A Change of Speed

Time to start catching up on the Speedpainting for the last couple of months. So far this month I haven't painted any, which is a little miserable. Not that I've done no art at all, just nothing that I can show, and even if I could it wouldn't be very interesting. This also means I've not really started on going back to the fundamental studies I set as a new year resolution. I've done a little, but not at the concentrated level I'd conceived. Early days - January is often a little chaotic, and this year more than most.

Anyway, this post takes us all the way back to November, which seems like a year ago at this point. I'd better get on with writing it, or it will be a year before I finally cover December.

Time Taken: 120 Minutes

Software: Photoshop
Self Portrait

So, if you've been paying attention you may recall this one from the previous post.  November 1st was Self Portrait Day, and apparently this has been a thing for a while, though I knew nothing about it until last year.  I thought I may as well take part as it had been a little while since I'd had a new profile picture (which is what most of my selfies end up being - just like anyone else's really).  I wanted a picture from that day, rather than one from a photograph taken before.  Sadly by the time I decided to participate everyone else had buggered off to bed, so I had no one to take a photograph of me to base it on.  Briefly considered using a mirror and working from life (I've done that a few times), and then decided I'd just take a snap on my phone and work from that.

It being late I completely forgot to save any progress images.  I mean it's usually late when I paint, but this time I was also up against the clock to get it done by midnight.  A shame, because as I mentioned last time it's one of the better pieces I've ever done in many ways.

Time Taken: 120 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: Selfies of a friend of a friend

A friend of mine linked me to the photo this is based on shortly after Halloween saying it looked like something I might paint. Turned out she was right. Despite being in a halloween costume I thought the photo and costume looked quite festive.  I asked the friend to ask her friend if I could paint it - the answer was yes, and I got some additional photographs to work from should I want to. I did.

The end result is  a combination of three of the photos I think.  The face and hair is the original one I saw, the angle of the shoulders a second, and the headdress a third (it was cropped off in the original).  Originally I was going to have a very graphic background, but around the time I reached the second row I realised the whole thing looked like the sort of Meme that would have Impact font text top and bottom. Something like "What if Harry Potter is real... but sold to us Muggles as fiction?"  So with that in mind I went back and made it more snow like at the end.  Not much else to say, although I was using a different bunch of settings from the usual, which I also mentioned last post, and will mention again when we get to the rodeo.

Time Taken: 135 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: Various Rodeo Pictures

A friend of ours runs a Facebook Secret Santa group.  She does most of the organisation, because she's a lovely person, and assigns everyone in the group someone else to get a present for.  The present should be from local stores rather than chain stores, and the intention is for everyone to mail their gift to their recipient by a certain date.  You get a little bio about the person you're getting a gift for in advance.  My gift was fancy chocolates from the Bay Area for example (and they were very fancy indeed - yum!)

The person I was assigned to loved horses, and especially rodeos.  I though that might make an interesting subject for a painting - not my usual type of subject matter, and an opportunity to do something a little more impressionistic.

The intention was to get more of the movement of the horse than a crystal clear image of one.  I had the initial image in my head fairly firmly, but needed suitable reference.   Surprisingly it was quite difficult to find a shot from a rodeo in this pose, so in the end I think I cobbled together two horses and two riders, with the costume and face of a third rider.  In order to help me keep it loose I went back to the technique I mentioned in the paint above, which is to have thick paint and low pressure with a stiff brush (these are digital settings you understand, not actual brushes; though it is closer to the way I might paint in reality).  I did do a little colour switch at the end, as I wanted a cool bluer look rather than  a more purple one, though I had both the blue and the purple version printed to give the recipient options.

Since it was for printing I painted it rather larger than my usual speedpaint, and this image shows it at actual size - is also gives a good idea of how impressionistic it is.  Sadly it printed really dark - much darker than I was expecting (blue usually prints darker, but not by this much).  She didn't seem to mind (I said if she wanted a lighter version to say so on FB, but she didn't).

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Software: ArtRage

This one you may have seen before, as it's one of the pieces I did for the last book cover before finalising the design.  There wasn't any reference for it, and unusually for me I didn't use the Oil Paint tool at all.  The piece came about using the Roller and Palette Knife tools, with a little bit of chalk.  This was actually done quite a long time ago, but I couldn't show it in the last post as the book wasn't out yet.  Now it is (with a different cover), so I can finally cover it under the speedpaints.

And that's all for this time.  Hopefully next week I can tackle the paintings I did in December.  Since I started the post I have actually managed to do another speed painting (somewhere between a study and a speedpaint), so maybe I will have something to cover next month as well.