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Illustration thoughts for June

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I thought I’d share some resources I’ve found recently for my Illustration/ personal development.

I found a good book recently, ‘The Brushstroke Handbook’ by Maureen Mcnaughton from North light books. It shows you how to do decorative brush strokes with round and flat brushes and wet acrylic. My interest in it stems mainly from my experiments in Corel painter to achieve more natural brushwork techniques and learn more about painting. I thought it was quite useful and it’s a nice book to read.

I’ve also been trying to develop my creativity and find new ways of working. I’ve been interested in the effects of light, shadow and colour combinations and have been looking at more of the impressionists work. Another good book I found in a charity shop is ‘Techniques of the Impressionists’ by Anthea Callen, Orbis publishing. It shows really detailed close-up views of the actual brush strokes that make up the whole pictures, explaining the techniques and workings of the artists belonging to the Impressionist era.

I’ve been looking into cartooning, character design, drawing techniques,  3D digital art and 2D traditional animation as well in my development time.

I found some nice free or reasonably priced software to help with 3D art and creativity: (I’ve tested these myself)

I’m not going to suddenly become a 3D artist, my thoughts are that it could help with my painting to use 3D objects for lighting and angle reference as well as a creativity aid.

  • Sculptris: a good introduction to organic digital 3D sculpting. A bit like working with clay. Free
  • Meshlab: good for viewing meshes and repairing them. Free
  • Kerkythea: A rendering tool. Useful for lighting and rendering 3D meshes. Free
  • Curvy 3D: Create 3D forms using a tablet and some sculpting and painting tools. designed for 2D artists. Not free- around £52 on offer at the moment
  • Alchemy: A little tool for creativity, brainstorming and creating art in new ways as promoted by Andrew (Android) Jones- an excellent free thinking digital artist

Some more good books I wish I’d bought a lot sooner:

  • ‘The Painter X Wow Book’ by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis, Peachpit Press
  • ‘The Fundementals of Illustration’ by lawrence Zeegen/Crush, AVA Publishing


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