Techniques for Painting Animal Fur

See techniques for how to paint fur with marker, acrylic inks, and acrylic paints. Explained is ways to layer the 3 media to create a foundation for details. Find out specific ways to handle your brushes and ways to mix and apply the paints to capture the textures of fur. Demo by Art Prof Clara […]

Sculpting a Dog in Air Dry Clay

See how to sculpt and model a sculpture of a boxer dog, using air clay in white and terracotta colors. Techniques for using colored clays together are explored, including adding graphite powder to the air dry clay to darken it. Hear about the specifics of working with air dry clay, including how to deal with […]

Woodcut: Relief Printmaking

See a step by step demo of the woodcut process, a relief printmaking technique from beginning to end. You’ll see comprehensive explanations of tools, types of wood, carving, inking, hand printing, pin registration, preparing paper, and more. Demo by Art Prof Clara Lieu. Thank you to our sponsor! Thank you to Arielle Finberg for sponsoring […]

Workshop: Drawing Primates in Color

This 1 day workshop is a chance to learn techniques for capturing a sense of gesture, personality, and movement in primates. We’ll address ways you can creative an effective structure in primates while also achieving volumetric organic forms. Watch a Sample Workshop How it Works Resources Before the workshop First 2 hours Last hour After […]

Sketching Elephants, Rhinos, Warthogs in Ink & Photoshop

See a drawing demo on how to quickly sketch elephants, rhinos, and warthogs. Tips for how to draw effective gesture drawings, by blocking out the biggest shapes first, and emphasizing the structure of the animal are explained and shown. Demo by Art Prof Clara Lieu and Teaching Artist Jordan McCracken-Foster. Video Walkthrough Prof Lieu’s Tips […]

Comics Prompt: Animal Sounds

See a demo of a comics prompt: create a comic showing animal sounds and movements. Useful comics techniques such as point of view, the “foot rule,” panels, speech bubbles, spreads, and pages in order to communicate a narrative. Drawing demo by Teaching Artists Cat Huang and Alex Rowe. Video Walkthrough Prof Lieu’s Tips I’ve always […]

Ink Wash: Drawing Cats from The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

Watch a demo on drawing cats from The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. Sketching techniques using sumi inks for capturing the personality and gesture of the cats in the film are explained, as well as how to build up a range of textures and volumes in the drawings. Explained in the video is how to […]

Gesture Drawing: Sketching Horses in Conté Crayon & Marker

This video shows drawing tips for how to do quick gesture drawings of horses. Techniques explained include how to capture the entire anatomy of the horse efficiently, and then how to build upon that gesture to create a convincing sense of movement and form. Demo by Art Prof Clara Lieu and Teaching Artist Deepti Menon. […]

Drawing Fish in Adobe Fresco

See how to use digital painting techniques in Adobe Fresco to draw fish! This video starts with basics of drawing with Adobe Fresco covering layers, tools, and various effects that are possible with the program. More techniques such as how to navigate layers and create textures are also shown. Demo led by Art Prof Clara Lieu and […]

Digital Basics TRACK: Lesson 6, 5 Fish Composition

Prompt Create a composition that includes at least 5 fish. Use any format, any style, as long as there are a minimum of 5 fish in the image, anything goes! The fish do not have to be ones that exists in real life, they can be imaginary if you like. Consider the mood you want […]

Cats: Gesture Drawing with Colored Pencil & Markers

This video shows how you can draw from real life! See a demo of how to do gesture drawings from life using Faber-Castell colored pencils and Pitt pens. Discussed in the video are the many advantages of drawing from life, as well as the challenges. See how to draw cats who simply won’t sit still! […]

Art Prof Timed Drawing Videos

Practice your drawing skills with our timed drawing session videos! These videos makes drawing practice easy: get your drawing supplies and follow along as each pose plays with a timer. Portraits • Human Figure • Landscapes & Plants • Mammals • Underwater • Birds • Bones All of the reference photos used in these timed drawing videos are available on Art Prof’s free reference photo collection […]

Soft Pastel: Drawing Guinea Pigs

See how to draw guinea pigs using soft pastel gesture drawing techniques. Drawing a moving guinea pig IS possible, get some tips and tricks for how to achieve that. This video also explains how to capture each guinea pig’s personality by using soft pastel techniques like layering and smudging. Demo by Art Prof Clara Lieu, […]

Rubber Stamps

Rubber stamps are an easy, fun printmaking process what is versatile and gets great results. This video demonstrates how to start with a brush pen drawing which is then transferred using a graphite technique onto the surface of the Speedball Speedy Carve surface. Techniques such as how to cut many different types of lines and […]

Pen & Ink Wash Illustration

Teaching Artist Alex Rowe shows how to brainstorm, research, sketch, and complete an illustration based on a historical event from the colonial era in America. Alex talks about how to come up with an idea for an illustration. He takes a trip to the library to research a story about sheep in colonial America. Another […]

Painting Basics TRACK: Lesson 6, Underwater Creatures

Prompt Choose an underwater creature: fish, crabs, lobsters, and more. Aim to capture a three-dimensional feeling of form and a wide range of textures and colors. Examples Manette, Helen Background Consider the background as well, is your creature in a specific environment, or do you want to do a close up view which minimizes the […]

Procreate Animation: Snails

See how an animation of a snail is made in 1 hour in Procreate! Using basic techniques in Procreate is a quick way to whip up a fun, simple animation of a snail character. Inspiration is taken from our reference photos of snails, available on our free reference photo collection on Flickr. Demo led by […]

Procreate Animation: Pigs

See how an animation of a pig is made in 1 hour in Procreate! Tips are also given on how to capture the likeness of a pig. Also included are techniques for how to draw pigs using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons on an unprimed basswood panel. Demo led by Teaching Artist Deepti Menon and […]

Drawing Basics TRACK: Lesson 1, Animal Gestures

Prompt Complete six hours in total of gesture drawings of animals. We recommend that each drawing session is a minimum of one hour so you have time to warm up and sharpen your skills. Using a timer make two, five, and ten minute drawings. Start with the two minute ones and progressively increase to ten […]

Gesture Drawing of Animals: Colored Pencil & Photoshop

This video shows how to do quick gesture drawings of animals, using Eadweard Muybridge’s book, Animals in Motion, as a reference to show believable action and movement. Technique explored in this video are how to capture the most important essentials of the animal as quickly as possible, while creating a compelling sense of structure and […]

Oil Pastel & Oil Stick Drawing: Peacocks

Art Prof Clara Lieu and Teaching Artist Lauryn Welch demonstrate how to draw with oil sticks and oil pastels by drawing peacocks. Prof Lieu and Lauryn explain the differences and similarities between oil sticks and oil pastels as well as their distinct qualities as drawing media. Art Supplies Oil Pastels Oil Bars Other colors Reference […]