Dan Dos Santos is a Connecticut illustrator who has done work for a variety of commercial and editorial clients, including Boeing Aircraft, Scholastic, Ace Books, Penguin, Tor Books, UpperDeck and Wizards of the Coast.
His refined realist style allows him to create convincing images of fantastic subjects, including lively dragons, startling monsters, convincing wizards and fascinating and sometimes very human characters of all kinds.
He often uses a muted, carefully chosen palette, often with the color of the composition held within a controlled range, occasionally punched up with bright accents. Sometimes he will use a more intense palette, as in the image above.
The gallery on his site contains illustrations, sketches and gallery paintings. There are free wallpaper images in the “misc” section. Gallery thumbnails often have small links beneath them to details or preliminary sketches. Also, the “painting” gallery (but not the others) is linked to a second page with the “more” button at bottom.
There is an extensively detailed 17-page oil painting tutorial in PDF format in the “methods” section. In addition to the step-by-step walk through, it includes the palette, information on the selection of brushes and medium and even his process for photographing the finished work.
Dos Santos collaborates with Irene Gallo in running the Art Out Loud demo sessions at the Society of Illustrators.
