RYAN MURPHY

Ryan Murphy (b. 1979, Muskoka, ON, Canada) is a Peterborough based artist and illustrator. He has a lot of passion for pop culture and music, and these themes are very present in his artwork.

As a kid, he was always drawing, listening to music, playing retro video games, and enjoying the great outdoors. After many, many years later… not much has changed.
A man with a beard and mustache wearing a brown flat cap, a black jacket, and dark pants standing outdoors in front of a tree with yellow autumn leaves.

PROCESS

A detailed pencil drawing of Vecna from Stranger Things 
Ryan works in both traditional and digital mediums.

As a traditional artist, he uses a variety of different mediums, including: pencil, charcoal, pen & ink, pencil crayons, watercolour, gouache, acrylic, and airbrush. 

At the heart of every piece, Ryan always starts every painting with a traditional pencil sketch.
Drawing of a leopard with detailed spots on its fur, facing right, showing its profile with a neutral background. 
As a digital artist, Ryan likes to paint in Photoshop, but has also used Corel Painter in the past. He learned how to paint digitally in the early 2000's while attending college for graphic design. This was well before having useful and helpful YouTube tutorials to help you along your way.

A lot of Ryan's digital artwork starts with a traditional pencil sketch, scanned, then painted on the computer. A perfect example of this is seen the Stranger Things Vecna painting in his gallery. In that painting, there was pencil drawing, pen & ink drawing, and final digital painting.
A person is painting a portrait of Chucky, the doll from horror movies, on a canvas. The painting depicts Chucky's face with a stitched scar and bright red hair.