How To Paint Fantasy Concepts

For awhile now I've been exploring the world of Acrylic painting and my style of painting suits the way of painting fantasy concepts quite well and this hubpage shows my journey as an Artist as I begin to learn more about painting with the Acrylic medium. Preparation before paint is usually minimal as all you need is a nice clean surface whether that is a canvas or Artist paper and some Acrylic paints and brushes.

We will show some example of some Acrylic painted works, but first we'll quickly show you that paints, brushes and Art canvases can be cheap as chips compared to the expensive ones, because when you are starting out, you don't really want to lay out lots of money or perhaps you don't have much money anyway like most Artists starting ou t(including me lol!)

Professional Artists will tell you that the higher end price range of paints and brushes are best and that is generally quite true, but the starving budget Artist inside of me always thought that whatever makes the mark is equally good enough and so I use cheaper paints and brushes.

Of course you do not want paints and brushes that are so cheap that they don't seem to work well, like paints that don't overlay like traditional Acrylic paints or create good quality wash or glazes over your paint work. Reeves Acrylic paints are the cheapest brand name paints I can think of, but there may even be some local market alternative that is just as good, I know there is for me in the UK, so there should be quality and cheaply priced paints in your part of the world too.

Brushes I tend to use a mix of stiff and soft brushes which help to create varying effects on the canvas. Cheap stiff brushes are excellent for the Dry-Brushing technique and the softer paint brushes usually the sable hair ones are awesome for blending colors.

Wyrms are serpents in fantasy worlds, the size of Dragons usually without any wings or legs or arms, just a serpent like body with vicious looking teeth. Here I wanted to paint the image right onto the canvas so that there was no time wasted with any pre-sketching. The dominant colors in this painting is the Greens and Yellows and that's the color combination I wanted for these Serpent Wyrms, of course I threw in some reds here and there for the tongue and blood tattoos.

Take a look at the steps. I took photos below of each small step, by following along you can see how I approached the painting process. I went with the simple idea of having all of these Wyrm Serpents all together as one larger monster

Painting can be a spontaneous creative act that does not require you to draw some pencil lines beforehand to work out your painting and in fact when I paint I never ever draw directly on the canvas, because I want the paint to flow and actually feel like I've explored the mediums full potential. This leaves a lot open for the Artist to experiment and change direction with the painting as you go along.

Painting without drawing is a good technique to simply get on with painting and see what happens. Happy accidents is what Bob Ross called it and that's what you could aim for. By all means look into Acrylic techniques like Washes, Glazes, Dry Brushing and layering colors. Generally speaking though, you will find your own way of working with Acrylic paints that will work better for you if you explore and practice painting.

This Acrylic painting was my first ever painted commission, I have previously sold artwork and illustrations but never a large painting like this. Again I've documented the painting process so that I have something to look back on as the painting will no longer be in my possession as I ship it to it's new owner when finished.

Also I like it when I receive a commission particularly as this one was just the simple words "Nightmare Demon Thing" just make it look cool was all the paying client said, but that was enough for me to begin with the painting.

Click the video to the right and see a nearly finished painting appear before your eyes in steps!

This was an easy idea as I previously drew a Demonic Clown face for a YouTube video and I simply took that idea and began to paint that on a small Artist Canvas. You'll notice that I used the Burnt Umber brown to mark the entire clowns head first. This was so that when I over painted the White with Titanium White it would appear brighter. Much like proper face paint I wanted it to appear like the Demon had just slapped some cheap face paint on.

The blue wig and red nose make it look comical, yet the sharp teeth and eyes make it look that little bit scary as Clowns have often been feared by kids and grown ups all over the world which makes me laugh, but hey...Click through each step with the thumbnails to the right.

I decided to put together a work in progress video filled with step by step photos of the progress of some acrylic paintings just as a video record, but also to help remind me that I need to finish these. There is a Black Demonic skull with Red And Blue background, a Melting Demon Skull which I had fun dripping all of the red paint and a 4 headed Demon thing with also a red and blue background too.

I need to paint in more details on all 3 of these paintings and finish them off.