Art Advice – The Art of Nathan Parkinson

Borrowing a Colour Palette

11/23/2025 • Art, Art Advice, Nathan's Thoughts, Other Creators

Having impactful colours in your images can do so much for the interest, even if the quality is rough.

This is a rough illustration I did a while back.

It’s got some fun action, but the colours, contrast, and saturation are weak.

I decided to see how borrowing the colour palette from the following image by Tim McBurnie could improve my image. I paid attention to the saturation and values. I probably just used the colour picker.

Borrow Palette 2 Tim McBurnie nathanparkinson.com

This is the result of my application of that palette to the same composition.

I think it gave the impact a massive boost. I also tried to add motion blur and a bit more of a painterly quality. Now the image throbs with intensity! What happens next!?

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the before and after:

Don’t worry, he’s okay in the end 😉

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The Library: Artist Resources

10/15/2025 • Art Advice, Nathan's Thoughts, Not Art, Other Creators

These are some of the most valuable resources I have encountered on my artistic journey: they’ve offered much needed guidance and have helped set my course. To give more context a few of the links will go to articles on my blog.

Library Frederic Pillot — Image credit: Frederic Pillot

Live Demos, Sage Advice

Mastery in Real-time – beyond seeing great finished artwork, there’s nothing to light a fire under you like watching masterful artists create in real-time, and share their thought processes. Here is a selection of my own influences:

Kim Jung Gi on Composition and Storytelling – to see him draw is a wonderful thing to behold; you can find many such videos online, but I really enjoyed his advice here about how to practice inventing scenes from imagination.
Glenn Vilpuu’s Live Demos, Figure Drawing (CAUTION: nudes) – listening to him vocalize his thought process as he creates is so invaluable to me. Don’t just watch, draw along. Amazing!
Feng Zhu’s Design Cinema – I so love the teaching of Feng Zhu. He speaks such wisdom about the realities of being an artist and what is important to improve. Some of my favourite episodes:
Design Cinema – EP 89 – Just Draw!
Design Cinema – EP 101 – Sketching 101
Design Cinema – EP 102 – Intro to Digital Painting

Advice, Interviews & Artist Profiles

Finished, Not Perfect, Jake Parker – Just Do It! Embrace your current skill level; be a master of whatever level you’re at. Create stuff, build momentum, study as you go and learn from others; keep at it and you will improve.
The Secret of Simple Forms, Marshall Vandruff – Here I think Marshall wonderfully lays out the basics of form drawing in relation to perspective. This information will especially benefit beginners trying to wrap their minds around the concept of drawing from memory and imagination, why it is so difficult to do, and how to train it; but even if you’ve drawn for years, but have never tackled this subject, Marshall will offer valuable insights.
You Need a Product, Not a Project, Jake Parker – experimenting and exploring are valuable activities for artists, but when trying to make deliberate progress, specificity is key.
SELF TAUGHT ARTIST SECRETS AND STRATEGIES, Trent Kaniuga – I think this is a nice introduction to Trent; he’s a super generous concept artist; he teaches so much value on his YouTube channel.
Tim Mcburnie’s Strategy For Learning To Draw – creating and studying are two oars of the same row boat; with only one you just go in circles. Rather than doing loads of isolated exercises, integrate what you learn into your process and finished work ASAP.
Karl Kopinski’s Thoughts on Photorealism – I love Karl’s response to a questions about style vs realism.
Greg “Craola” Simkins’ Artistic Process – I really enjoyed hearing Greg describe his creative process; I’m a huge fan of his work.
A background painting tip that saved me tons of time, David Revoy – really, you don’t need all that detail!
Michael Spooner – Visual Development artist. Fantastic artwork and sage advice.
Spooner talks with Vilpuu!
Spooner on The Breakthrough Creative
The Draftsmen Podcast – I think this is a classic that should definitely be preserved in the archive for generations to come. Listening to Stan and Marshall banter about art is both insightful and delightful.
Schoolism interviews – Bobby Chiu has interviewed a ton of artists over the years; they used be openly available on his YouTube channel, but are now only accessible with a Schoolism account. A couple of my favourite interviews were with Heri Irawan and Devin Elle Kurtz; there are many more great ones. It is really enjoyable to hear artists share their journey; great to listen to while doing low-concentration work or just chilling.
3-Point Perspective Podcast, School of Visual Storytellers – Jake, Lee, and Will have some really great insights into being a professional artist.
Pete Beard’s illustration series – this is a great way to learn about a variety of illustrators throughout history.
Grand Portfolios, Character Design References – I have discovered so many amazing artists here.
How to Think When You Draw Tutorials, The Etherington Brothers – tons of specific insights on how to draw tons of stuff.

Art Courses

Nathan Fowkes’ Pictorial Composition – I learned a great deal of foundational knowledge from this course. Fowkes teaches some very helpful universal principles for composing images with a hands-on approach.
Marshall Vandruff’s Perspective Course – I have not taken this course, but I did take Marshall’s old course for $12. This one is considerably more costly, but Marshall has invested countless hours into fine-tuning his approach to teaching perspective in the 3 decades since his first course. I can’t help but anticipate that this will be fantastic!
Line and Color Academy – Tim McBurnie helps you build a solid process to reliably get your ideas onto the page/screen; create a positive relationship with the creative process and just keep levelling up.
Human Anatomy Fundamentals – when I’m ready to dive back into learning to draw people, this is the resource I plan to follow. Joumana Medlej lays a solid foundation beginning with seeing and drawing the energy of your subject as the foundation for the structural, anatomically correct body to stand on.

Art Books

There are many great recommendations from industry pros. I’ll list the ones I’ve actually read and found helpful (I’ve not read many):

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud – as a disclaimer, before reading this book I don’t think I’d read a single comic book in my life; I had no appetite for them, but so many pros recommended this book that I decided to get it. A comic itself, this book opened my eyes to the power and great potential of telling stories with pictures and words. Great stuff!
Picturepedia, DK – this is a great reference book for . . . everything! 360 hard-bound pages of high-res photos. I love to use it to get specific direction and inspiration for my work. You only wanted reference for a butterfly? Well, which of the 47 species best suits the design you’re creating!? This book is picture-heavy with tons of examples! Love it!

Writing Advice

HOW TO WRITE A SCENE | elements of narrative + tips (with example doc), ShaelinWrites – I started learning to write fiction with BREX and was super frustrated that all my writing was only summaries of the story; Shaelin taught me how to write a scene which totally opened up my capacity to write engaging stories by expanding time and allowing the reader to experience the action through different kinds of story beats.
3 Line NPC Method, Johnn Four – Johnn introduced me to character-driven stories and his 3-line method gave me a fantastic framework for concisely writing characters with depth and interest. I created a random generator to assist me in employing this method; it is my go-to approach whenever I need a new character for my story; I have a lot of fun with it and create characters in advance for my character library so that when I need a character I have an interesting selection to choose from. (also see my 3-line NPC Generator article)

Business Advice

How to start freelancing THIS WEEK, Jamie Brindle – a masterclass of a business resource. You can literally get started in ONE week. I’ve never heard anyone break it down like Jamie. Bookmark this one.
HOW TO START A BUSINESS WITH NO IN 3 STEPS IN 2021, Sam Ovens – lots of valuable advice here. Find a niche and build systems.
The ladders of wealth creation: a step-by-step roadmap to building wealth, Nathan Barry – this article explains different businesses like being ladders that can take you to different heights. Climbing each ladder requires you to learn certain skills that will serve you as you switch to bigger ladders. Skipping ladders is possible, but means you’ll be compressing how much you have to learn at once.

Honourable Mentions

Peter Draws – if you want to melt into the most chill narrated doodling experience ever, drop by Peter’s studio. This guy has completely embraced his own identity.
Scott Gustafson’s Methods – it is so cool to see the steps of Scott’s process; I appreciate his transparency, but it also intimidates me. Scott’s work makes me drool
Gurney Journey – James Gurney, the creator of Dinotopia, has a very interesting and informative blog, still updated regularly. His paintings are wonderful. He was heavily inspired by artists of the past like Norman Rockwell who recorded their artistic process for us to learn from now; he tries to do the same.
Monika Zagrobelna, How to Draw – she has some valuable teaching about drawing form:
https://monikazagrobelna.com/2019/11/25/drawing-101-how-to-draw-form-and-volume/
https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/why-is-it-so-hard-to-draw-from-imagination-heres-how-to-do-it–cms-22967
Drawabox – I spent a chunk of time doing this seriously; I learned valuable stuff, but ultimately decided to focus more of my time on creating finished work and much less on grinding skills. Irshad does have the 50% Rule about spending at least half your time drawing for fun, but in the end I was ready to drop the formal exercises and just make art. One of my favourite memories was the seasonal Promptathons; I really enjoyed the 24-hour challenges and tried to weave little stories for each.
How to Make Your First Comic Book (An Easy Way to Start) – a comic book on one page?! No way! That’s too easy!! but it might be just what you need to start building momentum.

To Be Sorted

These are additional resources I’ve found to be highly valuable, but have not yet integrated into the meat of the listings above.

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Art Lessons from Guitarist Rob MacKillop

03/26/2025 • Art Advice, Not Art, Other Creators, Quotes, Videos

Rob MacKillop is a guitarist with a great variety of experience, popular for playing classical music without nails.

As an artist I draw inspiration from other creative fields such as writing and music. There are so many parallels between the various art forms.

MacKillop inspired me with some powerful ideas in a few interviews. I watched them several months ago and have been affected by them since. I just re-visited them and found even more good advice than I remembered finding the first time. Here are the interviews with some quotes and paraphrases of my key takeaways below, but there’s plenty more in the videos; so grab your notebook and dig in.

“You’ve got to fall in love with music and let that be your guide . . . it’s so important that you love every note you’re playing on the guitar, and if you don’t love the notes you’re playing, why play them?” (59:20)

“Just be yourself because if you’re not being yourself, who are you being?” (1:07)
“The beginning point is to find a little kernel of something that is you, not to start with technique.” (2:19)
“There’s no reason to try to convince others that what you do is great; your own voice will come through; and there are people out there who will like it.” (3:18)

“Don’t worry about making a mistake; it’s the bigger picture, the bigger story that matters.” (55:49)
“I didn’t mind the little mistakes he was making here and there because I was listening, not to the guitar so much, but to the story behind what he was playing.” (59:58)
“Learn from lots of teachers. Be prepared to disagree, but don’t fight with them. Listen and absorb it all, but develop the strength to find your own way. The big journey is actually back to yourself, not out there to other people. It’s me with this box with strings on it — how can we communicate?” (1:07:02)
“The greatest teacher you can have is the score of music. When you study technique too much you tend to coat everything in that; but if you treat the score like a unique thing in the universe and listen to what it wants, it will teach you how to play guitar.” (1:09:02)

If you’re an artist I hope you’re able to see how MacKillop’s advice strongly applies to making pictures. Artists, writers, musicians – we’re all storytellers trying to discover our identity and master our craft. Just be yourself, love what you do, and tell your story. Technique and mastery will follow.

Lastly, please do visit Rob’s personal YouTube channel and website to hear his music and learn more about him and his work.

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The Morphing Canvas

02/01/2025 • Art, Art Advice

A little over a year ago I wanted to improve my digital drawing/painting, fight against my perfectionist tendencies, be less precious with my work, and work more efficiently and confidently (I was probably inspired by watching Trent Kaniuga paint).

I created a square canvas with a single active layer on a gray background. I chose a pencil brush for drawing and a paint brush for painting and a single colour (I settled on dark purple). At the start of each day I spent about 30 minutes drawing on this single canvas from memory and imagination. I would take whatever was there from the day before and I would morph it into something else. I eventually began to use some white for highlights and light sources, but I only ever drew on one layer. I drew to get darker and erased to get lighter against that gray background. I came to really enjoy this process and I encourage you to try it. I got some really fun results. I think this is a great way to get back your love for drawing just for the fun of it (if you’ve lost it).

One thing I enjoyed doing was to spend 30 minutes studying some sort of reference, and then another 30 minutes drawing some “morphing art” trying to incorporate what I had just studied into the scene from memory; that was fantastic practice! My digital painting program Krita has a live recording feature which creates a new image with each brush stroke. I would save major points of change to track progress, but a couple times I saved all the images to create a time-lapse video (#MorphingCanvas). Below you will find the bigger milestones of change; there’s too many to include each step. The images are best viewed if you open them in the full-sized lightbox and use the arrow keys to flip through them. Enjoy!

The Morphing Canvas

“Change is the only constant.”

Your Turn

If you do give this a try, I’d love to see what you end up with after a month or two.

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Fundamentals of Art

06/28/2024 • Art Advice, Nathan's Thoughts, Not Art, Updates

If you’ve spent much time in the art world, you’ve probably heard of “the fundamentals” and how important they are. Over the years I have studied how making art actually works and how to accurately define the many components. “Why is this useful?” By breaking a skill into its individual parts, you can practice each one more intentionally. Trying to learn everything at once or with a vague focus can make it harder to recognize your progress. For someone trying to master their craft, having a solid comprehension of the tools available is important.

The result of my efforts is the Fundamentals of Art document that I am now offering for free download.

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Karl Kopinski’s Thoughts on Photorealism

04/04/2024 • Art, Art Advice, Other Creators

The skilled artist Karl Kopinski did a livestream with Proko discussing his character design process and answering viewers’ questions. At the end of the stream a very interesting question was addressed, essentially, “At what point as an artist do you stop striving for photorealism and embrace your own style?”

My Summary

Part of your development as an artist is recognizing what you do well that makes you unique and interesting, and not always striving for photorealism: your strength might be line quality, lighting, etc.
As you gain years of experience, simplify your art and engage the viewer by letting them do some of the work; like style, it’s not something that can be forced or else it looks contrived; it requires confidence in your abilities.
You don’t always have to prove you’re amazing at what you do; there’s always someone better than you; tell your story in your way.

Here’s a few pieces of art from Karl’s website.

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Greg “Craola” Simkins’ Artistic Process

08/04/2023 • Art, Art Advice, Other Creators

The quality of Greg Simkins’ work makes me want to be more diligent (i.e. get focused on making more art and waste less time browsing reference or doing lower-priority things).

“Innovation is saying ‘No’ to 1,000 things.” – Steve Jobs

I aspire to create as freely as Greg does. Watching him paint in video form is awe-inspiring. I found the following conversation on YouTube of him with a couple other artists; he goes into some exciting detail about his creative process.

I especially enjoyed the second half of the first hour of this video.

I’d love to show some of his pieces here, but he asks people not to reproduce his work without permission; so while I wait to hear back from him, go check out his website and YouTube channel for more golden art and advice.

Edit: I got permission to feature some of Craola’s art! Thank you to Greg’s team.

Edit: Jan 27, 2025

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Tim Mcburnie’s Strategy For Learning To Draw

07/29/2023 • Art, Art Advice, Other Creators

Learning to draw is an endless journey. I’m always looking to improve my approach and mindset regarding how to learn and produce most efficiently. Tim Mcburnie’s advice on the subject resonated with me. I love the quality of his art.

What I took away

Your need for the art fundamentals depends on what art you want to make. Many current pros just drew a lot without focusing on fundamentals.
Follow an applied fundamentals approach: decide what art you want to make and spend most of your time making it while building your foundational knowledge and skills to support that.
Apply foundational concepts ASAP! Doing endless studies and exercises just helps you get good at exercises. What’s most important is to understand how to integrate/apply the knowledge gained from an exercise or study into your workflow, how you can actually use it to help make art.
Exercises are largely an academic approach; once you understand the techniques/ideas, you can skip doing exercises and apply them directly to your work.

Did I mention I love the quality of his art? 😉

Please do check out his website and YouTube channel.

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Learning Composition

07/22/2023 • Art Advice, Other Creators

For an artist composition is debatably the most important skill to learn and employ in one’s craft. I have compiled a list of resources I’ve found helpful in learning this skill.

WARNING: there is a lot of contradicting information about composition available online. As Glenn Vilpuu says, Nathan Fowkes emphasizes, and the Draftsmen echo,

“There are no rules, just tools.” – Glenn Vilpuu

I’ve tried to list the sources in rough order of what made the biggest impact/impression on me. I’ve not watched every video here, but I am familiar with each artist enough to recommend them. Remember, too much head knowledge without application isn’t usually healthy (in any area of learning). Try to put what you learn into practice as soon as possible before taking in more information.

Free Internet Resources

Nathan Fowkes

Nathan Fowkes has some free content about composition on YouTube, but his most valuable offering is his paid course on Schoolism.

The Draftsmen Podcast

The Draftsmen podcast/channel on YouTube has at least one episode dedicated to composition; Marshall Vandruff is very knowledgeable about composition and often has great advice to contribute; Stan Prokopenko has good advice, but Marshall has more life experience; they have rather different backgrounds as artists and each offers a valuable perspective; they balance each other nicely.

How to Learn Composition – Draftsmen S2E15
What Are The Fundamentals? Draftsmen S1E04 (not strictly a composition episode, but they touch on how it fits into the rest of the art fundamentals)
From Rocket Scientist to Professional Artist (ft. Jama Jurabaev) – Draftsmen S2E33 (Jama Jurabaev is a past student of Marshall’s and has some stunning work.)

Bill Perkins

???? How To Nail Composition with Bill Perkins

Glenn Vilpuu (and Michael Spooner)

Glenn Vilpuu spews artistic wisdom constantly; he’s a great figure-drawing instructor; just be aware that as a classically trained artist, he works a lot from nude models.

How to Create a Composition From Imagination with Glenn Vilppu
There Are No Rules, Just Tools (Draftsmen talk about Glenn Vilpuu’s advice)
Composition and Lighting, with SPECIAL GUEST Visual Development Artist Michael Spooner! (two veteran pros chatting about composition; both blew my mind)

Michael Spooner is a wonderful illustrator. I love his work.

James Gurney

James Gurney has much to say about composition on the Gurney Journey blog

Feng Zhu

Feng Zhu on composition (Feng has tons of free, valuable drawing instruction)

Design Cinema – Episode 104 – Environmental Composition
Design Cinema – EP 78 – Environmental Thumbnails
Design Cinema – EP 89 – Just Draw! (I love this episode so much!)
Design Cinema – EP 101 – Sketching 101 (I love this one too)

Trent Kaniuga

Secrets of Thumbnail Drawing (Real-time) (Trent Kaniuga has a lot of good art advice)

Alphonso Dunn

How to Draw Tips | What are thumbnail sketches? How to use them (Alphonso Dunn has some good art advice)

Kim Jung Gi

WARNING: Kim Jung Gi frequently draws extremely inappropriate content; so I don’t endorse all his stuff, but man is he ever good. He gives a bit of drawing advice and instruction, but one can learn much from watching him draw; I find his skill inspiring and something to aim for. The following content is safe.

Aaron Blaise

While I don’t find Aaron Blaise‘s composition advice to be very strong/helpful, he’s got a lot of other great art advice, especially when it comes to drawing animals; I will say though, that he composes very well intuitively through decades of creating on a highly professional level; I just don’t find that he communicates too strongly in the area of composition.

Aaron’s Art Tips (Season 1)

More Resources

help-me-draw on composition (they categorize art resources from all over the internet; tons of great stuff)

Paid Internet Resources

Nathan Fowkes’ Pictorial Composition on Schoolism

Art Inspiration

If you haven’t seen Syd Mead‘s art, you’re missing out 😉 – wild, futuristic concept art with stunning compositions.
Joseph Clement Coll has absolutely amazing compositions in his ink work – so much energy: Image 1 & Image 2.
Pete Beard‘s YouTube channel will open you up to new worlds of art and composition.
Bobby Chiu‘s interview with Heri Irawan – if you’re struggling economically, this guy may inspire you. Bobby has tons of really interesting artist interviews and other great advice; listening to other artists talk about their lives is a bit like reading biographies; you can learn something from everyone.
Bobby Chiu’s interview with Devin Elle Kurtz has tons of art advice and inspiration. Also check out Devin’s website.

Final Thoughts

A useful exercise is to try to break down other people’s compositions as studies; just do little 1×2 inch thumbnail copies (or go up to 3.5×5 inches); try to study how they structure the values (i.e. scale from light to dark) and the colours. What kinds of contrast do they use? How do they focus/move the viewer’s eye? etc.

A simple YouTube search for “art composition” by itself or with an artist’s name will yield many useful results. These are some of the most influential resources I could recall from several years of drawing. I know it’s a ton of information; please don’t go crazy and burn out; just pick one resource to start (whatever catches your eye) and spend some time on it; pace yourself. Don’t try to consume this waterfall as fast as possible, but do drink deeply to your satisfaction. I’d recommend visiting this list from time to time when you’re wanting to up your composition game. Composition obviously isn’t all there is to know about art, but it’s a really valuable skill, and as Nathan Fowkes’ says, possibly the most important skill an artist can possess.

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