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.

Terry

Me and Terry go way back.  Waaaaaay back, not as far as Stu, but I've known him for at least a decade.  Terry was with me the day I bought my first Wacom tablet back in 2000 (though I doubt he remembers) and it just so happens that tablet is still working just fine, so it's somewhat fitting that I painted his portrait with it.  Terry has a daughter now who's somewhat younger than the tablet, and he asked me to paint this particular picture (after I complained I didn't like any of the ones he had on facebook).  I don't usually do specific requests, but since I've known him so long, and since he actually gave me the actual photograph to work from I felt it would be rather mean to say no.

As usual you can click the images for largoramavision.

So, I don't think I did as nice a job on his daughter as I would have liked, but she is recognizable, as is Terry.  I think I went most awry with he mouth (I think it's a bit small) and her ear (it's a bit big).  The lighting worked out quite well though, and I think I did a really good job on Terry's right eye (left on the picture) and forehead.  The picture took quite a while longer than most of these since I was painting two people rather than one, which also means I have more step by step images than usual:

Kelly

So Kelly is a very close friend of my wife's.  I also happen to work with her husband (though not alongside him, just in the same building) and her Son and Daughter are (usually) good friends with my Son.  She's good people, really that's all you need to know.  This picture doesn't do her any justice by the way, but is obviously Kelly if you know her.

So, not a great deal to say about the picture.  The turquoise in the background was added because it's her favourite colour, and also because the picture needed a little something to make it pop.

Elizabeth

You've seen Elizabeth before if you're a regular follower of the blog, she was in the UDraw event post from last year. This one is (I think) a much better picture, but oddly looks less like her. No point prattling on about her here when you could go and read that :)

Not happy with lots of things about this picture, but I was trying a new technique; using pretty much just the new features of the pallete knife tool in the latest ArtRage update.  The exception was for the jellyfish behind her which was done over the oils using a wet marker pen.  Worked out OK, but her hairline is all wrong (I really have to work on hair, I'm rubbish at painting it without spending far longer on it than the rest of the picture ;)  Why Jelly fish?  She studied to become a marine biologist, loves sea life and had a picture of her taken in front of a tank filled with them. Obvious really, right?  You'll note in the progression below that I started from a pencil sketch, rather than a digital one as I normally would.

So, now those are out of the way, back to moaning...  except I won't, because mere seconds after I wrote my moan at the top I saw the following pop up on facebook (and thanks to Marcus for bringing it to my attention, and Ira for saying it).  It pretty much puts me in my place ;)

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

 ― Ira Glass