It took me years as an artist to realise that the black and white value structure is the heart and soul of the image. In my opinion, this is the secret to a dynamic image not making something realistic, but rather breaking up the image space into an interesting pattern of light and dark shapes.

Thumbnail stage to establish the composition of light and shadowįirst I start with black and white thumbnail studies, just exploring the composition of the figures with abstract patterns of light and dark shapes.

That was the look I was attempting to mimic in this painting. My influences came from fantasy art book covers from the 70s by artists like Frank Frazetta, who created dynamic heroic poses and figure compositions using a traditional oil technique. My concept was centred on showing the relationship of Ash, the hero, with his deadite zombie sidekick, victorious over a pile of zombies (or deadites!).

'Ash and Sam' was originally painted as a full-page illustration for a game magazine, showing the main characters from 'Evil Dead Regeneration', the game.

3d painting on canvas tutorial