Illustrating Resource: Wacom イラストレーター Live Painting YouTube Videos

Today's resource post highlights a playlist of "live painting" videos that Wacom has posted to YouTube using its "wacomcl" user account. These 30+ videos, each speed up several times to condense hours worth of work into minutes worth of video, show several well-known Japanese anime-style artists creating illustrations from sketch to finished piece using a Cintiq monitor (which would be Wacom's pecuniary interest in making these videos).  The real value in watching these videos is the unique insight they can give into the work processes of the individual artists, and how much variety in approach and technique exists among them - points of differentiation that contribute directly to each artist's distinctive style. 

On an even more basic level, it can reassure an aspiring artist to see that even professionals whose work appears on book and game covers and even large advertisements in Japan draw their amazing illustrations one line at a time, and even resort to erasing when the lines they've laid down aren't quite working.  In this way, these videos have a similar benefit to those posted by Brandon Sanderson:  they offer a peek at the actual act of creation for artistic works that, when viewed solely as a finished piece, seem superhuman in achievement.  Witnessing these creators do what they do to realize their works is both awe-inspiring - the skill and aesthetic eye involved is apparent even at break-neck speeds - and encouraging.