Muddy Colors: Where Working Fantasy Illustrators Actually Share Their Process
In January 2026, Greg Manchess published a post on Muddy Colors titled "Artemis II is Go For Launch". He had spent nearly two years working with NASA's crew to design the mission patch for Artemis II, the first crewed lunar flyby of the Artemis programme. "If you told 14-year-old me, riveted to the family television set during the Apollo 11 mission, that I'd be here, I think I could have flown to the moon on my own energy," he wrote. This is what Muddy Colors does that no other art blog manages: it gives you working professionals talking about real, current projects, in their own voices, with the kind of detail that only comes from someone who was in the room.
Also in January 2026, Donato Giancola published "Interior Illustrations: To Green Angel Tower", sharing his process for illustrating Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy for Grim Oak Press. He walked through rough sketches to final oils, credited his models by name, and discussed the challenge of selecting 12 images from a novel with too many visual moments to capture. In February 2026, he posted the cover art process for the same book, describing the pressure of working in the shadow of Michael Whelan's original cover and the two months of constant labour the oil painting required.
In October 2025, Manchess published "Painting Sleepy Hollow", documenting his illustrated edition of Washington Irving's tale for Fablelistik Editions. He filled an entire October sketching and dreaming up images.
This is a blog where working illustrators share what they are making right now, how they are making it, and what they are learning from the process. It has been doing this since 2011.
Who Writes Muddy Colors?
The founding and core contributors include Greg Manchess, known for his painterly, historically grounded illustration style and his work for clients including National Geographic, Time, and major book publishers. In 2026, he is designing NASA mission patches. Donato Giancola creates technically masterful oil paintings for fantasy and science fiction book covers, collected by major institutions. In 2025 and 2026, he is illustrating Tad Williams' trilogy for Grim Oak Press. Rebecca Guay brings a distinctive watercolour-influenced style that has made her one of the most recognisable artists in fantasy illustration.
These are not former illustrators teaching workshops. They are working professionals with active commissions, current deadlines, and recent project credits. This is the single most important thing about Muddy Colors: the people writing it are the people doing the work.
The Content: What You Actually Get
Technique articles are specific, personal accounts of how individual contributors approach technical challenges. These are not generic tutorials. A technique article by Manchess or Giancola provides insight into the thinking and practice of artists who have solved the same problems at the highest professional level. When Giancola shares his process for painting 12 interior illustrations for a fantasy novel, he includes the false starts, the reference photography, the model credits, and the compositional decisions that went into each piece.
Career articles address the practical realities of building and sustaining a professional illustration career: approaching art directors, pricing work, building a portfolio that gets you hired, navigating the transition from student to professional. This content comes from artists who have actually navigated these challenges, not from career coaches.
Process articles document the creation of specific pieces from initial concept through finished illustration. The Artemis II patch post shows dozens of sketches and colour studies. The To Green Angel Tower post shows rough sketches through final oils. This is as close as you can get to looking over a master illustrator's shoulder without being in their studio.
Inspiration and influence articles discuss the historical and contemporary artists who have shaped the contributors' work, providing context for understanding the traditions that inform contemporary fantasy and science fiction illustration.
Insider tip: Use the category filters in the sidebar to sort by contributor. If you want to study Manchess's approach, filter by his name and read his posts chronologically. You will get a multi-year view of how one illustrator's process evolves across different projects, from Sleepy Hollow to NASA mission patches.
How It Compares
Against Illustration Age, which is a curated showcase for professional illustrators seeking client work, Muddy Colors is more about process and career content. Illustration Age shows you finished work. Muddy Colors shows you how the work gets made.
Against Lines and Colors, which covers illustration alongside fine art, comics, and concept art through curation, Muddy Colors is written by working illustrators rather than a curator. Lines and Colors gives you one viewer's perspective. Muddy Colors gives you multiple practitioners' perspectives.
Against Gurney Journey, which is one master painter's daily investigation of painting and visual science, Muddy Colors is a group blog with multiple professional voices. Gurney goes deeper on colour science and plein air. Muddy Colors goes deeper on the business and career realities of professional illustration.
Against YouTube process videos, Muddy Colors offers written process articles that include more decision-making context than most videos. A video shows you what happened. A Muddy Colors post tells you why the illustrator made specific choices.
The Archive
The archive spans more than a decade and thousands of articles. It covers technique, career, process, inspiration, and the business of professional illustration. The quality is consistently high because the contributors are consistently professional.
The archive is searchable by category and contributor. If you are working on a specific challenge, such as pricing a commission or approaching an art director, the archive probably has multiple articles that address it directly from different contributors' perspectives.
The Community
Muddy Colors has built a community of working and aspiring professional illustrators who engage through comments and social media. The comment sections are notably higher quality than most art blog comments because the audience is primarily professionals and serious students, not casual browsers.
The newsletter provides regular updates on new content. For illustrators who want to stay connected with the professional illustration community, it is one of the more valuable subscriptions available.
The Limitations
The blog focuses specifically on fantasy and science fiction illustration. If you work in editorial illustration, children's book illustration, or commercial illustration outside the fantasy/SF genre, the content will be less directly relevant. The technique articles are broadly applicable, but the career content is genre-specific.
The blog runs on a standard CMS with a functional but unremarkable design. It is not a modern multimedia experience. Some posts are text-heavy with limited imagery, which can feel dated compared to Instagram and YouTube process content.
The contributor roster has changed over the years. Some original contributors post less frequently now, and the blog's output depends on which contributors are active at any given time. Post frequency can be inconsistent.
Who Should Read Muddy Colors?
Aspiring fantasy and science fiction illustrators will find the most directly relevant career and technique content available anywhere for free. The contributors have built the careers you are trying to build, and they are sharing how they did it.
Working professional illustrators benefit from the process articles and the community of peers. Seeing how other professionals handle commissions, deadlines, and creative challenges is valuable at any career stage.
Art students interested in illustration as a career get a realistic picture of what professional illustration involves. The honesty about rejection, creative blocks, and financial pressures is more useful than any career counselling session.
Artists in other genres will find the technique articles broadly applicable but the career content less relevant. If you paint landscapes or portraits, the colour mixing and composition content transfers. The pricing and client management content is genre-specific.
Final Verdict: Who Is This Actually For?
Muddy Colors is the best free resource for aspiring and working fantasy and science fiction illustrators. It is written by people who are doing the work, not teaching it from a distance. The process articles from Manchess's NASA patch and Giancola's Tad Williams illustrations in 2025 and 2026 demonstrate that the blog is still delivering current, relevant, high-quality content from active professionals. If you want to understand what professional illustration actually looks like from the inside, this is where you go.
Visit muddycolors.com to browse the archive and subscribe to the newsletter. For related resources, check out our profiles on Illustration Age, Lines and Colors, and Concept Art World.
