Realism painting, where to start

[Kolbenito]

Hello,

I would eventually like to get into realism paintings of fantasy subjects, essentially fan art portraits and action scenes.

Having just got back into art as a serious hobby I am doing studies from idrawgirls.com, life drawing sketches and learning photoshop trying to learn new techniques and just build up the mileage. There is a mountain of how to paint/draw stuff and lots of advice on the internet, which brings me to the question.

I wanted to ask here if anyone has any dvd/books/tutorial or online instruction suggestions that you want to share? I love all types of illustration, but just on personal preference I would prefer to explore realism for a while particularly with painting portraits and action scenes.

Thanks in advance! :)

[JonHop]

There is no 1 tutorial that can teach you everything you need to know about how to paint using a realistic style. There are good videos on youtube to help you understand but generally watching someone else do it and talk about it can only take you so far. It all comes from personal studying and understanding, form, light, shadow, colour, perspective, how to create depth in an images, your use of edges in your painting, drawing from life and just putting in the time to learn by doing studies and reading on the subject and watching other artists. There is no quick fix, no 1 tutorial that you'll watch and instantly be able to paint like the old masters.

As this is your only post I can't see where your at with your personal work and comment on how to improve it, posting up a sketchbook here should be very helpful to receive critique and feedback.

What I would say is paint a study from life, ( a still life or get someone to pose for a portrait, a still life would prob be the better option here) take it as far as you can with your understanding where it is now and then do a imaginative illustration and take that as far as you can go toward a realistic finish and post it up in a sketchbook and the critique section and get feedback on it :).