Time Taken:40 Minutes
Software: Art Rage Studio Pro
On occasion I like to just paint without any reference (or at least minimal reference, such as a photograph of something else entirely). This was one of those times. The result is not great, especially so for taking 40 minutes, but there is a reason for the extended time taken over this one, and that's that Microsoft are gits. How is Microsoft responsible? Well, every copy of Windows comes with tablet drivers installed. This makes sense, especially if you're using a tablet PC (there would be no way to turn them on if they weren't already), but it doesn't makes sense that these are so difficult to disable, especially when using a third party graphics tablet such as a Wacom (which I am). You have to disable the various parts of the Windows ones in several different places, and there is no documentation (that I could find) on where all these are located, or how to turn them off. So I had just done a reinstall and hadn't managed to disable the built in ones yet. This piece was painted with everything slowing down every time I made a stroke, weird little graphical do-dads appearing every time I clicked down and text popups obscuring everything whenever my cursor stopped moving. Really MS, would a button in the Tablet prefs allowing you to disable everything to do with your built in tablet stuff be too horrible to ask for?
None of this excuses the horrible result of course, but at least I could have done it more quickly.
Time Taken: 190 Minutes
Software: Art Rage 4
Source: This set by Faestock
Stages: Link
Yes, that's right, I'm counting a picture that took over 3 hours as a speedpaint. At least this one turned out better than the last. Why did this take so long? Well, I still hadn't managed to remove all of Microsoft's Tablet stuff from my system, leading to a fractional (but significant enough) delay every time I made a stroke, but also because I was using Art Rage 4 for the first time. AR4 has made some fairly significant changes to the way the Oil Paint features work. In many ways they are now much more realistic and more like oil paint, but that change is disadvantage when speedpainting since knowing the medium is a good chunk of how you maintain a reasonable level of speed (after this I decided I could not get rid of Studio Pro, and would use both packages as my mood changed my requirements - more familiar or more powerful). So between the two things this was already trending to be a long speedpaint. Eventually I decided just to take it a little further than most, which pushed it even further over time. I like it though - if this was real paint I'd probably be ecstatic about how well I'd done. You can see the stages for this one (and some of the others in this post) by clicking the link by "Stages", and you can click the image to enlarge of course.
A pause now to speak of Deviant Art, and more specifically the stock to be found therein. DA is an artists social network. Think facebook, but dedicated to art of all forms. Of course as something that basically amounts to a huge gallery with social extensions this does mean that a huge percentage of the things to be found there are people who use it for their personal pictures, people who hang out there to look at other peoples pictures, people who rip off other peoples pictures and pretend they're their own (or don't pretend, but post others stuff anyway), and people who delight in posting nothing but pictures of their penis/labia/nipples (bending the 'no pornography' rules to the limit).
All that has given the place a bit of a bad rap in some circles (I'm sure the name DeviantArt doesn't help), which is a shame because as well as all of that it is a community of amazing artists and aspiring amazing artists; storytellers, cosplayers, photographers, seamstresses, illustrators, painters, sculptors and more. Every time I go on there I'm just a couple of clicks away from something that will probably knock my socks off and make me feel artistically useless (and that's actually a good thing). As well as all that there's also a group of extremely generous people (mostly women, but some men) who take and make available stock photography.
Stock is great - there are usually a few rules (Such as 'let me know what you're doing with this' and 'nothing to naughty, thank you'), and more rarely payment is required, but after that you can do with it what you will, which is great (I'm not actually sure about the rules of painting based on stock, rather than using the stock directly, since I see people painting things based on not-stock all the time, seemingly without permission, and that doesn't seem to cause much of a fuss. Grey area? I dunno).
Quality is highly variable, but quite a few of these folks supply photography that is every bit as good as the fully commercial stuff you can nab from shutterstock or Corbis. Even those who are shooting under 40watt bulbs with their first gen i-phones are making an effort, and supplying inspiration and reference to unimaginative schlubs like me. So a large number of my speedpaints are based on photographs from DA's Stock community, and for that I salute their efforts. For your part, if you like a piece I've done that's clearly based on a DA stock piece (I usually say, as I do above and below) then please take a moment to go and check out their work as well as mine via the link provided. Thanks.
And now back to our scheduled programming.
Time Taken: 120 Minutes
Software: Art Rage 4
Source: This Image by Random Acts Creative
Stages: Link
Not much to say about this one. I like it (it's even signed!), but it amuses me that it looks more like John Snow from Game of Thrones than the actual guy it's based on. Slow again - I think that's just going to be a common state with Art Rage 4 pieces as getting good results with the new tool takes a little more work (but as I said above it is potentially more powerful)
Time Taken: 80 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CS3
Source: This stock image by AmethystDreams1987
This one also took a while, but you'll notice these are A) getting faster and B) done in a wider variety of software than usual. I have real difficulty painting in colour in Photoshop for some reason, but I figured the only way I was going to improve was to start doing it more regularly. As a result you may see more PS paintings from me from now on. 'Funny' story with this one, I struggled and struggled with it, and then when I was done with it (gave up in frustration more like) I discovered the pressure sensitivity for the tablet was not working. Humph.
Time Taken: 120 Minutes
Software: Art Rage Studio Pro
Source: This Image (found while looking for car pictures. Does not compute)
Stages: Link
Back to Studio Pro for this one, and with all the tablet stuff working correctly at last. Still no earthly reason this should have taken over an hour, but I quite like the result. There, I can be brief, see?
Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Software: Art Rage 4
Source: This Image of 'Toolkitten' from Random Acts Creative
Stages: Link
I was trying a new technique for this one, and it didn't quite work (mostly because I muffed her face :?), but the resulting style does sort of match the goth aspect of the original source if nothing else (IMO anyway). Really don't like how her face came out, but I am quite pleased with the corset. I'll try this technique a few more times and then, if it's working out, I may share it (I used it again below). Oh, and Toolkitten is also a ridiculously accomplished artist as well as being the model for this, so go take a look at her stuff eh?
Time Taken: Not sure, but less than an hour each.
Software: Sketchbook Pro 2011
Source: Picture of my wife from a few years ago
Two studies of my wife, chosen mostly because of the really tricky angle. I did the first one (the pencil style one) and hated it, so I did another, which is a better likeness but I'm not sure about the style. Might try it again one day. As it happens the first was just eyeballed, which didn't go so well, while for the second I tried that new technique. So, I guess technically these aren't speedpaints, but I have no idea where else to show them, so shush :)
Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: Art Rage 4
Source: Picture of Swansea's Castle square, taken a while back.
Not much to say about this, it's a picture of my hometown. Mucked up the perspective on the building in the background. Messed up most of it actually, but people I know from Swansea seem quite fond of it anyway.
And that's it. I did have some updates to write at the bottom didn't I? This post has been so long I've forgotten what they were though. I did finish out another sketchbook recently, so I guess a sketch post is due shortly. Other than that I still have several pieces planned, but I think I may finish something more spontaneous first. Stuff to look forward to either way. Oh, and as it happens I got a great comment the other day on one of my posts. I thought it was someone trying to sell me something at first because it was pretty glowing (better than my previous unknown commenter who simply posted 'this sucks'), but also because almost no-one ever posts (I've mentioned this before. I was even amazed when my wife posted on the last one - this is a very rare occurrence), which is why this is worth actually mentioning - yay :)
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