The Speed of another Year Gone By

Last month I made only one post, and I fear the same will be true this month.  Next week my Family arrives for Christmas, and that's more or less me out of the picture until the new year.  At least this time I'm letting you know in advance that there's no more coming for a while.  I have a lot to catch up on next year of course, as this last year I have let things slide to a revolting extent.

I've been trying to think of ways to get the sketching I missed up faster, but I don't want to resort to just posting the pages uncut.  Actually, I might, that's even more honest than the usual way I do them - you'll see all of the crap along with the relatively good stuff, although it's harder to clean up the scans because my scanner hates me.

Another thing I need to do is get back in the grove with Speedpaints.  The last Speedpaint post I made was three months ago, and that's just not good.  This latest one contains six new ones, so that's about two a month.  Disappointing.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

I guess this one isn't dreadful for the time I spent on it, at least I quite like how her face and hair turned out.  No link to the source because, well, I don't know where it came from.  I've had the reference I worked from for years, but Google reverse image search shows no such image.  It came from somewhere, and I might take a longer pass at it one day - at that point I'll share the photo itself I guess, but until then, if this looks familiar let me know so I can dish out the credit.

As you can see there's nothing much to it in the step by step - I was just sort of chilling out while I painted.  I'm surprised I left the hair so late, but other than that, not terribly exciting.

Time Taken: 20 Minutes
Software: Sketchbook Pro 2011

Not really a speedpaint, but I have no idea where else I'd stick it. It's a sketch of actress Yunjin Kim done in Sketchbook Pro, because I've owned it for ages and only used it about three times.  I didn't realise it was Yunjin Kim when I was doing it, because I only know her as Sun on Lost, and she spent most of the time with her hair up, no makeup and covered in mud on that show.  She looks rather better in the photo I based this on, but now I've done the image search to find a link to it I found some even better ones to base future stuff on.

Time Taken: 90 minutes
Software: Photoshop

One of those photos you randomly stumble across on Pinterest and think 'oh, I need to paint that.' So I did.  I did it in Photoshop because there were some aspects I thought would be way easier with a custom brush, and I have some in PS, and I don't in Art Rage.

It's mildly amusing to me then that once the background was done, most of the girl I painted with one brush, that happens to be based on the default one I use in ArtRage.  I like that brush.  Also, when I got to the tree I realised I didn't have a suitable brush to do the leaves, so I ended up making a new one anyway.  I could have done that in ArtRage just as well.  Still, I need practice painting in Photoshop, so this was as good as any to do in it.

Time Taken: 35 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

This one is so bad I almost didn't include it, but, y'know, showing off the horrible things is part of the whole point of the Blog, so here it is.  I based it on a photograph of Ashley Oakley on Deviant Art, but rather mysteriously she's taken all her stock images down since then.  Since it's awful, lets all just forget it ever happened.  I plan on doing a better one of her at some point, but I guess now I need to ask for permission to use any of the images I saved before she took them all down.  Hurm...

Time Taken: 2hrs 45 minutes
Software: Photoshop

Yeah, this one took a little long to be included in the speedpaint pile, but I didn't spend long enough on it to warrant it having it's own post, so her it is. It's based on Lance Guest as Alex Rogan from The Last Starfighter, but doesn't look that much like him if I'm honest.  No point looking for the source I based it on, as it's based on a few, which is likely how I managed to make it not look like him.

This time I did take advantage of something I could do in Photoshop that's hard to do in ArtRage - I straightened him up between the two rows shown here.  You can't tell can you?  Well, that was a waste of time then.  Anyway, one of the reasons it took so long to paint was that Tartan/Plaid lumberjack shirt.  Second one I painted in a row (the other is in the last post).  Not doing that again for a bit.

Time Taken: 70 minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

Okay, this and the next are sort of part of an unofficial series.  I didn't mean to paint two castles in a row with very similar palettes, it just sort of happened, but since I've done it I may as well do some more so I can get better at it because I'm not happy with either of them.  Not next, but just generally I'll add some more of these over the next year and at the end I'll take a look and see if anything improved.  This one is based on this public domain image by Wiki Commons user Villy of Esztergom Castle in Hungary.

So I start off trying to define the main shapes and then building it all up from there.  It all looks a little soft and lacking in contrast though.  Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'll have some opportunity to find out.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

And here's the second of the accidental series.  This time I have no idea where it is, but it's based on a stock photo from Mehrunisa Stock.

Same process as before, but I tried to make the contrast a little punchier.  Still made a mess of the Perspective though.

And that's pretty much it.  I'll be back in the New Year, and of course my resolution will be 'Be More Productive.'  We'll see how well that goes.  Oh, and I have been doing a fair bit of art that you've not seen, but it's for work, so obviously you can't see that.  By the time you do I hope I'll be significantly better, and can look upon it and cringe (even more than I do already).