A Balance of Speed and Quality

I'm somewhat amazed to find it's been almost two months since I last did a Speedpaint update. Unfortunately I don't have that many good pieces to show, but I do have a lot of awful ones. You see, I don't post every speedpaint I do. Oh, I post the bad ones - there's plenty of evidence to that fact, but I also start a lot of speedpaints that I realise are dreadful early on and then don't bother to finish, or that get interrupted and I don't get back to, or I just realize I'm not feeling it and stop. Usually I'll post them anyway, but a handful have slipped through the net. Today I'll gather them up and post them to get them out of the way - an admission that I probably won't get back to them so I can move along with a clean conscience that I've been true to the mandate of the blog. To make up for the horror to follow you can see a couple of nicer ones though, bringing the speedpaints up to date.
The Good
These are recent one's I'm relatively pleased with:

Time Taken: 25 Minutes
Just a quick sketch with no reference. Quite like the tone of it, although the brushwork could do with some refinement.

Time Taken: 1 hour
This is actually part of a much bigger stock photo by jademacalla on Deviantart. Jade does lots of seriously awesome stock photography - generally himself (I'm guessing it's him) dressed and posing like an action hero. He's good at it - almost always looking badass rather than a scrawny Bruce Willis wannabe. Anyway, this one was a nice quiet one, which I liked, but got caught up in painting just his head - That's fine, it leaves the door open for a more finished piece, and I learned a surprising amount, so it's all good.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
Another reference-less piece, this time in colour of course. Not much to say about it really, it has some issues but isn't dreadful. The hair turned out quite nicely.

Time Taken: 2 Hours
A little long for real classification as a SpeedPaint (by my own definition anyway), but I don't have an issue with stretching the rules from time to time. This one is unusual for more than just the time spent on it, it's also the first ArtRage piece I've done with just (or even primarily) the airbrush tool, and it's one of the rare pieces I've done smaller than the native res of the screen. The preview isn't much smaller than the final image. If you don't know what this is a picture of then you've never seen Robocop clearly. This is ED-209, the precursor of the titular cop (sort of). My Brother suggested I paint it when I was fishing for ideas; I think it turned out pretty well.


The Bad
Best not to talk about these all that much, just show with a quick comment.

Time taken: 55 Minutes
There are elements of this I like, but when compared to how the picture should look (in my head you understand, this is not from reference, which is probably part of the issue) it's dreadful.

Time Taken: 15 Minutes
This could have gone some interesting places if I'd given it more time, but my body decided it was time for bed at this point, and who was I to argue. I might reuse the colour scheme or subject some time, but probably not together.


The Ugly
Really, I'm not saying anything about these at all (other than how long I wasted on them). They're not complete, not even approaching a presentable state - you get to see them anyway (very little click to zoom here - what you see when you click is barely more than is shown here).

Time Wasted: 45 Minutes

Time Wasted: 20 Minutes

Time Wasted: 40 Minutes (yes, really)