How to paint the perfect beefcake

Has fun with the pin-up genre, depicting a muscle-bound barbarian’s unconventional fishing method. Don’t try this at home!

his workshop will take you through the process of painting a little fantasy/sci-fi beefcake. Clearly this will be no study of metaphysical angst and search for meaning in the empty void of nothingness (unless you wish to read that into the final image – art is in the eye of the beholder, after all): the brief is for something fun, tongue-in-cheek, heading slightly towards caricature, all of which is a natural fit for my more painted style and usual approach to illustration.

TConcept/brief

For this tutorial I will use Photoshop as my software and paint with a mouse, but the principles will be pretty much the same whatever program, version or input device you currently prefer. I get puzzled looks about the whole ‘paint with a mouse’ thing, but it’s a well-trained mouse, it doesn’t eat a lot of cheese, and I’ve been working this way for so long, it’s actually quite natural for me.

You’ll need a basic understanding of navigating a paint program (Photoshop or whatever you happen to use), using

I toy with a few quick pencil concept sketches and present multiple options. Occasionally, this means you end up working on an idea or design you don’t like as much as another, but the clients here have discerning taste and impeccable judgement. We go with a barbarian or Tarzan-like character fishing – though it’s also clear that when it comes to fishing, I’m pretty clueless. brushes, palettes and layers, as we will be playing with layers in this tutorial, demonstrating how they can be used in conjunction with colour overlays, for highlighting and other effects.

I will be spotlighting a few rules along the way, smarter ways to work, and most likely why I didn’t actually follow my own advice properly.

Enough preamble, though… It’s time for me to put down the potato snacks, flex my atrophied muscles, stick a fish in my mouth and get this beefcake thing rolling.