Med's Map to
Digital Painting Fundamentals

You need a strong foundation before you jump to rendering the human face. So, we'll start by covering the basics. You'll learn my step-by-step process for rendering cubes, spheres, cylinders, and more. You'll also learn about value structures and how lighting affects these simple shapes.

You'll learn color theory (both RGB and CMYK) through my simple method. The basics of the color wheel and complementary colors will soon become second nature.

What brushes do you use?! In this lesson, you'll learn about brushstrokes, layering brushwork, lighting, and brush economy. Learning is an iterative process, and you're going to get your practice in here. After this lesson, you're going to notice development in your confidence and personal artistic style.

We will simplify the human skull into easy-to-render shapes. Knowing the underlying forms, will allow you to easily illustrate heads from different angles.

We will break down the shapes of the skull into spheres, cylinders, wedges, and a magnet shape. We will also be going over some details of proportions of where to place the overall parts in relation to each other, like the cranium as it relates to the mandible.

We're continuing our subject of skulls, but this time you'll learn how to draw from your imagination. You'll learn how to build and draw skulls from different angles. And we'll continue our discussion about effective lighting on the head.

It's time to render faces. You'll learn how I render facial features through their basic forms. And you'll learn my wireframe method for rendering light on facial features. After this lesson, you'll have a mental library of what to look for when you are painting a face. There will also be a section on secret shapes and ratios.

We're going to start building your personal library of color palettes by analyzing color references. You'll begin to develop an intuition for colors in skin tones. We'll also cover warm vs. cool colors and high saturation vs. low saturation.

Alright, back to faces. You'll learn how to indicate form, lighting, and contrast on faces using value alone. I'll show you my techniques for pushing and pulling values.

Now we're taking off the training wheels. This direct painting method will enable you to put together everything you've learned so far. I'll show you my step-by-step method for this technique, which adds color to your toolkit.

This lesson builds off our previous discussions of facial features and color theory. You'll learn how to stylize from photo reference. We'll be pushing and pulling the forms that were carefully studied in earlier lessons.

How did the masters stylize their portraits? We'll analyze the creative choices that John Singer Sargent used in his paintings. That will help you make your own creative choices with lighting, brushwork, lost edges, sharp edges, and focal points.

We need to get you away from ideal superhero faces. So in this lesson we'll analyze the everyday faces that we see in normal life (rather than in movies and games). After this, you'll be able to create characters that have personality, story, and appeal.

Now we're getting advanced. I'll walk you through the elements of rhythm, harmony, and repetition. You'll begin to think about these elements in your own work. And you'll learn more about shape hierarchy, composition, gesture, negative space, and flow.

You'll learn how to render appealing light through specific reference images. Together, we'll break down the elements of lighting so you can begin your own lighting library.

Now that you have all the fundamentals and an extensive toolkit of techniques, it's time to cover what concept art actually is. You'll learn how to approach a project and how to make your own portfolio. We'll be discussing world building, themes, and multiple approaches for sketching and painting heads using reference and your imagination.

Free Expansion Content: This expands on the Appealing Light lesson. We further dive into actually using lighting in a practical setting and show how it applies to an actual character. We go over the process with three different lighting scenarios using the same sketch.

Free Expansion Content: Based on the Elden Ring themed artwork from my Instagram feed. The real-time step-by-step process was requested, and here it is!

Free Expansion Content: After many requests, this was added as a step-by-step walkthrough of how to take paintings from your favorite artist, analyze them in very easy steps, and then use that information to apply to your own paintings or designs. This lesson is essentially "how to develop your style based on your preferences"!

Complete your toolkit with these 6 classic Gumroad tutorials (35 hours of content):

• Character Portraits
• Staging Your Characters
• Composition 1: Understanding Tension
• Focal Points, Rhythm, & Composition
• Masks and Gold
• Tiefling Portrait