Phil Holiday has gone into the light of digital painting

Apr 1 2011

Phil’s skills across all traditional illustration mediums have always been jaw dropping. Over the years we have seen him succeed at all traditional mediums from pencilling concept cars for motor shows to detailing every fur on the bodies of two fighting elks in scraper board. What dropped the jaws of Drawing Book Studios most recently was this incredibly detailed digital painting Phil sent us. Especially given Phil only started to learn Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter last year. It goes to show that an illustrator’s ability hinges on how solid their core drawing skills are.

Phil describes this personal work as an exploration into light, density, material and pose. We would call it a mastering of them. Just scroll through the zooms we have posted below and pay attention to how Phil has achieved relative density between the low lying ethereal clouds in front of the rock face versus the thicker grey stratocumulus clouds grumbling away in the background.

In regard to the central heroine, Phil wanted to see if he could illustrate a woman in an extremely powerful pose whilst maintaining her beauty and femininity. Phil also explored how light appeared on skin, hair and leather and used this to differentiate between the surfaces.

It’s an amazing display of passion at play when an artist such as Phil explores their passion in a personal piece. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

To see Phil’s portfolio click here or any image below.