25 Tips for Dynamic Fantasy Scenes

Ralph Horsley breaks down his oil painting process into 25 expert tips, explaining how to develop your own fantasy scene with a compelling narrative

- By Ralph Horsley

This painting, ‘The Scribe’, is the back cover to my art book, Ralph Horsley: An Art Adventure. The book is a career retrospective, and this image encompasses the processes and techniques for creating fantastical oil paintings that I have developed over the past 30+ years of my career. These include a dynamic point of view, interesting lighting, storytelling and detail. My work process has evolved through experimentation, trial and a degree of error. I believe that having a clear methodology helps me create stronger work. This article breaks down my approach into a series of tips that lead from the initial idea and thumbnail sketches through to a completed oil painting. I encourage you to think about your own approach, experimentation and decision making.

Art has been an exciting journey that has taken me from being a teenager playing Dungeons and Dragons to painting cover artwork for the game. I hope this helps you on your own path.

Ralph is a traditional artist who has successfully forged his passions for gaming and fantasy art into a career painting dragons and goblins. www.ralphhorsley.co.uk

1 Preparation is key

It can be hard to resist the temptation to launch into a painting straight away. Introducing some preparatory stages prior to that can feel like adding extra work (and time) onto a project, but good preparation will not only help you create a better picture, it's also a more efficient way of working. There is a lot of decision making in creating art, and parcelling them up into bite-size chunks does ease digestion of the whole.

2 Write your own brief