Master the Art of Speedpainting: Digital Painting Techniques by various artists (3DTotal Publishing)

With the various art challenges I love taking part in every day, it's sometimes a struggle to unpick other artist's work and figure out just how they can work so quickly, and produce such amazing pieces...
This book is a bit like the magician revealing how he does his tricks, as 3DTotal Publishing gather together some of the best digital artists out there to show you how they use speedpainting and accelerated workflow to come up with stunning works of art.

Whether you're interested in concept art, scenery and backgrounds or even detailed weaponry and vehicles, there are processes tucked into the covers of this awesome book that will help you develop your work in different ways.

The book kicks off with an area of Photoshop art that I've always misunderstood. A fantastic tutorial in building your own brushes shows how you can very quickly build up background detail and points of interest without painstaking hours of mulling over detail and trying to paint every piece of dust or leaf. Creating your own brushes in Photoshop is a really quick way to help speed up what you do, and it's ridiculously simple as well.

The book moves on to show how colour, lighting and a detail layer can also pick out points of interest in your scenes.

Coupled with 3DTotal's extensive digital resources to support this and their other books, there's a ton of inspiration here that will truly change the game for you if you're wrestling with Photoshop as your preferred design tool.

Fantastic, truly fantastic. I've got the rest of the books on my wish list - just need to wait for the prices to come down a tad as they're not cheap but are very much worth it!

"Master the Art of Speed Painting: Digital Painting Techniques" is out now, published by 3DTotal Publishing.