Still, last month was actually pretty good when it comes to speedpaints, with 6 to show, except it's actually sort of 14, for reasons. I'll get into that below. This month on the other hand I've done 4 so far to show next month. I might get to doing another, but maybe not. With the exception of the sketches though I think this brings me back up to date again (finally). I may be forgetting something though, but if I am I've forgotten (obviously), so I have no idea what it is. Okay, enough preamble, lets look at splotches of colour that look like things!
Time Taken: 165 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Kurt Russell as Jack Burton
I realised half way through painting this that I've been doing a sort of unofficial walk through 80's cinema during my time since I started Speedpainting. There were a couple of not very good ones early on referencing Die Hard, Robocop and Blade Runner, and then more recently I've covered The Last Starfighter and Terminator.
This one is from Big Trouble in Little China of course. I say of course, but there's every possibility that you, the reader, have not seen the movie, or even heard of it. I'm thinking back to when I saw the trailer to the Robocop reboot in the cinema, and in the row behind me were two 20 year olds who had never even heard of the original. I mean yeah, you've never seen it, but surely somewhere, somehow you'd have heard of it right? Internet Memes or something? Okay, well, never mind I guess.
BTILC is a fun movie, made at the height of the 80's 'Fun Movie' tidal wave, and it's also one of the more quotable movies of all time. The hook isn't really the Chinatown setting, it's that the protagonist Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) isn't really the hero, he just thinks he is. The film follows him around while the real hero (Wang Chi, played by Dennis Dun) is off doing his hero thing. To be fair Burton does end up defeating the villains, but it's more by luck than any kind of judgment. At one point Jack gets lipstick on his mouth without knowing it, and spends the next few scenes being all macho with a bright red mouth - hence the picture above.
So after all that explanation, I'll keep the process description fairly short. The pose was taken from a behind the scenes image of Russell speaking with the director (John Carpenter), but the head is taken from a screen-grab of the film itself. He does not have makeup on in the photo.
The painting itself was fairly straight forward. I used a 4x4 grid to get his pose about right, but it wasn't a lot of use for the headshot (I could have used another grid, but was trying to get the likeness without one). As a result a lot of the early stages were my trying to make his head look right. I did get a fairly caricatured version of him quite easily, but lots of moving features around and widening his head followed to get him more naturalistic looking.
Since this was done in Photoshop I used some layer FX to get the nice neon glow and blur in the background, and played with the channels to get a little fringing into the final picture. The background isn't completely abstract by the way, it's based on a statue that features prominently in the final act of the film, though you'll probably have to squint to make it out.
Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: This and that.
I'm trying to get into the habit of doodling ideas when I get them. I'm not really doing a good job of it so far, but this is an instance of that. The idea is to get an idea down fairly undiluted while it's still fresh in my mind, so that if I want to come back and make a real painting of it some time I can refer to what I was thinking originally rather than second guessing myself months down the line. You may note I don't have many original finished pieces yet - They'll happen eventually I hope, but that second guessing thing often gets me in a tangle before I even start, so I don't start. This is an effort to avoid some of that.
Anyway, this more or less speaks for itself. It's rough and ready, but I also used a very small amount of reference without copying directly from any of it. She looks a bit like Clara on Doctor Who, but that's just a coincidence since neither Clara or Jenna Louise Coleman were one of my references, though if I ever paint this properly she likely will be, because the sketch looks like her ;)
Time Taken: 170 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Not a lot.
This is another one that's not really based on anything particular, and it also didn't really turn out anything like I was expecting it to when I started. I don't even like it that much, but it did accomplish some things when it comes to learning, so I guess it did what it needed to. The thing I like least about it is her hair. If I was ever going to repaint this I would change her hair completely, or give her a helmet or something.
In the step my step you can see that originally I was going to give her a swimming cap type thing, and the lighting was going to be a lot more purple. In retrospect I should have stuck to my guns about both of those things. Other than that, the only thing of note is that I used some filters near the end to get the grimy post-apocalyptic look that I felt it needed. Oh, and I am quite proud of one thing; the facemask came out really well I think.
Time Taken: 20 Minutes each
Software: Photoshop
Based on: The images to the left.
I felt I should pull back a bit and focus on some aspects of my Speedpaints that I am terrible at. These include things I usually fix as I go along, but would benefit from if I got things more accurate early. In these three images I used a hard round Photoshop brush with no opacity. The pressure sensitivity was controlling the size of the brush instead.
This meant I had a challenge I don't usually have - getting things right straight off the bat. Usually if a colour is off a little I'll blend in a closer colour and then sample the result of the mix. This then becomes the colour I use on the next stroke, slowly getting closer to a result that I like. It's also the way I do blending - mix in a little of another colour, and then sample, paint, sample again, paint, and so on.
In this case I couldn't do that - each stroke had to be right (or as close as I could get it). Not first time - I'm not crazy, I was allowed to erase and undo, but much more accurate than I usually worry about. Of course mistakes that had me resorting to undo and erase took up time, and I'd limited myself pretty strictly to 20 minutes per study, and each image was quite small, fitting into a square of 256 x 256 pixels. These are the results, along with the images I based them on
Time Taken: 15 Minutes each
Software: Photoshop
Based on: The images to the left.
And here are some more - Unlike the previous bunch these ones are done with the Polygon Lasso and Fill tools. I'm trying to break the images up into their fundamental shapes. The accuracy isn't as high as I'd like because this is surprisingly tricky, especially with the even more limited time (15 minutes instead of 20). I also ran out of time before I got half the elements in the final one done (perspective always slows me down something terrible). Still these were valid experiments, and ones I'll probably do again some time.
Time Taken: 125 Minutes
Software: Paintstorm (120 Minutes) Photoshop (5 Minutes)
Based on: Photo of Shannyn Sossamon, found on Pinterest
So I bought a new art package to speedpaint with. It's brand new, and really, really cheap, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's not bad at all, especially for the price. Go show your support and buy a copy if you're into this sort of thing (or at least try it, which is free). The downside is that it is pretty early in the development process, so it's got some bugs still, and some features are missing that you might expect. It also ties itself to one computer, so you can't have it on your desktop and your laptop without buying it twice, which is a shame.
The image above had a few minutes spent on it in Photoshop too. This is the only place I'm showing this Photoshop treated version at the moment. You can see the less filtered version here, if the one in the step through isn't enough for you.
And really I don't have a lot to say about the process itself - it went fairly cleanly, and the most exciting thing about it (other than being with new software) was that I used a set of calipers for the measurements instead of a grid or other means. The calipers are fairly cool because I wanted plastic ones I could hold right up to the monitor without scratching it, and I've never been able to find any. The solution was really obvious once I thought about it for two minutes - I made some out of Lego pieces ;) Not used them since though - I should try to rectify that very soon.
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