of forms like crests and horns with pencil. It’s important to add in texture and create an indication of volume, but avoid smudging because we’ll apply colour later with a marker. Perspective is important when it comes to horns and antlers, so I’ll break things into shapes and planar views. You’ll want to map out where your highlights and shadows will be. Working in marker, I’ll be building up from lights to darks and plotting out my whites. Layering colour is key, too. Nature doesn’t…

The transition of an image from a rough line drawing to a finished painted piece can be a challenge, especially if it’s not directly from reference or a live model. It can become confusing to decide which colours to use and how to get started on painting something without anything to look at. My recommended approach is to do a bunch of thumbnails for both value and colour, and then graduate on to your final piece with a good grasp of your colour scheme. However, it can also be a great learning experience to work on an image spontaneously and pick colours on the fly. I often do this either while working on smaller commissions or when producing personal work for practice. One way to overcome the fear of getting…

T here’s nothing I love better than being outdoors painting the world around me, but it was definitely a struggle for me when I first started using gouache. It can be intimidating working with an unfamiliar paint medium, the complexity of the scene and the everchanging light. That’s why setting up a small-scale, basic still life in the comfort of your home can be a good way to work on the art fundamentals and build up your confidence before heading out. You’ll know better than anyone else the variety of props with different shapes and colours that are in your home, and for some artists like myself they provide a constant source of inspiration. Working on these still life exercises under a consistent light source means you can take your…

Light shapes the mood of a painting. How you light your model, either for photographic reference or live observation, will shift the tone from naturalistic to melodramatic or anywhere between. Thinking carefully about what mood you wish to achieve is the first step to finding an effective lighting strategy. All lighting concerns come down to controlling the quality and direction of your light. Quality of light mostly refers to how hard or soft the light appears. Hard light casts harsh shadows while soft light will cast gradual shadows, possibly to the point of almost no perceptible shadow at all. Direct sunlight is an excellent example of hard light. Ambient light from a nearby window shows soft light. Extreme soft light can be seen under an overcast sky. Light quality relates…

Acrylics can be applied thick, right out of a tube, or you can water them way down and spray them through an airbrush. I work in mixed media and begin most of my paintings by laying down a watercolour-like wash for my underpaintings. It dries quickly and won’t wash or lift off, like watercolour or gouache. You can then bring into play other mediums on top of the wash. I frequently use oil and coloured pencils. Acrylics can be used on many surfaces, including paper, fabric, wood, collage, papier mâché, silk screening, plaster and masonry. But the main upside is also a downside: acrylics dry so fast! The key is to keep your paint wet in the palette, and don’t let it dry in your brushes. To reduce the speed…

1 Contrasting elements The brief is about a well-educated psychopath who kills people out of boredom. Her contrasting nature reminds me of the opposing forces of yin and yang, which in turn guides my composition. I’m particularly careful about the nature of clothes: how the folds in jeans would behave differently from those in cotton. 2 Capture the emotion For my values, I follow up on my thumbnail. The cultural aspect is reflected in the woman’s clothing and personal style. The driving emotion is callousness, which I try to depict through the woman’s irreverent attitude – checking her phone. The bowl of potato chips initially seems a total misfit, but actually adds to the irreverence. 3 Colour plays its part I want the colours in the composition to be eccentric…

When cave people first dragged a stick of charcoal across a cave wall, the artist was born. Today that same primitive tool is unmatched for creating instant, expressive marks. In this workshop I’ll share my favourite charcoal tips, and demonstrate how to manipulate that black, magic powder once it’s laid down on paper. Charcoal techniques are often discarded by students once art school has ended and they move on to the serious business of art, but as a working artist I can attest to the importance of charcoal in the professional world of art. With all the wonderful digital and traditional painting tools at my disposal, my first port of call is still charcoal and paper. Why has my love of charcoal drawing endured? The answer is simple, and a…

Anatomy is a huge subject and requires a blend of scientific information and artistic practicality. For example, you need an engineering-like understanding of how the skeletal joints work to construct your figures. But if you can’t draw well enough to get a good gesture, no technical understanding of the joints is going to save you from awkward-looking movement. Too many artists get stuck on one side or the other: either having a complete understanding of medical anatomy but being unable to draw a convincinglooking bicep, or having enough figuredrawing experience to be able to fake the form but not really understanding what they’re doing and inevitably drawing something physically impossible. Yet when everything is in balance, anatomy is magic, and it enables you to create a human figure in any…

1 Pencil studies Nothing beats drawing from a live model. With no time for detail, a short life-drawing pose forces me to draw the essential forms quickly. This not only sharpens my drawing skills, it stamps a better understanding of the figure in my mind for the painting stage. 2 Colour rough The colour rough is a vague, miniature version of the painting. This is my most valuable preliminary stage because it has everything I need regarding value and colour strength. With the colour rough in the bag I know the painting will take care of itself. 3 Underpainting As final preparation for painting I transfer a detailed pencil drawing on to my canvas. Here is the block-in stage, with some of the pencil still visible. I use mostly flat-edged,…

1 Gesture sketches I start all my images with emotion-based thumbnails in my sketch book. These are not beautiful or impressive drawings; rather, I see them as useful thinking tools driven by the feeling I want to convey. You can see in this preliminary sketch that I’m working out the emotion and the gestures between the figures. The unusual moment as their torsos press together and the position of the hands is very important. 2 Preparing the canvas I take two 30x48-inch stretched canvases, sand them down, coat them with gesso and then carry out wet sanding between five or six layers of gesso. I want the surface to be velvety and smooth with very little “tooth” of the canvas left. In most cases I’ll freehand my drawing on to…

Hell is pretty full these days, so I work at home like most artists. I recently moved my studio back into my home from an office location. I felt the extra expense of the off-site studio was unnecessary, and wanted to save money for upcoming projects. My workspace isn’t very large, but this means I can bounce from my easel to my computer or drafting table with ease. With the new painting techniques I’m utilising, this is ideal for me. I switch back and forth from traditional media to digital several times within a piece. I can work on a drawing, lay some acrylics and pastels on it, scan it, paint on it in Photoshop, print it out, mount it to board and be painting in oils – all in…

Vertebrate anatomy is consistent, and you’ll notice that muscle groups between different animals are similar, if not the same. Just as with the skeletons in our previous lesson, it’s only shapes and sizes that vary – with a few differences, vertebrate bodies all share the same basic muscle systems. When drawing muscle studies of animals, start out with a wireframe and then basic skeleton gesture. Using a harder lead for this will help keep the drawing light and workable as you move forward with your muscle study. You’ll notice that my canid skeleton isn’t detailed, but the gesture and proportions are in place so that I can build on top of this with my red Col-Erase pencil. These pencils are great because you can easily range from dark to light…

Very few artists begin work directly on canvas without any prior preparation. Thumbnailing for value and colour is one of the most important stages in the painting process and is widely practised among artists. It helps give you a clearer idea of the image and can save a lot of time while working on commissioned assignments. The process of thumbnailing involves breaking the image down into shapes and then dealing with the principles of design with respect to the light and dark portions of the design. Working in colour could be looked at as an extension of working in value. An image can work and be effective to a certain limit, as long as the values are in place and the design works at the thumbnail level. The colours would,…

After years of study I’ve learned working methods that help me to simplify my colour and painting process. One of these methods is rendering with temperature shifts. So when I change the value of a colour, I alter the temperature by adding more yellow, more red or blue. I start with a limited palette of white and only two colours – usually a warm earth tone such as Burnt Sienna and a cool blue, for example Ultramarine Blue. Later I’ll add a yellow and a red to bring about the necessary temperature shifts. When painting, my first concern is value, and I’ll squint to see the value shapes. I’ll also simplify the values and group value shapes as much as possible. With these simple value shapes in mind, I can…

Painting outdoor scenery is the best way to learn about capturing natural lighting. One of my favourite exercises is painting urban street scenes with cars. It may seem complex at first, but if you treat them as just simple shapes – either squares or box-like forms – they become a lot less intimidating. I like to start by grouping big masses of value shapes together and not worrying about the likeness of the elements such as the cars, house and trees. Doing this also helps me narrow down my composition and ensures I don’t try to paint too much of the scene. Then I approach the painting almost like a colouring book. I start to fill in my shapes with the colours I observe that closely relate to the value…

Whole books have been filled with sage advice on painting materials and how to use them. Here we’ll cover what’s needed to start you painting. None of this is meant to be definitive or even prescriptive, just a few pointers based on my own experience. A comfortable workspace is particularly important. If like me you never liked being told to tidy your room, it’s best to find a space that doesn’t need to be cleared up after you’ve finished a painting session. If you’re blessed with plenty of room, a dedicated studio space is great. It’s also essential that the area is well-lit. If you can find a north-facing window, that would be ideal. But comfort is the critical factor. Artists through the ages have painted on every surface and…

Acrylics are fast-drying paints that can be used straight from the tube, like oil paints, or can be thinned with water, like watercolour. They are extremely versatile and vibrant, offering the artist a wide range of textures, colours and consistencies to work with. Acrylics are also affordable, making them ideal for covering large areas with paint. Because these paints are opaque and fast-drying, they can be very forgiving, allowing you to cover up mistakes with more paint. Acrylics can be painted on almost anything and dry into a water-resistant surface. While you need to be aware of how quickly they dry, acrylics can be blended beautifully. The heavy body colour of acrylics is buttery and smooth, blending on the canvas almost like oils. Because they basically dry into a plastic…

This is a subject that might seem of little consequence when you decide to take up a brush and make some marks. After all, it’s natural to fixate on what we perceive the desired outcome of our efforts will be rather than on the difficulties of “the journey” getting there. Any artist with a little experience, however, soon learns that breaking open the paint is merely the first step in a long sequence of lessons, the first of which is also one of the most fundamental: how do you mix your paint? I thought back to how I approached this question as a young lad with my first set of Cotman watercolours. No one had actually offered me any instruction on how to mix paints, so I had to make…

1 Pinpoint the composition After brainstorming through several thumbnails, I elaborate one into a tight sketch that defines my picture’s values. I use HB and 2B pencils to pinpoint the light source and determine how it will affect the composition, such as the contrast between the damsel’s hair and her porcelain skin. By finding my darks and lights in the preliminary stage, I have a better idea of where to lay paint in the final. 2 Rendering the form Because of the permanence of acrylics, I render forms with extremely diluted layers of paint. I begin with glazes of Payne’s Grey and Prussian Blue to slowly build up the values determined in step 1. This technique of glazing is great for smooth, subtle gradients. After the main undertone has dried,…

1 get more from your life-drawing sessions Drawing the figure from life is one of the art world’s toughest challenges, and also a great and memorable art experience. It’s also an essential exercise to keep your drawing hand fluid. In the tradition of the Old Masters some of my life drawings, like this one, are studies for oil paintings. You can hire life models by forming an art group and all chipping in for the cost, which can be just as affordable as rocking up at a lifedrawing class and paying at the door. That way, like me, you can request poses from your sketchbooks. Here I lightly draw in the form with a large piece of charcoal as I would for an underpainting in oils. 2 Ensure that you…

1 Skeletal study I do a few preparation studies before the final drawing to solve all possible problems and make sure I really understand my reference. I look at proportions, gesture, composition, and of course anatomy. The skeletal study uses simplified structures, and here I’ve identified the three basic forms and all the bony landmarks. 2 Anatomy tracing Next up I would do an anatomy tracing on top of my reference photo, blocking in every muscle in turn and then breaking them up into their main bundles. The whole point of this torso drawing is the anatomy, so I want to make sure I get this just right, to lay good foundations for my anatomy painting. 3 Final drawing When the time to draw finally arrives, I break out the…

1 It’s all in the preparation My colour comps are unrefined gold. I treasure them and refer to them throughout the painting process. All the work is here in miniature. Taking the time to figure out the composition, colour scheme and lighting on a small scale makes the painting stage a joy rather than a hardship. 2 Digital is cheap! The days of worrying about the cost of developing film are over. So even if the chances of hitting the perfect pose in one shot are almost nil, I can shoot 20 or more variations of every pose, then use the best hand, head, foot and expression to compose the ideal shot in Photoshop. 3 To paint fast, go slow Frank Frazetta was famous for his speed of execution at…

To finish with a strong image, you must start with a strong vision. A painting can convey more than ability to accurately copy a jacket, pose or person: it can tell the viewer how the artist felt about their subject. By being an active participant throughout the process and using keen observation combined with deliberate editing, you can achieve realism and more – you can convey a personal point of view. As I develop this portrait I work from general to specific, building up detail in layers. Many choices are made on the fly as the piece evolves. By allowing for some accidents along the way, I keep both the artwork and myself fresh. Nupastels especially lend themselves to this type of spontaneous process. Works in pastel are commonly considered…