And Then Two Come Along At Once!

It's been ages since I've done a speedpaint, but it's been even longer since I actually posted any. Time to make amends.

In fact I have far more to post than I thought I would. In my addled brain I was under the impression that I'd posted some at the end of January, but I didn't. Given this, and the similar comments I've made in the last two posts I have to assume I had a particularly vivid dream where I went on a posting frenzy. You know, the sort where you wake up and think it actually happened? Happened to me yesterday in fact; I dreamed it was Monday, woke up, panicked because I was late for work and then realised it was Saturday. Typical.

Time Taken - Various (Between 2 and 20 each)

Various studies for a painting I was planning on before the world went mad. I may come back to it one day, but for now I may as well post the studies before I forget all about them. Yes, that's predominantly Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

This one was an experiment into painting flesh tones and bounce light and things.  I didn't "finish" it as you can see, but I thought it came out quite well anyway.

Time Taken - 50 Minutes

We had a dog randomly turn up at our house back in January. Cute little King Charles Spaniel looking lost. We (well, my Wife and Son) did a tour of the neighborhood looking for his owners but no dice. Son wanted to keep the dog, but of course we had to call Animal Control and have it taken away. A note to non-Americans, "Animal Control" sounds like they come with flamethrowers and wearing hazmat suits yelling for people to "stand back from the animal", this is not the case - the animal control guy was very nice, wore a shirt and drove a small white van.

Anyway, I dubbed him Toby while he was here due to his resemblance to my friends late dog, but it turned out his name was Butterscotch. I don't know about you, but if I was a boy dog and my owners called me Butterscotch I'd run away too. Incidentally, I think this is my best speed paint so far. Your mileage may vary.

Time Taken - 30 Minutes

This is what happens when I speedpaint with no reference of any kind. Not the worse thing ever, but not very inspiring either.

Time Taken - 10 Minutes

I took my glasses off to clean them and caught my reflection in the monitor - decided to try painting it without the specs.  Not a great work of art, but you can tell it's me at least.

Incidentally, I had my eyes tested recently and the optician asked me what the first row I could read without my glasses was.  I couldn't read any of them, so he scrolled down and down, the letters getting bigger as he went.  Eventually he ran out of letters to scroll through and I still couldn't read any - just saw a big blurry blob.  Put my glasses back on, and what's on the screen that I can now read?  A gigantic 'E' and nothing else.  How sad.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

An experiment using the pallete knife in ArtRage - 4 blobs of paint smeared around for 45 minutes (plus a couple of minor touchups on the face and highlights).

I actually took a note of the source for this one (I usually forget too, terrible I know).

Time Taken - 45 minutes

Not a particularly good one, but quite relaxing to paint. More experimenting. This time painting without zooming or panning, and mixing the majority of the colour on the canvas itself. I may do a better piece from the same source one day. It's from a screengrab of Project Runway if you're curious, but I don't remember which one - it's probably from one of Tom and Lorenzo's awesome dissections of the show though.

Time Taken - 40 Minutes

This was a study I did right before starting on Annette's profile pic.  I'd never drawn or painted a horse before that I can recall, so it seemed like a good idea to have a couple of dry runs.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

Based this on a picture that came up in a search for the word Stall (I was doing the horse research at the time). Liked it, decided to paint it, but it was pretty late so I gave up before I had to paint all the people. Sorry people. Here's the link to the reference picture.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

March 1st is St. David's Day; the Patron Saint of Wales.  Since I'm Welsh this is a day that has some significance, and, since you probably aren't aware, the Red Dragon is the symbol of wales (I believe Wales is the only country with a dragon on its official flag - it's a red one of course).  Anyway, painted this on February 28th to celebrate the occasion.

And here's another link to the source image (I must be getting better at making a note of them)

That's your lot for today.

Oh, okay, one more thing.  One of the lovely people on the Art Rage forums called Moosie was asking for advice regarding a portrait of his Granddaughter, so of course I had to stick my nose in and give an example.  Here's the resulting sketch.  I'm posting it here because I quite like it and I've yet to think of where else I could sensibly put it on the blog.

And I think that's something quite nice to end on, don't you?