How to paint a fox in 6 steps

I'm still flooded by freelance work for some time, but I still managed to put together this little tutorial on my sparetime. Painted this foxy a few months ago, and luckily I saved the steps for this one too!

I made this image at Net Entertainment(my awesome day job), so this image belongs to them.

Hope you find it useful :)

- Andrea

Thank you for looking! :)

Sunday // Workday

Today I've spent working on some freelance gigs. 

I'll probably do that for a few more hours, just to get as much ahead as possible.
Got a few deadlines to catch and one of them is in less than a week.

Can't wait til I can show you what I'm currently working on.
It's a very fun project and something I haven't done before, so I'm very excited about this :)


Hope you all are enjoying your weekend!
Doing anything special, or are you just relaxing? 


- Andrea

Otters for a game

Otters. Character exploration. Photoshop CS5 + Cintiq 12WX

 Here's the otter that I mentioned in my previous post.
He's not final, I'll probably start all over with the design, but it's nice to document the progress anyway.

Some of my awesome friends started this pet project a while back. Pearl Boy.
I got the privilege to contribute with sketches, concepts and character development, so this will keep me occupied whenever I got some time to spare. And you'll be able to follow along!
No NDA's this time what so ever :) Cool, eh?

It's a game idea, and this greedy, fatty otter is one of the characters in it.


The sketches took me about 1-2 days. I made lots of thumbnails before I managed to nail a few that felt stronger than the rest that I managed to crank out. Practice makes better I guess :)

Other than that.... Had a great day. Been really productive, managed to deliver new updates for clients and things has just been flowing along nicely.
Let's hope I didn't jinx anything by mentioning this, haha.
Hope this glowing piece of luck will save moi.

Nah, time to get back to laziness. Ben Netflixing my brains out the whole evening and I'm planning to do that until I pass out.
I Love Summer.


- Andrea

Speed of light!! Tiger again.

Tigers. Photoshop CS5 & Cintiq 12WX

I got inspired earlier today so this happened. Speedpainting happened.
Of a suspicious mirrored tiger.

I just tried to nail everything in one go. Dunno yet if I'm gonna be satisfied, tomorrow, next week, next year. We _will _see, mkaaay!

Had tons of fun though :)


I think that I did this, sort of because I was.. Kinda running away from this other task. Which is a tough one. I'm trying to design an otter. For a game. And I'm supposed to draw lots of poses of him.
It's haaaaaard, darn it!

Anyway, I'll give it another go now. And work until I fall asleep.

TODAYS FACT:  Well, I don't think I'm good at this vacation thingie.


- Andrea

New WIP: Tiger and kids... And a lantern.

 Work in Progress. Photoshop CS5 + Wacom Intuos4

Here's another WIP of mine. Started out as a spontanious sketch like most of my pieces, hehe.

The purpose for this painting? Oh, I dunno :P
I kinda felt the urge to paint tigers, play with colors, and playinh around with lights.

We'll see how it's gonna turn out.

Meanwhile I'm trying to think about making more art that actually has true meaning and story behind it.
I wanna be able to reach out to the viewer, move them somehow.
Ghah it's so hard :D

I mostly end up falling on love with the actual technical part. Pretty brushstrokes, yummy, colors..
But the subject is the thing that should matter the most, right?

Ahh, rambling away :)

Anyway. Hope you like this little update!


- Andrea

You think that you have control

Some random wolf. Photoshop CS5 & Wacom Intuos4

Sketched this one earlier today and felt somewhat content with it.

Got all cocky and thought that "Hey, I could paint a least 3-4 more sketches like this one, dude I'm leveling SO FAST!"

But haha.. No.
Been painting most of the day and, I'm only making one epic fail after another.
Guess I'm gonna get some rest for now.

It's always like that. You practice a lot, think that you suddenly got it all...
Then you get knocked down by the ugly truth.

Or something like that :P


- Andrea

How to paint a wolf in 6 steps

 "Did he just watch me poop?" Step by step. Adobe Photoshop CS5 + Cintiq 12WX

I promised on my fb page to post a higher resolution of this little step by step thingie.

Painted this wolfie a few months ago and as I went through my archive of paintings on my harddrive..
I realized that I've actually saved all the steps :D

So here you gooooooo!
Use it and abuse it haha.


How it was done:

1. Rough sketch/linedrawing
2. Blocked in a simple shape with the lasso tool + blocking in colours
3. I add ze light! On a separate layer.
4. I start fleshing everything out.
5. I turn off the light-layer and start refining "everything underneath"
6. More refining, trying to balance everything out. And it's done!

Hope you found it helpful and have a super awesome weekend! :)



Saw that I got some new followers, So a big welcome to you as well!



- Andrea

Featured: Advanced Photoshop, issue 110

Feels like there's fun stuff happening all the time nowadays.

Just found an article about me in the latest issue of Advanced Photoshop(Sold worldwide, and you can find it at Pressbyrån if you're in Sweden).

15 artists got to share some tips and tricks, and I got the great opportunity to describe my workflow when I painted "The Wolf". Huge thanks for letting me be a part of that magazine!!

Even saw my online friend Victorior in there, make sure to check him out if you haven't seen his stuff yet! He's really talented and very friendly :)



Well what else is going oooon?

Tomorrow my 4 week long vacation from Netent starts.. Technically it starts tomorrow, but I've been "off duty" since thursday evening and all I've been doing is slacking :D

It's how I work. I either have to work 110% or do absolute nothing. No inbetweens.

Later I'll also be enjoying working on my personal art, but also do some freelancing though.
Still got at least one deadline to catch.



How are you spending your summer? Any vacations/projects fun plans ahead?




- Andrea

Two new illustrations - "The Wizard"

"The Wizard", Kamratposten. Photoshop CS5 + Cintiq 12WX + Wacom Intuos4

The latest issue of Kamratposten contains not only one, but TWO new illustrations painted by yours truly :)

Painted them earlier this spring, and as always, I had lots of fun working on them. I've mentioned this before, but these type of illustrations are definitely the ones that enjoy working on the most.

Normally, I get to illustrate the short stories written by kids- and teen readers, but this time the story was written by the author Katarina Gena!

Just sent off another fresh illustration to my Art Director, but that one will have to wait until it gets published.. hmm later this summer or fall I think :)

Hope you're havng an awesome weekend!

- Andrea

CGMA Academy, Lighting and Color Key for Production

I'm currently taking a class at CGMA Academy, studying Lighting and Color Key for Production with Mike Hernandez. I think he's at Dreamworks right now, and have been working on movies such as Shrek, to mention one. And he's my current teacher now!  Respect.

My first week is already over, and here's my first assignment!
We had to pick one of the still frames that he uploaded for us, and then make greyscale paintover using the lighting that was described underneath each image.

I picked a still frame from Kung Fu Panda, where I obviously had to turn a daytime frame into one with both moonlight and a dramatic underlighting upon the character himself.

Tried to keep it simple and easy to read, keeping the amount of detail rather low.
Fingers crossed that I got it right.


It's been fun so far though, and I'm looking forward to learn more from him :)


Anyone else studying at CGMA at the moment, or have been taking courses there?
Which classes did you attend?




- Andrea