Building a fantasy art portfolio

When building a fantasy art portfolio it is best to include lots of examples of different media artwork to attract clients by showing them that you can deliver high quality fantasy art in a variety of media styles and formats.

Your art samples need to reflect your art style but also the kind of work you are capable of producing to a set standard, which is usually of a high standard.

Fantasy art is usually shown throughout popular exhibitions as painted works, but now we are seeing a lot of examples of digital artwork that really is something to look at and basic pencil drawings showing the raw creative process and random ideas come to life on scraps of paper too.

And so building a good fantasy art portfolio is just like picking and selecting the areas of this art form that you like and create a sense of structure for your display to show to potential clients and employers. By writing a contents page that is your first page you show what the contents of your portfolio contain and therefore this leads your collection of samples more likely to be opened and reviewed, because let's face it you need to know how to get your work seen by employing certain tricks and techniques.

Art portfolios need not be filled with too much art that the art director or potential employer won't have time to go through it, instead a simple small A4 or A3 size portfolio case should do for this and at least 2 to 3 examples for each media.

At the front of your portfolio it is best to have a contents page so that the editor or whoever is viewing your work can easily know what to expect, think of blog post titles this helps me!

If you know of a company that creates great products with fantasy artwork then you know what they are looking for, so try and aim for a collection of artwork samples that aim to deliver what that company or studio expects.

Top 3 Fantasy Art Drawing Resource Books That I Recommend

When it comes to learning to draw the concepts of fantasy art, I tend to have pretty much learned and self taught myself, but over the years I have opted to find other resources that could present new ideas and ways of drawing fanasy art that I may not have thought of.

Fantasy Art Drawing books are one of them essential resources, and there are a great choice of drawing books out there, but for fantasy art you need to dig a little bit deeper for finding some good ones to really learn from and be guided by, so here are 3 books that I have read and followed in my pursuit of drawing more fantasy art content. Of course you could find allsorts of drawing tutorials on the internet, but nothing beats a good book!


John Howes Fantasy Workshop

John Howes work is forever entwined with Tolkien and the lord of the rings many scenes and characters of middle earth and here we have a book that adds to that way of working on fantasy art projects, filled with step by step drawing demonstartions and right through to painted pieces, this a a great book also for the art it shows throughout, being a John Howe fan I have seen many of his pieces of artwork on the internet and in other books.

To see examples of how someone works is one of the best ways of learning the craft and particularly from professionals of fantasy art, this book is a must for those who want to learn how to produce artwork that looks as good, also there are tips on how to present your work for film and other projects.

John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop

Hell Beasts: How to Draw Grotesque Fantasy Creatures

This is one of my favourite as it is filled with the sort of content that I love to draw, hell beasts and demons and other dark creatures, the books author has mnay valid credits to his name and they include the work of creating creatures for card games and other games of that nature, Wizards of the coast spring to mind as one of the top card game collectibles in America, but also many board games like Dungeons and Dragons with which his artwork and creature creations have been his biggest input into that industry.

Hell Beasts: How to Draw Grotesque Fantasy Creatures

Drawing and Painting Fantasy Landscapes and Cityscapes

A good book to create fantasy worlds for your characters and creatures to inhabit, this book is a great find for the fantasy artist with it's look at different types of fantasy worlds and the tried and tested version of middle earth or a fantasy world with myth and dragons, there is also a look at what computer software can do to enhance your art with looking at specific tools and what effects you can achieve.

This is an inspiring book if you want to create better looking scenery for dramatic effect aswell as to learn how to master the many versions of any fantasy world you can think of.

Drawing and Painting Fantasy Landscapes and Cityscapes

Fantasy Drawing Videos And Tutorials

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

A Rough Flaming Skull Drawing Video

I have begun trying out different styles of youtube drawing videos to try and get better at presenting and speaking when I am drawing the things I like.
Skull drawing is another one of my favourites, up there with demonic tattoos and horror artwork.

I hope you like these style of videos as I hope to improve on them somewhat.