Social Profiling № 11: German Shepherd

It's not just blogging that's been the victim of my tardiness over the past year (and by tardy I mean being too busy doing other things), it's also been the art itself.  Yes, I did a reasonable amount of stuff last year, but one thing that suffered was the occasional social media pieces I do.  that is, every two years I put out a call for people to put their name in a random draw, and those that get picked (4 of them) get pieces done by me, for free, within a set of parameters.  Last year the theme was 'fan', and people could say what they were a fan of, and then I'd paint it (for more on those, click facebook profiles at the bottom of this post).

This did not go as expected, with people being big fans of their kids, their dad, their potted plant, and so on.  Still fair's fair, so I threw them all in a hat and drew them anyway.  A year later and I have only finished the first of the four I drew (though I have just started on the second): A German Shepherd.

Social Profiling № 10: Headphone Fun

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention this year, so instead of prattling on about it I'll just get on with the post.

This is the last of this years Facebook Profile pictures, and given how long it's taken me to get through them this year I don't know if I'll be doing another set.  Certainly not next year, although I might still paint the occasional similar picture just for fun.  If you've no idea what I'm warbling about click here and work from the bottom up - all will be explained.

This latest one was one of the smoothest of the lot.  As a result there aren't all that many images in the following post, which is a shame in a way, but great for me as I've less to write.  Oh, and there's a short tale behind this one too.

Social Profiling № 9: Smile!

And here, finally, is the post I was planning to put up last week.  All the prep work on the images was done for that post, so this should go fairly quickly.

Before I begin though, I'm going to digress and mention (for my own future reference, as much as your general interest), that in the last week one of our cats has gone missing, and we have a large hole in the house boarded up with plywood from where the new sliding door was supposed to go in, but couldn't because of rot in a support beam.  The frustrating thing about the later being that the former could have come home, but would have no way of letting us know because his usual entrance is now covered with boards.  Bugger.

Oh, and a stray cat showed up at one point (possibly to relay a message from the missing one, which was useless since we don't speak cat), stayed over night but ran away when it was time to call animal control.  One of those weeks.

Anyway, enough about me, and on to the wonder of fake paint!

Social Profiling № 8: All in the Eyes

Well, this was embarrassing.  I'd started prepping for today's Social Profiling post, when I realised I hadn't written the last one! So now this is that and I'll write the new one later.  How did I miss one? Well, I painted it way back at the end of February, and as you may recall March was, well, a little full, so I honestly thought I'd already written the post, when in fact I'd not even prepped the images for it.   It's been that sort of year.

So, anyway, I'm getting to it now, just over 4 months later.  Oh, and I didn't post last week because it was a choice of painting the latest Social Profiling picture (not this one, remember?  I just mentioned that, try and keep up), or writing a post, and painting won.  Then I hurt my back, so that painting took longer than planned (in terms of days from start to finish, not actual hours spent).  OK, all up to speed now?  Good, lets look at this picture then.

Social Profiling № 7: Sunset Bear

It might be a puppy, but Sunset Puppy sounds vaguely rude to me for some reason so I'm pretending it's a bear.

It's been a while since I made one of these posts, mostly because I thought I was done with them.  If you want to read the preceding six you can go here and work from the bottom up.  If you'd rather skip six bland posts from history the basic premiss was this: ask for people on Facebook to volunteer for me to paint their picture. I got to choose the picture and the theme (if any), and four people, randomly chosen, would get a full best of my ability painting, and some of the others would get something too if I could be bothered.  Of the people that signed up I ended up painting seven of them, and it was quite fun.

This year (two years on) I decided to do it again.  Same message on facebook, and twice the number of people signed up.  Again the pictures were randomly chosen, although there were some surprising coincidences in the people who ended up getting picked.  This time I let people pick their own photos for me to do, and all of them will be painted with a more speedpaint mentality than before because, y'know, free work?  I'll get to the coincidences later, but here's the first of the paintings, which I did a few weeks ago.

Social Profiling № 6: Four's a Crowd

It's funny, it's been three weeks since I've posted anything, yet it seems much, much longer.  3 weeks isn't bad going in the grand scheme of things, right?  Truth is I don't know what I've been up to to fill those three weeks so full that it seems like a lot longer, but it has.  One thing I know is I've been unusually negative about my stuff of late (and if you know me much you'll know that that's pretty darn negative).  I've not been happy with much I've produced (with the exception of two sketches you'll see soon), and this is stuff I've been openly complimented on.  I take the compliment ('thanks!' I say) but I don't fully understand why I deserve to receive them. This is at work as well as at home.  But you didn't come here to read my moaning, you came here to look at pictures (I hope), so we'll pick this up later...  If you want to get up to speed on the Social Profiling story so far you can start here and work backwards.

Social Profiling № 5: Three's Company

If you're unfamiliar with the "Social Profiling" facebook experiment you can scroll down to the tags at the bottom of the post to catch up properly. I did the four initial profile pics as promised, but I still had a good number of people who wanted one, but didn't get one. As a compromise I decided more or less right off the bat that I would paint them anyway, but more directly from an existing picture, rather than inventing a new scenario to place them in as I did with the initial group. Then I got busy and didn't get a chance to do any. Time to catch up.

Unlike the initial four, these new portraits will all be done on a whim, with various things inspiring me to do them rather than saying "OK, I have 4 to do and 5 weeks to do them" as I did on the first set. This is nice if I'm not finding anything inspirational until a suitable picture or idea turns up.

A Musing 4: Stress and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I've been away for a while. Had you noticed? Poor May, no love for May. Poor blog, missed it's first birthday. Why? Well, therein lies a tale, and I'm limited in how much I can tell you. But it does lead to this current blog entry, and I'll post some speed paints and such in with it as examples, but, as the title may lead you to believe, it's all due to stress. Nothing to do with Motorcycles though - but a more meaningful title would get me in trouble at work...

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.

Social Profiling № 4: Annette

Up until last week I knew bugger all about She-ra. Actually, that's not entirely true; I knew that she existed (in a not existing because she's fictional kind of way), I knew roughly what she looked like, and I knew she was the Princess of Power (and Eternia) and sister of He-Man. How I knew even this is a mystery to me as I've never seen an episode of the cartoon, or seen one of the action figures (as far as I can recall). I have to wonder if she made guest appearances on He-Man and I know her from those, in much the same way as Dora the (bloody) Explorer and Go Diego Go (hell of a name that) turn up on each others shows and yell at each other for half an hour at a time while solving simple issues in the most complicated way imaginable*.

Anyway, I knew very little about her, but this is no longer the case thanks to Annette, as you will see...

Social Profiling № 3: Larry

If you've strolled into this post you can see what it's all about, and the previous related entries here (for Owain) and here (for Steve). OK, so hopefully everyone's now on the same page. Good.

I was hoping to get this posted about an hour ago, so it would count as an extra post for January, but sadly poor old January is now going to miss out on it due to a series of cockups. Actually only one cockup was responsible for the post's delay, the other two probably saved it from being even later (one was the loss of over an hours progress in New Vegas. Most upset about that I was).

Anyway, enough about all that rubbish. Hold on to your hats, it's time for Larry.

Social Profiling № 2: Steve

Quick recap: Painting four profile pics for four of my Facebook friends.  You can see the first here; along with a better explanation. This is the second.

Since that first post I've managed to crank out the third in the series, but I'm still only at the point of writing up the second.  Will I get the third written up tonight? Unlikely, but possibly tomorrow (more likely next week).  But what of the second? The one of Steve? The one I'm supposed to be talking writing about now?   Well, if you'll stop interrupting we'll get to see it.

Okay? All done with the fidgeting? Good, let's get to the pic.

Social Profiling № 1: Owain

Back at the start of the month there was a thing going around on Facebook. People would post something along the lines of "Paying it forward 2011. I will give something handmade by me to the first 4 people who reply, on condition that they repeat this message and do the same for their first 4 respondents." This popped up all over the place like a rather smelly chain letter, and struck me as being a bit, well, naff.

So I did my own which read "Who wants me to paint them a profile picture? I'll do four, two for the UK, two for the States if anyone wants one. There's a catch though - I get to pick the picture, and I can't guarantee it'll be any good. ;)
Anyone game? I'll do them over the next week or two (and unlike that paying it forward thing you don't have to do anything, not even use the picture if you hate it)."

I got 16 responses out of 140 friends. I don't know if that's good or not. Anyway, it's taken more than a couple of weeks, and I've only got two finished. I was going to speed paint them, but they ended up taking a bit longer each, and as a result they each get a post of their own. I randomly picked 4 of the respondents to do profile pics for (and it really was as random as I could make it) and started from the top of the resulting list of 4; my old chum Owain.