Sketching for the Imagination: Helen Norcott

Helen Norcott is a freelance environmental concept artist who loves speedpainting and recently completed a year long sketch-a-day project...

From an early age I loved video games and art, so, naturally I chose to study design and illustration at university. While these were great topics to study my love of concept art still interested me more. I found myself drawn to environmental art most of all which led to me to my current freelance career.

I've spent the last year working on my sketch-a-day project, where I painted a speedpainting every day of the year, with the goal of improving my rendering and composition skills. Ultimately I would love to see my artwork be part of something bigger and all my current work is done with that dream in mind.

While much of my artistic time is used on freelance work I still find time to create art work for fun. Art was always fun at a young age and I like to think I've kept that feeling going to this day. I speedpaint and draw thumbnails for fun but I've also branched out into traditional art mediums like acrylics and watercolours. I've also found time to do some writing as a means to inspire my future artwork. Keeping busy with art is a big part of what keeps me creative.

Daily speedpainting #124 – experimentation with custom shapes & the lasso tool

Inspiration & ideas

I like to theme my work around the idea of "the traveller,” adventuring in undiscovered landscapes. When someone views my artwork I like them to feel as though they too are seeing this place for the first time. I ground my designs in reality with just enough "rule of cool” to inspire the viewer to wish they were there in that world.

Daily speedpainting #298 – A sky and cloud speedpainting. My chance to paint fluffy clouds in some lovely golden hour lighting

Materials

The majority of my sketches are digital, so my main tool is my Intuos. As for software, I mostly use Photoshop. Recently I have been exploring traditional techniques like acrylics, watercolours and good old fashioned pen and paper, as I want to improve my skills in many areas.

Daily speedpainting #337 – My mystery travellers cross paths with a shady merchant in this little bit of building practice

Daily speedpainting #286 – A quick speedpainting playing with light and dark contrast

Sketching techniques

Keeping my painting loose and brushy is a big part of my speedpainting process. I start with big, chunky shapes to block in the composition and refine the details later where needed. I use a few basic thumbnails to find the shapes I like and to explore different views of the scene. When the composition feels right I take the piece forward by gradually adding more texture and refinement until I'm happy with the level of detail.

Daily speedpainting #349 – A quick speedpainting of my travellers on their journey through a winter landscape. These quick sketches teach me to capture the scene with a few brush strokes as possible

Related links

See more of Helen Norcott's work on her Artstation page
Get yourself a copy of Sketching for the Imagination: Characters from the store