So, another article for the Video Tutorials Series (as you may have seen, I changed the Portrait Video Tutorials series to simple Video Tutorials, to collect more tutorials in the same category).

This time, I featured a simple but really interesting video about Basic Blending in digital painting. When I start learning digital painting, I see that one of my major problems was to blend colours togethere to create a smooth but textured surface. Also, I got the problem of selecting the colours for lights and shadow, to enrich the palette, avoiding plain lights/shadows.

Since I started browsing tutorials and videos on the web, I discovered a great amount of video tutorials about Digital Painting. I find that video tutorials, if well done, can be more useful than normal written tutorials, because they show the real work in process of the author.

I think that in a good video tutorial the work in process shouldn’t be too fast, otherwise you cannot see many interesting and useful techinques. Also, I think that author comments about the steps would be really great!

I’ve decided that I’m going to start a new series of articles dedicated to Portrait Video Tutorials, where I will collect all the more interesting video tutorials about portraits that I find in the web. I’ve already posted an articles, the Hanagumori Digital Painting Tutorial, which contains video, but I prefer to took this out of this series, because it is a complete, video and written tutorial.

Drawing is a wonderful art. How many times you have admired artworks, some of your friend’s drawing and say “It would be great to do something like this!”. Well, searching in the web I found this great site, Drawsketch, owned by Helen South, which give you lessons about learning to draw, from the basic medium informations to the figure/portrait drawings.

I started yesterday reading it on my own, and I find it really interesting and useful, especially the article “How to hold a pencil“, which explains the different type of pencil grips. I truly think this website can be a great starting point for who, like me, is a beginner in drawing, and can be a resourceful site for more expert artists, to improve their skill. I hope you will give a look at it.

Hanagumori is a digital painting portrait created by Diane Özdamar. The word “Hanagumori” means “late spring with blossom haze”. This artwork represents a young Geisha, with a blue and a green eye. The author of the image makes a great study on the details, such as the make-up, the pearls, the skin pores and so-on.

This artworks has been created recording the whole painting process, from the very start to the final product. The video tutorial has been divided in eight parts.

With the video tutorial, Diane Özdamar wrote also a three-parts tutorial, where she explains how she worked on the details like eyes, pearls and skin.

In this article you will find the eight videos of the tutorial, the links to the written tutorial and a small animation of the work in progress.

Of course, all this work is copyrighted by Diane Özdamar.

Have you ever tried to make your own sketchbook? Having a personalized sketchbook can make the difference for an artist! You can use your favourite drawing paper, you can choose the cover and size of the pages. You can also create a space for the pencil or the pen. Also, this can be a really cheap solution, instead of buying premade ones. And you can show your style from the cover!

Well, I love to carry with me my sketchbook because I need to fix inspirations and to take notes when I need. And I think it is a must for an artist, if you want to learn drawing, you should start a sketchbook, where you can draw in the spare time, wherever you are.

So, in the past days, I googled for a sketchbook tutorial, and I found an interesting explanation here: [link].

I think this can be a very usedul, easy to make, and cheap thing. Also, this can be a great Christmas gift! Sure I will give it a try!

The site is owned by Dani Jones, an child books illustrator, and is full of great articles and tutorials, so try to give it a read!