Digital painting tutorial shield maidens concept art

Digital Painting tutorial shield maidens concept art. This tutorial shows you how to paint a concept art of a shield maidens of the Viking. This image takes me about a few hours to finish. You can scroll down further to see step by step images with instruction.

A lot of concept art or illustration is all about telling story. In this one not so much but showing a company of shield maidens walking toward the camera. Not really much of a story behind it but playing with the composition and characters and scene design.
In this tutorial I start with a vague or rough idea, I can then start to explore with shape on my canvas. Then I tackles on the character design with the front lighting. At this stage, I only focus on big shapes, lighting and compostion to get the overall look and feel of the scene. Then the rest will take care of itself, I will just add the detail to the background and characters as I go on painting.
This time though I have a good idea of what I want to paint. But sometime, I will just let the visual shapes and color guide me as I go.
Again I usually start my image from shapes and build those shape up along with composition in mind. The lighting and value.

shield maiden concept art tutorial

Tips on speedpainting. Keep it simple first and make your image clear and easy to read or identify.
Things you should focus on primarily.
1) Shapes
2) Lighting and mood
3) Edges and depth of field.

Below are step by step painting tutorial.