Doing a Project from Start to Finish

By Danny Staten

Introduction

This tutorial is not meant to be a claim that I am by any means the perfect artist. Nor is it to imply that any of the techniques I present are the only way to create things. There has been some interest expressed in my doing a tutorial, and I rather enjoyed making a previous tutorial. Since I made the last tutorial, my methods have evolved drastically so I have opted to create this new tutorial.

This tutorial will be extensive, covering everything from the initial creation phases of the piece titled Harmony all the way to the final product. For those of you who are more interested in seeing a particular section of the tutorial, you can use the table of contents on this page to go to a specific section. For those of you who have the time to go through the whole tutorial, I think many of you will find valuable things in each section.

Finally, I apologize for the copyright text over all the images. The piece I am doing the tutorial of is going to be a very rare card making the art, and all work associated with its creation valuable. So I feel that I must take steps to protect it. I ask all who view this site to please respect copyright laws, and show some sort of appreciation for this tutorial simply by not using any of these images at all.

Table of Contents

• Taking your work to a new level: My rambling on what it takes to get where I hope to some day be as an artist.
• Birth of a project: Initial sketches, planning, canvas preperation.
• Painter Basics: Painters work space, pallates, tools etc.
• Start Painting: Starting out.
• The Planet: Steps to making the planet and creatures
• The Deity: Steps to creating the deity
• The Elements: Creating each element
• Wrapping up: Final thoughts.

FARP Article Guestbook Date Name Comment   5 Aug 2005 UnKnown Loading... Amazing article! I love it! It has a heck of a lot of very good points (and very good artwork!), and it's clear and everything else...wonderful picture, and wonderful article! Thank you! ^_^ 11 Dec 2005 Emily Clarke Loading... This is a really useful tutorial. I have recently started dabbling in digital art and found it great fun, although i have to admit, nothing beats being able to actually touch real paint and feel the layers through it. I've been using PSP7 for my pictures so far. Not having a perminent palette tool is quite annoying (if there is a tool i haven't found it yet) but i got round it by keeping blobs of colour on a new layer which i could delete afterwards. 24 Jan 2006 Anonymous Loading... Excellent work on this tutorial. But I would say that you should have been worked a little more on the legs of the human creature. 22 Aug 2006 Ele 'Beruthiel' J. Loading... Whoo... best tutorial I've seen here on FARP so far! I'm not terribly interested in digital art (for the moment, anyway...) but I have to say the most useful part of this tutorial was the first few sections where you talked about references and so on. I've been using references for most of my pictures, but not very confidently... and until now I thought lead-up sketches were a waste of time. I think I'd convinced myself that professional artists just launched straight into artworks because they "knew" what to draw. Your story about your teacher was really helpful. I'll start doing proper lead-up sketches now... 13 Jun 2009 Cat Jaynah Smith Loading... Great Work! 28 May 2010 Cramson Loading... Absolute garbage. Shame on you. 23 Mar 2011 Anon. Loading... very bad 29 Aug 2011 Anonon Loading... Wow! What an informative and inspiring ’tutorial’! I applaude you for writing this, and I am so grateful that this has been posted! I find that with my art, I will be impatient and want to finish it as quickly as possible. Perhaps today when I draw, I will take my time, as finishing isn’t the most important, but rather, the journey is. 29 Nov 2011 Greenee Loading... Amazing article, has some really good tips in it even though I don’t like the finished piece that much(but that’s just a matter of taste). Thanks! 21 Mar 2012 Marlene Blue Johansen Loading... What a splendid tutorial! I am usually very impatient as an artist but what you write in the beginning is so obvious and true. You can’t expect great results unless you are willing to spend the time needed on a project. And it’s important to take your time and study all the elements for your project. So thank you very much for sharing. You’ve just made my day a lot better. Now back to the drawing board. I’ve got some things to study ^^ Page: [1] 2 3 Not signed in, Add an anonymous comment to this guestbook...     Your Name: Your Mail: B I U URL ? Click here to write something! Post Message!    Private message? (Info)

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