Speeding Through It All

Whenever I do a speedpaint post I think to myself "Well, I only have 4 or 5 images to show, how long could writing that take?" and then I actually go an look and it's more like 6 to 8 images, so it's going to take longer than I thought.  6 to 8 isn't bad going, especially since it feels like I've barely set aside any time for them recently.  And I really haven't - most of these are very, very quick studies, for various reasons.

I still have a lot on my plate  over the next few weeks, but it's not always easy to find the time in between my day job, and the stuff I do for Dr. Sandifer.  Last week, as an example, I was working on an image for work in my spare time. It wasn't an official image, but I needed to demonstrate something at a presentation, and didn't have time to both write the presentation and do the artwork without working on it at home.  No, you can't see it, at least not yet.  Maybe one day, when what it refers to is no longer under wraps.

SO yeah, I've been falling behind on my art practice, and I'm honestly at a bit of a loss to where all the time goes, but it does go, and it goes fast.   Speaking of fast...

Time Taken: 35 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

 So I spent a while messing around with brushes and the new color picker I have for Photoshop.  This started in the last speed post, as you may or may not remember, but I carried on with that theme for a bit.  This is just a simple greyscale sketch with no reference used.  Not very exciting, but there's something I like about it anyway.  I painted the background with a fairly random brush, and then filled in the details with a more detailed one, basing those details on the shapes formed with the big random one.

Time Taken: 5 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

This might be the shortest paint I've ever done.  I was mucking around with brushes, did a scribble with this one, and could basically see this on the screen.  All I had to do was fill in the other tones.  Once I'd done that he looked Native American (or American Indian if you prefer, I know there's some contention over that), so I sketched in the feathers.  I quite like it, even if it is pretty rough.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

I feel bad about this, as I often do when I can't give an original source for an images reference, but I liked the photo and painted it because I was in the mood, and only discovered I couldn't find the credits after the fact.  Yes, I'm a terrible person, and no, a reverse image search didn't help much.  If you know who's photo this is, or who the subject is then let me know and I'll credit them properly, but until then, you can find the original here.  Very poor show on my part, especially so as it's one of two images with this issue this post.

Still, this was more messing about with Photoshop. In this case I went ahead and used the Gaussian Blur filter, because why not? And it gave the picture a nice depth that I wouldn't otherwise know how to achieve (not without spending longer on it than intended anyway).  After that I threw in two layers, one for the quick layout, and one for the actual painting.  I didn't add any additional layers after that, and when I was done I turned off the sketch layer.   Nothing too taxing, and I'm not a huge fan of the result, but I've done a lot worse.  Nothing too fancy about the method of painting; I picked colours and painted them - I really wasn't thinking about this one terribly hard, which made for a relaxing paint even if not the best result.

Time Taken: 65 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

More brush tests.  This time a spiky one, a noisy one, a flat one and a cloudy one.  I don't much like the results here, but I'd honestly be hard pressed to tell you why.  Is it the colour range (which I'm pretty sure is way off the source photograph, which was my own), or bad perspective, or what?  I think I need more practice on environmental paintings.  The clouds came out well though.  I like that cloud brush; I think it will prove very useful on occasion.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

Used another filter on this one, right at the end.  Ran sharpen on it and liked the result, so I left it.  This one is the other one with no direct credit.   Image search returns a Japanese term that apparently means Personality Hairstyles, which doesn't help much.  The original is tucked away here, but again I will gladly give credit where it's due.

So I quite like this one.  Again it was the result of mucking around with brushes, but I like the result.  For all that though it's a little embarrassing looking at the stages picture here because I didn't notice until quite late that I'd put her eye in completely the wrong place.  When I finally did notice it didn't take long at all to move it to a better location, but it does look a bit strange.  My original intention was to paint the whole thing with the spiky brush you can see I've used in the first stage, but I quickly realised that that was going to look awful, so I switched to a more traditional one for the rest of the painting.  I picked this one because I really like the graphic nature of her shirt,  I'd be tempted to make a more finished piece out of it if I had any idea who to give the original credits too.  Maybe I'll just do something unrelated, but use this as inspiration.

Time Taken: 25 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC
Are you bored with these quick Photoshop brush tests yet?  Well, the good news is that the next one is in ArtRage.  This one is a wolf - hopefully that's self evident, but maybe not.  All done using one brush type (it's the spiky one again, only really big), and black and white.  There's not much else to say about it, I just let the brush do most of the work to be honest.  Yes, I had to provide some guidance, but it's the brush that provided the nice sketchy finish.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

After all that I needed a break from Photoshop (though I did convince myself that I might be able to do a finished piece in it at some point), and went back to ArtRage.  This piece is based on 'David 12' by faestock.  I liked the expression.  I wish I could tell you more than that, but I just fell into my old speedpaint habits for the most part.

Oh, and I cheated, sort of.  You can see there are some marks on the step by step stages above that disappear at the end; two on the right, and one in the middle at the top.  That's my "grid".  It's not much of a grid, especially since I eyeballed it, but it did help a lot with getting the layout worked out, so I may be doing that again.

Since it was done in ArtRage, and because I remembered before closing it, I managed to record a timelapse from my undo stages.  It's a bit jumpy right at the beginning, but it settles down before I paint the portrait proper.  You can even see me add those marks.

There you go, 7 paints for the price of 4.  I'll be back again as soon as I get time, but until then, arrivederci.