Sam Santala - Concept Artist | Illustrator

I decided to spend some of my spare time the last few weeks doing some armour studies. This had initially started as just a bit of practice on the side, but after some really positive feedback and some requests for a tutorial I ended up making an entire collection of texture spheres and cleaned up a lot of the studies so people could better understand how to paint these types of things too. Firstly we have the finished studies themselves. I had tried gathering a few different types of armour specifically to understand both their design, and their material properties, so we have things from clean plate mail to tanned leather and rusted metal. These took some time on their own, but I then decided to create material spheres for as select few textures. For those of you who haven't come across material spheres before, they are used as a way of studying and showing how light works on various types of textures, it gives you all the variables of having a strong focal li...

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that my work is going to be featured inside Spectrum 24 ! If you're unsure what Spectrum is, it's a yearly collection of art created by the best concept artists, illustrators and painters in the industry, with this year being their 24th edition. Being featured in publications like this is the kind of thing I've been dreaming of since I first started painting, and I'm genuinely so humbled to have my work selected to go alongside the truly fantastic artists that go into Spectrum. This feels like some of the most encouraging news I've had in a long time and it's totally made my day. And I hope you all take a look at some of the fine work the other artists who've been selected produce, I would argue they are objectively amazing. Spectrum 24 Entries Love, -Sam

Big post this time! So this is the last few weeks of the Schoolism course combined into one. Our first task was to study elephants, both Indian and African, so we could learn the subtle differences in their anatomy (there's more thasn just their ears you know :P) Here's what I created with the appropriate notes: It was really interesting to do, as I certainly underestimated the number of anatomical differences myself before starting this. Next we had to take another animal and combine it with any of the previous studies thus far. I chose to take these elephants, and combine them with a Moose. Creating a Mooslephant ! And finally we had to create an illustration using this creature. I chose to try and tell the story of characters from Magic: the gathering. Specifically a group of Kor as they tried to tame this wild beast. If you've seen my development process before you should be familiar with the steps I've taken to make this illustration: In...

Because there are simply so many creature studies I'm creating for this course, I've decided to filter down the number of those studies that I'll put onto my blog. For this post I'll briefly sum up the two weeks worth of topics. Firstly there was the dog/dinosaur studies. As I said from the last post, dinosaurs come in two varieties (bird-hipped and lizard hipped). That week was all about studying another mammal, and combining it with the bird-hipped dino that my previous study didn't cover. Below are the studies and final product: This combination turned out quite well I think! Taking the thin aspects of the Russian wolfhound and combining it with th4e relatively stocky Parasaurolophus was quite the challenge though. --- And for the following week was about ungulates (animals that walk on the tips of their toes) and combining those. I could have chosen any two ungulates, but I chose a Shire horse and Dorset Down sheep because I knew they ...

During this weeks lesson I spent my time studying birds and their ancient ancestors, Theropods. I had taken a while to really try and understand how the anatomy of birds can be traced back down the evolutionary tree and so did detailed studies of examples of both, making notes as I went. As you can see I studied bones, muscles, posture, and wingspans. It definitely revealed a lot about how theropods transitioned into the birds we see today. Here's a closer look at some of my notes: Unfortunately I couldn't find the species of the deceased bird I was referencing In the image for the theropod you'll notice how I've highlighted the pelvis of the creature. This is because this is what defines a theropod as it is 'lizard-hipped., This is to create a stronger support for it's leg muscles. As opposed to 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs such as the triceratops, who have closer hips to allow for more digestive tracks to break down the large amounts of  ve...

This weeks assignment was to focus more on the earlier stages of evolutionary life so I could grasp how anatomy developed over time. I was tasked with sketching some studies, and combining a fish with either an amphibian or a reptile. Fish/Amphibian Hybrid Fish Studies Reptile/Amphibian Studies After I'd gotten the basics of these creatures sketched down I decided to try going more in-depth on their anatomy. This wasn't required but I felt it would help me really make better decisions on the final piece. Fish/Amphibian Anatomy What made this especially interesting for me was the fact that I knew most creatures followed the same basic plan when it came to their anatomy. But fish and amphibians turned out to be wildly different to what I expected. Amphibians (Salamanders specifically) lacked a ribcage, and fish had their pelvis right near the front of their bodies when I was expecting it to be near the end. With this though I knew I could tackle the fin...

I'm trying to make use of every spare moment I have to try and push my artwork just a bit more. So during the end of my lunch-breaks I've dedicated about 30 minutes a day to just trying to work on portraits as rendering faces is something of a weak area.   And because I had some spare screenshots I also made a quick progress GIF in case people would like to see the process.   I'll definitely be doing more, but I may just post a select few on here. You can be sure to see them all as I make them over on my Twitter: HERE