Speeding Back to Action

Back again.  I'm not sure I'm going to write detailed reasons for post delays any more, as mostly they just boil down to "Because Life."  Time just tends to get away from me sometimes.  Anyway, I said a few days, and it's been seven, or at least it will be seven if I manage to finish this post on the same day I start it, which was not the case with my latest speedpaint. This is a speedpaint post by the way, if the title didn't give it away.  It starts badly but gets better, so stick with it if you're going to look below.

Ready?  Then I'll begin.

Time Taken: 25 minutes
ArtRage Pro

I told you it would be a poor start.  Yes, this woman looks like she has some sort of terrible drug habit, and no, she's not supposed to look like that.  The sad thing with this is that it actually looked like it was going to be pretty good at one point, as you can see if you look at the stages:

Rushed the finish though, messed it all up.  She's not based on anyone, I was just slapping down paint to see what stuck.  Sadly what stuck was poo; it's really hard to get that out too.

Time Taken: 70 Minutes
Sculptris

No, I didn't paint this.  It's technically a speed sculpt rather than a speed paint, as will be the next two.  70 minutes isn't actually that speedy for a sculpt though; I know guys who can reach this stage in what seems like 10 minutes (It's longer, barely, it just seems like that).  I've not done a lot of head modelling, so this was interesting.  No reference, so it was also a good way to gauge how my head anatomy knowledge was coming.  He turned out looking sort of Egyptian, and for once this was partially intentional; I saw him swinging that way and went with it.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Sculptris

Oddly I started this one from scratch, but she looks sort of related to the last one, as though I just altered the mesh.  Not terribly successful, but it could have been a lot worse.

Time Taken: 70 Minutes
Sculptris

I'm a reasonably big Discworld fan, and obviously I have a mental picture of most of the characters.  I've tried drawing Sam Vimes a handful of times and it never turns out like the version in my head, so I tried modelling him this time.  Looks a lot closer to my mental picture.  Not great, but better.

Time Taken: 1 hour
ArtRage

And this one is also dreadful.  She's based on Countess V by Ann-Emerald-Stock, and while there's a similarity I'm not very pleased with the result.

Time Taken: 15 minutes

Less said the better really.  On the plus side, it only took 15 minutes.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
SketchBook Pro 2011

Amadeus is one of my all time favourite movies (though I don't watch it often).  This is based on a picture of F. Murray Abraham as Salieri in the movie (specifically as he is in the framing story; an old man).  It's not particularly great, but it's the best thing I've done thus far in SketchBook Pro, so I guess that's something.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Photoshop CS3

Just a free form sketch of a woman, not much of particular note other than I really messed up the perspective.  Oh, and I did it all with a square brush, and the default color swatch selection, because why not?

Time Taken: ~ two hours
Photoshop CS3

One thing I don't like about painting in Photoshop is that Colour selection is sort of a pain.  In ArtRage and Sketchbook it's very easy to pick your colour, not so in Photoshop.  So after the last one (Where I only used the default colours), I thought Black and White might work well too, and since it was Freddie Mercury's birthday recently I thought he should be the subject.

This probably would have taken a lot less time had I not messed up the initial sketch.  It's the first one above (actually, that's the second attempt - the first was worse still).  It's clearly him, but there's something off about it.  eventually I realised I had drawn his chin and Jaw the wrong size (I guess he had an enormous jaw), and that was throwing off the rest of the picture.  I tried again, keeping much of the nose, cheek, eyes and forehead, and this time it worked out a bit better. Worked with a hard edged circular brush - if I had used a soft edge brush I likely would have spent much more time on it, getting the blending looking better and so on.

And there you have it.