i-m-a-g-i-n-efx-august

Workshops
Artist insight
art shortcuts
to awesomeness!
Creative shortcuts aren’t for lazy artists, says domareen Fox. They help
you streamline your painting process, so you can focus on getting better
Artist
ProFile
domareen Fox
location: Germany
Domareen has worked as
a designer for animation
studios across the UK for
the past three years.
She’s currently an art
director at Studio Soi.
www.dommifox.com
These days the art
community is full of
people suggesting
techniques that will
help you to get your art
down on the digital canvas more
quickly. To less-experienced artists,
this might come across as diluting
the thrill of the creative experience,
or to put it more simply, cheating.
However, in a hectic studio
environment where deadlines always
seem to be fast approaching, cutting
those corners can decrease your time
spent on those routine painting
stages significantly. Does this make
you lazy? Absolutely not!
We artists are presented with tools
that enables us to put on to the
canvas what we visualise in our
mind. How you get there doesn’t
matter – it’s what you create that
counts. I work on a fast-paced
animation production, where time
management is key. Upon starting
my job, I had to adjust to this busy
environment and carve out a more
effective way of working. And what
follows are some of the methods
I use to beat those pesky deadlines.
1 Lay down a base – don’t
work on a bLank canvas!
Starting with a blank or plain canvas can
be incredibly daunting and leave you a bit
lost, maybe even procrastinating. I prefer
to lay down some blocky, abstract colours
underneath a sketch to break the ice with
the empty canvas and kick-start the mind.
These colours don’t have to be anything
final! They just provide a complementary
base to work upon, that bests the
intimidating look of an empty canvas.
2 learn keyboard
shortcuts
Familiarising yourself
with the shortcuts of
your creative software –
like the Photoshop ones
shown here – is crucial if
you’re keen to develop a
faster workflow. Doing
so can save you a lot of
precious time in the
workplace. Make an
effort to customise them
so they suit your way of
working, too.
Reduce the detail and focus on the concept and
vision that you want to communicate
86 August 2017