Back to the 2015 Recap Post

I still have two speedpaint posts coming up soon, one for November, and one for December, but today I'm just going for something fairly quick and easy, one of those Review of the Year things that all the cool sites are doing these days, plus some thoughts on my goals for this year.

I don't recall ever doing one of these before (I have done year end speedpaint reviews, but those paying attention will know those usually come around in May, for reasons), so here's the format - I'll give a quick overview of what I've done, and then pick my 4 favourite pieces to show again and cover why I like them, and one piece I hate.  These are ones I personally like (or dislike) - not the most popular, and my preferences for my own work might seem a bit strange.  All good?  OK, let's begin.

This is almost every image I painted (outside of my day job) in 2015, with one major omission which I can't talk about except to say it exists (a shame, it would have made the top 4), and a couple of others I just remembered (but aren't worth redoing the image for).  If you click on it it'll blow up to a size where you can actually see what they are.  They're not in any particular order, and not all of them have had associated posts yet.

There are 72 images on the sheet, but some of them contain what I'd consider multiple pieces in one (and some contain multiple pieces I don't think count as more than one), so it's actually well over 100 things (I make it 142, depending on how I feel like counting at the minute).

Of those, 64 are speedpaints, which is awesome for reasons I'll get to.  The rest are commissions and random side projects.  That's not bad going for something I do in my spare time, and even then not as often as I feel like I should.

So of those, which do I consider the most successful pieces of the year?  Well, I'm surprised at how difficult it is to choose (you know I'm rarely a fan of my own work, but I have to admit, there's some good stuff tucked away in there), but I think, at least today, the following qualify:

White on Black

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 110 minutes, based on an older Skullcandy advertisement.

I liked this one so much I did a companion piece, and also considered doing others along the same theme (this may still happen).  This one was one that came about really quickly - I saw the image it was based on, thought "I should paint that!" and did it almost immediately.  In addition to that I made changes and choices that I wouldn't usually make, and I think the result, especially given the time I spent on it, is a quite striking and polished image.  Everything just sort of works together, from the one bold colour (pink/red) in an otherwise subdued palette, to the more graphic nature of the composition and pose (actually fully intentional for once), to the strong light shape of the headphones in the otherwise dark (but not fully black) surround.  One of the few pieces which turned out almost exactly as I planned, rather than turning out OK due to some happy accidents.

Me

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 120 minutes, based on a snap from my cellphone 2 minutes before.

Well, this one is awkward.  Not only is it a speedpaint I have yet to post in a speedpaint roundup (that'll be the next post), but it's also a self portrait.  I'm not the best subject for portraiture, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm generally available, and this was for Self Portrait Day (November 1st).
So, if I'm a terrible subject, why is this here?  Because despite the unfortunate subject matter I'm of the opinion that this might be the best portrait I've ever done, speedpaint or not.  Everything about it came together, and speaking as the person probably most familiar with the physog in question, it looks exactly like me.  The colours work, I like the feeling of depth that it has.  Really, the only things wrong with it is that it's of me, and I really can't remember how exactly I did it (I usually keep those step by step images for my memory's benefit as much as yours, and in this case I neglected to capture any).

So that's how my ego managed to make the top 4 of the year :/

Urban Assassin

Artrage Speedpaint taking 115 minutes, based on this photograph from DrunkHobo-Stock

Much like White on Black, this piece was a concentrated effort to do something a little bit different.  I worked looser, and with very different brush settings from those I'm usually comfortable with. This is the case for a handful of speedpaints - sometimes it works out, other times it's a disaster.  In this case it worked out, and I've used a similar technique twice since then, once for the book cover featured in the last post.

In this case though, I think the original worked out the best.  I'm slightly amazed by how well this piece works myself, given I know what went into creating it.  Small things, like exactly how little work went into painting the hands and face, but how they still came out looking really effective.  Usually capturing those elements takes quite a bit of work, but here there was very little repainting - what you see is essentially what I painted, stroke for stroke. Now if only I could work out how to do that every time I'd be set.  In the meantime, some of the techniques learned creating this piece led to two other fairly successful pieces, and that is enough to get it a spot on this here list (also, he does look pretty badass).

Not So Innocent

Photoshop work, based on this photograph by AmethystDreams1987

This is going to be a fairly short writeup.  There are actually a few elements in this picture where I think I did similar things better elsewhere (such as her hair), but I'm picking this one for one reason - that jacket.  It took a really long time to paint it, but the end result is probably worth all the time I put in.  That, combined with how much this piece transforms the photograph it's based on is really enough to place it in the top 4 despite its flaws.

Well, making that list was remarkably difficult.  Much more difficult than I was expecting when I started this post.  Looking at the four, I'm interested with how dark each of them is (in terms of lighting, but also in terms of subject in two cases).  Does this mean I just like strong contrast in a piece, or is it just a coincidence?  Blowed if I know.  

I do know the next section is easier though - what was the worst thing I did this year?  Scroll on MacDuff, and discover the horror:

Crap Tarzan

Crap speedpaint taking 25 minutes in Photoshop, and not worth a minute of it.

Really, I'm not even going to try and justify it, it's just pure crap.  There might be a kernel of an idea that could work quite well, but as it's own thing...  Yeah, no.  I can't blame the short time spent on it either - I've done a lot better in a lot less time.

So that covers the year, more or less, with one other thing to cover.  A year ago I said my resolution was to do more speedpaints - one a week.  I pretty quickly changed that to four a month, as that seemed more manageable.  

This grid (or at least 75% of it) was created then to track the speedpaints I was doing, but at the time all the green boxes were black.  Three columns of 16, so 48 cells, one for each image I needed to do - each time I completed one, I would fill in a box with green.  I'd filled those by mid September, back when I painted Bruce Lee, so I had to add another Column.  Since then I've done another 16 paintings, the last of which I'll be covering in the next two speedpaint posts. So I blew past my personal challenge to get a total of 64 speedpaints done (to varying degrees of success). Rather more than 1 a week - Go me.

One thing I realised while doing them though, was I'm still too reliant on direct reference.  Nothing wrong with that (especially when painting at speed).  I could probably work from nothing but straight reference from now until forever and nobody but me would mind.  It's not like I'm ever going to stop working from direct reference completely either - It's can be too relaxing for that.  

Even so, I want to go back to working on some of the fundamentals, and if that's at the expense of the number of speedpaints I'm cranking out then so be it.  This year's resolution is to work on those fundamentals, which will also aid my painting from direct reference in the long run.  Things like proportion, human anatomy, perspective, composition, and colour theory. 

I also realised that the speedpaints were getting to the point where they were less speed and more just paints. so I'm going to change my personal terminology a little.  Anything under 100 minutes can still be a speedpaint (that's still pretty fast for some of the things I've managed to do), anything over becomes just a quick painting.  The intent is to do more speedpaints, and just the occasional painting - even if that means they go 'unfinished' when the time runs out. 

This doesn't effect much as far as you're concerned - they'll still all come under the speedpaint umbrella as far as posts are concerned with the same internal gut feeling on whether they count or not.  There will also be Studies, which will be where I'm tackling something specific.  Those might be as little as a few brushstrokes, as long as I learn from them.  You'll get to see those too, but possibly under a different post.

Oh, and my other resolution is to get the rest of the sketch posts up to date ASAP - if some of this study is going to be traditional (and I intend for it to be) then it might be beneficial to get it up where I can easily find it - and by extension you can see it to.

So this year things are shaking up a bit while I go back to basics.  Back to the drawing board if you will.  Hopefully the only difference you'll really notice will be in the quality of the results.

Until the next post, Happy New Year! I hope 2015 was a good one for you, and 2016 is even better.