Painting has never been my strong suit, and I tend to stick with watercolors and pastels, and the occasional gouache. But I've always been fascinated with and admired so much art used for pulp novel and comic covers, especially the work of Emanuele Taglietti, who did most all the covers of a favorite comic of mine, Sukia.

You can see some select covers here, but of course there's plenty of nudity, sexy stuff, and violence, so be warned.

I would absolutely love it if someone out there with this skill could share it with me in the form of a tutorial video. I prefer to work in Clip Studio Paint, but just about anything would work, as long as it's well-explained or at least clear enough from the video and its approach. If it's speedpainting, please explain how you do it, because speedpainting tends to be…not much help due to the speed at which it's presented.

I've looked all over and haven't found anything like Taglietti's work, or really anything pulp-like. I think it's probably an acrylic approach with a stunning technique used to make every figure appear so vivid and real, but without the overwrought “photorealistic” nonsense I see in excess lately.

In advance, thank you! I hope someone can come up with something, and I will absolutely be sharing this video with every artist I know, because all of us do want to learn.

That's very 1970s style work XD
For that the main thing you NEED is a life model. I don't even think those were done with photos.

This work looks to me like he did detailed life drawings of the poses and also took photos for reference and then painted it.

People don't often work like that now. This was high speed, high volume work, with old methods.

It is indeed high-volume, high-speed work as the artist was working heavily in erofumetti at the time.

However, neither he nor I have the option of life models at the moment, and I don't really need that.

In any case, I'd still very much appreciate any sort of video or written tutorial anyone can do. This sort of approach was a very fast-paced commercial one, from the 30s to the 80s, and I would love to be able to get my mind and creative flow around the process. It's one of the few techniques and approaches I have simply never seen covered in any medium.

I'd say to look for videos on Youtube of all the noted illustrators from that time. You might find a documentary vid on on explaining their process.

I don't know if this will help, it's a timelapse video of illustrator Don Maitz working in paint. He was a famous illustrator from the 1970s and 80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf__39WhmJ8

Just a thought, it's noted in the article that he often used likenesses from horror films of the time and had started work in film. He might have used stills and publicity shots from various movies.

There were some pretty grisly and sexy shots because this was the period of Mario Bava, Jesse Franco and Hammer.

Great stuff! You could use photo reference to get close to this but the main effect you need here is hard to achieve. It's loose, expressive brushwork dashed onto the page with confidence and precision - no smooth, featureless gradations here. Every stoke in the figure work for instance, not only works to shade, but follows every contour of musculature as if the artist is brushing paint directly onto the model.

I think he's also painting dark to light. That is, laying down a mid tone, or several mid tones across the canvas and painting the lighter tones over that. The lightest areas will be those with the thickest paint applied - the opposite of watercolour painting. You can do this digitally too although obviously your paint won't get any thicker! You can use whatever you like for linework but you'll need natural media/bristle style brushes to block in one or more neutral mid tones, before building up the colour with finer brushes over that. For a more dramatic effect choose a less neutral, more saturated base colour. You want your brushes to have some transparency too so the undertones show through. Save the impasto for the lightest areas.

As for tutorials, I'm afraid I haven't seen any that do this.

e: Check out the second picture in that page you linked - the one with the champagne in an ice bucket. Look at the towel(?) underneath and you can clearly see strokes of white paint on top of the neutral tone below. The best way to see what's going on is to look for the least worked areas.

Ironscarf wrote:
It's loose, expressive brushwork dashed onto the page with confidence and precision - no smooth, featureless gradations here.

…

Thank you so much for your post! It helped me organize it in my mind, if that makes sense. I think I could play with technique now and figure out a way to do it my way. I really and truly appreciate you breaking it down from what you see – this sort of painting has always eluded me in terms of process, so I was never able to really understand it in my mind.

And bravo1112, you've hit the nail right on the head! This was the time of so many classics, especially in Italian horror and suspense. Taglietti used actress Ornella Muti (Princess Aura in Flash Gordon, who still looks gorgeous today) as a basis for his Sukia. You can really see the resemblance, once you know that!

I have such a profound love and respect for Taglietti's work. It's daunting at times because every artist tends to have a technique and medium – or a couple – where they're strongest, and the rest not so much! I'll try to experiment with this a bit later, when I'm working on the day's tasks. But if anyone finds a video or written instructional, or even can point me to a book, I'd be immensely grateful!

Hi hushicho,

YouTube has got a ton of instruction videos on creating comics and using Clip Studio Paint
Check out these posters:

Peter Draws
mikeymegamega
McKay & Gray
Paige Lavoie
Proko
Abel Art
Whyt Manga
Marc Brunet
struthless

I don't have a video to share, but I think i can help point out the sort of things you can keep in mind to help you in order to get the effect that you may want.

1,) Whats the story? I think the best way to go about it would be to first come up with a narrative. If you look at any of those pieces, they are stories contained in themselves. they have sets and their characters are full of expression not just through their faces, but their whole bodies. That's part of the allure!

2.)Who are the actors? So for that I would also recommend having some references to go off of as well. Take into account their silhouettes. is their body language recognizable from just their silhouette? make it dynamic and as captivating as you can. this sort of art isnt about being subtle.

3.) Atmosphere through shadow and color contrast- Also consider light source. The way light and shadows fall have a big impact on the atmosphere of the piece. Chip the figures right out of the darkness if you have to do so.

And color. Take a look at those colors. They can be pretty saturated and there are almost sections dedicated to different blotches of contrasting colors. Blues, reds, purples, greens, oranges. all except the figures in focus are painted this way which helps to make them look all the more like juicy, vulnerable peaches in a dangerous world.

The strength of Taglietti's work comes from a strong understanding of the principles of painting, as opposed to the unique aspects of a particular style or medium. The principles underlying good painting are, of course much harder to master than just a technique.

I watch a ton of videos on Schoolism, which has lectures and demos given by some of the top illustrators in the field. These are paid videos, but I personally think the price is dirt cheap compared to what I have learned from watching them. They are having a sale on a one year subscription right now.

(By the way: I'm not affiliated with Schoolism in any way. I just find their content very helpful)