Speed of the One Inch Punch

I had a lot of options for today's post, but finally decided to go with the good old Speedpaint roundup.  There are a fair number of them, but strangely almost all of them were done in the first half of the month, as the rest of the month was taken up with other projects (the last post being one of them).

Despite this, I've reached the goal of painting the equivalent of one speedpaint a week for this year.  48 of them.  Some of them were pointless of course (there's one of those this time too), but since I'm unlikely to not do another one before New Year I think the end result will still be a positive one.

OK, enough yapping, let's look at some painting.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: http://fav.me/d6o4naj (My Brother's selection)

So me and my Brother were having that little paintoff.  You may recall the Alien image from last time,  The alien was my pick for something to cover, while this one was his.  The rules were the same.  Paint it in Photoshop in 1 hour, use of grids is OK, and the only filters allowed are ones for blurring (I didn't use any filters).

As you can see from the stages, this one was fairly by the numbers.  I got a nice smokey background down pretty quickly, and then switched on a 4x4 grid to get the layout (the red blob), then switched it off and did the rest by eye.  Sorry for the compression on this one - JPEG really hates the color red.

As with last time, here's a comparison of the results - his on the right, mine on the left.

Time Taken: 5 minutes
Software: Photoshop

So I finally got a Cintiq (a type of graphics tablet that is also a monitor). It's very fancy, and quite pricey, but fortunately I got a slightly older model cheaply from one of the guys I work with as he was selling it to get a new monitor.  Score!

Anyway, this pointless doodle was what I did while I was setting up and calibrating it.  I'm calling it  a speedpaint for no other reason than I want a record of the first thing I did on the Cintiq, and if it's a speedpaint I'll always know where to find it.  Rubbish rationale, but take it or leave it.

Time Taken: 100 Minutes
Software: Artrage
Based on: Max, from the show Humans

Not the best likeness, but I'm assured he's recognisable to those who have seen the show.   It was painted in ArtRage on the Cintiq.  I haven't quite got it set up to work with the package in a way I feel comfortable with yet - this is a failing with the Cintiq software, rather than ArtRage, as ArtRage shortcuts start by holding space (not unreasonable), while Wacom insists that they should start with a CTRL, ALT or Shift key.  Humph.

This one is also not terribly exciting in the step by step.  I'm working a little rougher than usual, but not peculiarly so.  The main goal here (other than a good likeness, which worked out so-so) was a limited and muted palette, and I think I succeeded there.

Time Taken: 105 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Photo of Mr. Gerbik, a friends dog.

I said I'd paint this particular dog a very long time ago, but things kept coming up.  Finally I saw the photo this is based on, and loved it, so I thought I'd strike while the iron was hot.  Not much else to say about it, but his owner was rather taken with it.

The photograph was black and white, but I wanted to inject a little color into the speedpaint.  Since I know I'm not great at adding or changing colors on the fly I did an underpainting of strong colors, and then painted on top of this with semi transparent greys.  Since I often sample colours I need from similar ones already in the image this meant the colours got spread gently throughout the image as I went along.

I tried capturing this one as a timelapse video, but it failed miserably.  I did manage to capture a few frames from the video though, and it's from those that I made the progression image above.  It wasn't the only time this month I tried to capture a video, and not the only time it failed (I'll try the video route again sometime soon though).

Time Taken: 55 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: http://fav.me/d6ln4da

Odd thing about this one: I barely remember painting it.  I think I was trying to paint something using just the Palette Knife tool, because that is exactly how this was done, but I don't remember the process all that well.

Fortunately I do have some images of the process I've mostly forgotten.  I quite like how the hand behind her back turned out, but the one on her shoulder?  Erm, not so much.  Incidentally, there was another speedpaint between this one and the last, but I can't share it just yet - it may end up being used for something else, and I wouldn't want it spoiled.

Time Taken: 180 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Bruce Lee's posthumous appearance in Game of Death.

This is the other image I tried to record myself painting, but is all went south again.  I think I can only record 40 minutes or so of footage before it goes wonky, because the quick tests I did worked fine.  Anyway, that's my problem, not yours.  If just means the process image is a little lacking in images.

As a side note, the final image in this lineup is from the 170 minute mark, which is where I posted it to Facebook.  The more photographic effects were added when I was playing around with some of Photoshop's new blur tools, and took about 10 minutes.  I like how it looks, so it's the new normal now.

Time Taken: 50 minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Nada

Finally, here's a random sketch of a future police woman.  I don't like it all that much, but it has some potential ideas for future things.  It's not so much a speedpaint as a digital speedsketch.  I don't have a category for that though, so I'm including it under the speedpaints instead.