Henning’s 101: Seasons Let’s go for a walk through all of the four seasons of the year and study their unique characteristics. You can add a lot more depth and life to your paintings if you also consider the environment your subjects are placed in. By adding a hint of specific seasons, or simply some sort of influence by weather conditions you’re suddenly adding a whole another dimension to your art. Let’s go for a walk through all the four […]
Painting puddles Puddles, rain, and stormy weather makes up for autumn. Puddles on the ground doesn’t have to be hard to paint as long as you simplify the reflection a bit. First, break up the most important features with lines (or do it in your head), to make sure the perspective lines in the reflection continues towards the same vanishing point as the original. This means that you will see the reflection image from a different angle than the original […]
Painting icicles Step 1 – Get the basic shape up Paint the icicles in a separate layer, and start out getting the main shape up with a nice silhouette and bumpy surface. Feel free to add some filter overlays if you want to save some time, like “Plastic wrap” or anything that gives the surface a more interesting look. Adding a strong highlighted silhouette around the edges of the icicles will make it look more realistic. Step 2 – Refraction […]
Painting glow-effects Adding details like glowing effects can be a lot of fun, and the end result can add a lot to your piece. The effect we’ll be doing here can be added to everything from cool looking logos, text, or for effects in your paintings. Remember that overdoing this effect can make your composition confusing and hard to read, so make sure to take your time and place your glowing details carefully and not too scattered throughout your piece. […]
When painting glass and reflections, how does one go about creating distortion and refraction? Glass varies from colour-tinted to embossed patterns making reflections and distortion very complex, and it’s impossible to understand this thoroughly. Still, don’t worry, as all you need is to do is achieving the illusion of glass; just enough to convince the viewers. If we take perfectly clear glass into consideration, what makes up for the illusion for this specific type of glass is using heavy high-lights, […]
How to make wet or oily skin appear believable Playing around with different states of familiar materials, like for example wet skin can be great fun. You can even do this easily with old painting you’ve got laying around, just to add the final realistic touch. Wet or sweaty skin can be tricky, but let’s focus on creating the illusion of wet skin without actually painting any actual droplets. Think in 3D, and which direction the light source would bounce […]
Henning’s 101 : Materials Having an understanding on how different materials works will add extra flavor and texture to your art. Get a quick walk through here. (C) Henning Ludvigsen Painting is all about somewhat tricking the viewers to believe what they are seeing. What is it that makes us perceive that we’re looking at an object made out of glass, cloth, wood, ,metal, or even different qualities of the same material? As an artist, you have to convince your […]
How to paint plumage and feathers From an artist’s point of view, painting plumage and feathers is often a dreaded process, but even if it is without doubt time consuming, it doesn’t have to be complex or difficult at all. Now, there are many types of feathers, and if you plan on painting birds, you should study theory about different kinds of feathers and their purpose. Some feathers are for protecting against weather, some for insulating the body; some are […]
How to add a soft fantasy glow to your art Using a soft brush with a low flow works nicely to apply glow around highlights, and I recommend doing this at the final stages of a painting. If you really want to achieve a global glow effect there are simple shortcuts, but know that this will change the colour values in your picture quite a bit. Unless, of course, this is the effect you are aiming for. Add a flattened […]
20 fantasy art tips 1 – Fantasy skin Skin is an extensive subject that can be great fun to study. When painting skin for a fantasy-related piece, you can stretch the rules further than if you were creating for a more traditional genre. Monochromatic skin tones is a good start, but by capturing all the different levels of colours and different skin types, and then experiment with this, you can still end up with a monochromatic expression even though […]