How I Paint

Hi friends! Welcome to my little tutorial section. ^_^

I've been working for the film and gaming industry for many years and I have also been teaching Digital Illustration for 15 years with CGMA. My class was called Digital Art Foundations.

I am currently working on new workshops that I plan to make available later that year. Until then I thought it would be cool to offer you guys a sort of mini tutorial page to give you a better insight into how I draw and paint. :)

Let's go! ^_^

What Shapes My Way Of Painting?

Illustration:

A little background story first: I always loved to draw and paint since it gave me a way to express myself. I enjoy learning new painting techniques and I love to study materials in order to learn how to paint them as perfectly as possible. That is a special interest of mine.

I have been doing this for long enough that one style alone got boring over time. I started out with more realistic looking fantasy pieces when I was a teen because that was super “in style” back then.

I have attached some examples below that show how I learned new styles over the years.

My paintings all inherit a personal part of me and in illustration my goal lies in pouring my time and love into a painting that looks great in a specific style and composition to work well with what the client imagines. Over the years, I have painted book covers, illustrations for magazines, colored comics, did matte painting, made concept art and a bunch of other things that I all enjoyed a lot.

I will continue to be “old school” and paint my art by hand, since painting is what I love. And I will also continue to share this joy and love for painting with my students. ^_^

Paintings from 2006 and 2009:

I later moved on to more stylistic pieces, also studying a lot of art nouveau in my sketchbooks. And then, around ~2016 when Overwatch was all the rage, I used that inspiration to jump on the bandwagon of the semi realistic anime style. I experimented A LOT during that time, and I also animated many of these paintings by hand since that was a lot of fun to me.

Paintings from 2015, 2017 and 2019:

When working in the field of illustration, clients’ wishes might also differ depending on whom you’re working for. Somebody might have fallen in love with one of my older fantasy illustrations and wants something like that.

Somebody else saw my art nouveau sketches from my sketchbook and requested something like that, though digitally drawn and in color. And I was super happy to work for them because I love that style a lot.

Art Nouveau style drawing from 2019:

Examples of my art nouveau studies / sketchbook pages. I want to share more of my sketchbooks later. ^_^

Even in 2025, my love for the Art Nouveau style is still strong:

Concept Art:

Over the years I have been working to fit a selection of different trends and styles. Part of that comes from my background as a concept artist in the film and games industry.

When working as a concept artist, two things are most important:

The brainstorming of an idea for a concept. Such sketches can be more loose, offering a variety of options for the client to choose from.
Rendering concepts that depict accurate materials. At least one view of the character or prop should either be rendered with materials to be clearly identified. (Meaning leather is supposed to look like leather on first glance, metal like metal and so on.) Or, the concept sheet needs to have reference snippets of the materials attached with a clear explanation that, for example, that belt buckle is made of metal. Since many clients outsource a part of the 3D modeling, it is super important that every material is clearly marked for the 3D artists so they could work from the concept sheet without having to come back to us for clarification.

3D artists asking “what material is that?”, once something was unclear, made it a habit of mine to paint materials with great precision. I did A LOT OF studies to reach this skill level, it did not come over night, and it certainly is a lot of work even today.

Here is such an example of the studies that I used to make to improve my painting skills: Ocean Study

For all the reasons mentioned above, my big workshops for CGMA, where I usually taught small groups of students, focused a lot on learning proper brain storming, material rendering and edge control. And I plan to teach that segment in my new upcoming workshop as well. ^_^

Here are some examples:

Concept art prop sheets showing detailed rendering of materials, x axis and proper naming of materials:

References:

It feels a little outdated to explain that part in 2026. However, I guess a new generation of art enthusiasts now enters the field, so I find myself explaining that part once again.

It is not possible to render realistic looking concept art pieces without any type of reference. The materials would look off. My 3D artist would ask me that old question again “what material is that?”

So I am usually working with references from the start unless I have painted the material a bazillion times already (like hair, d’uh. XD).

When a 3D mockup is given that we are required to work from, I work from that. Sometimes the 3D reference also comes with a light / color reference that we are supposed to stick to, depending on the art director’s vision.

When working with photo references, I usually shoot my own. Either of myself or a friend. Hands seen on my realistic illustrations are usually my own, for example, because I want them to look good so I usually pose my hand the way I want it to be in the final illustration and then take a photo of it to reference from it.

I drape blankets on people or over a chair if I want to reference certain drapes or folds.

I run through the world and photograph things that look awesome and could be a cool reference for later. I also used to reference from stock images before generative AI infested the internet. Since I cannot trust that what I see on such a picture is accurate, I have mostly refrained from looking at photo references from the web, unless I am sure that the stock photo is NOT AI generated.

Procreate vs Photoshop:

Long story short. I work mostly in Procreate. But since Photoshop is still somewhat dominant and therefore popular with students, I could sadly not abandon it completely. So depending if I used a recent piece as an example to explain stuff to students, it can very well happen that the files switch from Procreate to Photoshop and then back to Procreate.

If I could choose I would probably abandon Photoshop altogether though. XD

Procreate just handles so much better since it was designed with someone who draws and paints on people’s minds. While Photoshop to me always seemed like a software mainly designed for photographers working with a mouse and all the “painterly” stuff was just stitched to it, so to speak.

Small Tutorial: How I Painted Shadowheart

Here is a spectacularly unspectacular overview of how I am working.

I painted Shadowheart after I had just finished a huge painting of a Zelda inspired character in a pool that I spent way too many hours on. I had used that chance to learn how to paint some new materials. For example, how to paint an inflatable bathing ring. And how to paint better light at an outdoor scene like this.

It turned out that I enjoyed the subject “lady chilling in a pool”, so I wanted to paint another one. Simpler and more straight forward. Have her sit there and look nice while I practice again how to paint the materials and light to get a better hold of them.

I took a look at different outfits that Shadowheart might wear and referenced them to design her some nice bathingwear and jewelry.

Like I said: This painting is pretty straight forward so I had the pose quickly. Pool beneath her, leaves behind her, done.

Fun fact: The leaves that you see on the wrongly spelled “leafes” layer are painted with a custom brush. Custom brushes have been a thing for decades. You could already make them back in Photoshop’s “early days”. (Procreate also offers the option to create your own custom brushes.)

So my landscape brushes have been around since I painted all those huge fantasy illustrations of ladies hanging around in forests and meadows when I was a teen. It allows me to paint a lot of random texture on the canvas that somewhat resembles leaves. This creates more detail and helps me to work faster.

In my workshops, I usually teach students how to build their own brushes and use them to paint better texture, and faster. And my new workshops will feature this segment, too. ^_^

(btw I noticed too late that her hand rests “too low” in the water. But then I was already done and didn’t want to change it anymore because I liked what it looked like under the water. XD)

At a point, I usually merge all my layers. Shocking, I know!

Where does this habit come from?

First, I have a background in traditional painting and I want to use the color blending brushes to further blend my colors and work on my edge control. The color blending brushes work best when all is merged, like on a real canvas.

Second, I used to work on a really shitty computer when I started out that would only allow 4 layers. So merging the layers is deeply ingrained within me and I sometimes have to force myself not to do it.

(For example when a client requires that the character stays separated from the background.)

Procreate offers some nice brushes for color blending.

However, I built my own color blending brush with Procreate 5’s brush engine since I also wanted it to have a texture like a real bristle brush. That makes the painting look more “painterly” than using Procreate’s color blending brush from the airbrush set, which kills too much detail/ texture. I also designed my brush to give me better edge control and pressure sensitivity which makes it insanely powerful when I am working with it.

Here is a comparison that shows my custom made brush vs the blending brushes already available in Procreate 5:

I teach my workflow in its entirety to my students, and I give my brushes to my students aswell so they can emulate my technique exactly the way I do, if they wish to.

So on my merged layers I do lots of my color blending, edge control, and extra texturing. I also still add separate layers, for example, when I am not sure how I want the glitter to look like. Once I am happy, however, I merge it all down. XD

I have just now become aware that this part is really hard to explain in writing. So I am making a mental note to make a free tutorial on that part once I find the time.

I hope you enjoyed this short excerpt into my work. Once I have made my new free video tutorials, I will make sure to link them here aswell. ^_^

References for my Shadowheart painting with emphasis on light and material:

Footnotes:

In November 2025 CGMA was shut down. You can read more about that here: Domestika shuts down CGMA. For that reason, for the first time in over a decade, I currently have no available workshop running. I've been in talks with other platforms to launch something new later this year. However, creating a curriculum takes time. Therefore, I am offering you some of my other resources down here.

If you are curious: My old DeviantART gallery can be used to verify the publication dates of my older paintings ^_^ https://www.deviantart.com/zombiesandwich/gallery?page=9

I have been publishing timelapse and some free tutorial videos on my Youtube channel. Here is a selection of them: