A Welcome Return to Speed

It's been a crazy few weeks. I didn't mention this in my last couple of posts, but the company I work for filed for bankruptcy and put most of it's assets up for sale. I won't go into the details (You can look up THQ bankruptcy if you have an interest), but suffice to say it was a stressful time all round, and while I still have a job (under a different parent company, but still with the same team in the same place), many people didn't, and that makes me very unhappy.
And given all that stress art has not been at the forefront of my mind. Even so I've sketched more this month than at any time since September, and given how little I'd drawn in December I felt I may as well hold onto that for a post in early February.  Which leaves us with the few speedpaints I've managed to cobble together over the last two months.  My last speedpaint prior to this was also in September, and I have no interest in leaving it that long again as the quality level drops sharply if I don't do them for too long.

Time Taken: 35 Minutes
I've held off posting this for a while as I was trying to get the original photographers permission, but have had no response (my guess is they're busy).  So after some debating I've decided it doesn't look so much like the original photograph as to result in issues of copyright, and I'm just going to show it anyway.  It's based on one of hepiefull's wonderful wildlife photographs; you can find the original here.   The only really interesting thing about this image beyond that was that I did it in SketchBook Pro rather than Artrage.  I should do that more often - it prevents me from falling back on comfort methods while painting.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
A few of my friends say this is one of their favourite speedpaints from me, but it really doesn't work much for me.  It's based on a photo from stockness, and looks pretty much nothing like her, and didn't achieve what I was aiming for in the first place (which was not a likeness but a fabric and pose study).  I like stockness apparently; I've drawn her before back in December 2011.  I suspect at some point I'll have to do a painting that specifically sets out to do her some kind of justice, rather than just mangling the poor girls features.  Oh, and this one is done in Photoshop, which I should really use more often.

Time Taken: 65 Minutes
I have no idea why this one took so long, and even less idea of how I mangled it as much as I did (The perspective on his face is all ganked up, much like the Riddick picture from the last speedpaint post).  Still, its got a colour pallete I can get behind, so that's something.  It's based on a photo from malenudereference at DeviantArt, but they seem to have closed their account so I can't link you to the original.  We're back to Artrage for this one, and for the rest.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
It's a caricature of Neil Gaiman, and not a terribly good one.  He looks almost as much like Serverus Snape as he does Neil Gaiman.  Gaiman has an interesting face though, so I'm fairly sure I'll be revisiting his visage sooner or later. In the unlikely even he ever sees this blog: sorry Neil.  For all that though I like the more purple/red colour scheme of this one, and how it almost looks as though it actually is painted on canvas.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
I've had the picture this is based on saved to my hard drive for at least 10 years, and probably more.  I have long since forgotten why I saved it, or where it came from, and by today's standards it would probably be considered barely more than a thumbnail (it's 640x480).  I stumbled across it a few days ago and said "Ohh, that'll be good practice" and decided to speedpaint it.  Mostly I did it as practice for perspective, which I think we've already established I'm terrible at, but I also liked the less standard use of orange and blue in a picture (you see that combination all the time in film posters and stuff, but not generally like this).  The result still has some issues with the perspective, but it's a lot better than that Porsche I was trying to paint a while back.

And that's your lot.  I'm making a promise to myself to get back into the one-speedpaint-a-week mode ASAP (and by ASAP I mean as of now), and also to post some more video game things over the next few months - I've already covered RFA, but there's still SR, SR3, RFG and Punisher to cover.  That's assuming anyone wants to see things from those (Well, I'll do them anyway, you don't have to read them, right?).

Next post will probably be the bumper sketch post from December and this month - Next weekend with any luck.