A Hot Mess of Speed

The last month has been pretty bad for art.  My art that is, not art in general, which trundles on just the same with or without me.  So far this month I've done a mere two speedpaints; one of which was bad, and the other took 4 hours (so not technically a speedpaint I suppose).  Last month though, last month was pretty good.  Six speedpaints (though two were more sketches than paints), two of which were pretty good in my opinion.  Let's go have a look.

Time Taken: 15 minutes

Software: Photoshop

This is one of the sketches. Not much to say about it other than that - I was testing out a new brush.

Time Taken: 25 minutes

Software: Photoshop

Almost everything is Photoshop now.  I still love ArtRage, but it's unfortunately less easy to use with the Cintiq.  Anyway, this is basically a doodle, of Korean singer Park Choa.  It's not a good likeness.  I'll be painting her again at some point, but this just happened to be visible in Pinterest when I got an urge for a quick paint.

Time Taken: 170 minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: This photograph

This took far too long for what the result is, but the result is pretty good, so I'll take it.  I just wanted to paint a slightly more interesting face, preferably a man with good facial hair - and this guy has epic facial hair.

I find it interesting how much the white hair really adds to this one.  I could have done him with black hair, as the initial thumbnails suggest, but that was never the final intention, and as soon as the grey comes in for the beard it completely changes the feel of the whole thing.  He's like Santa on vacation in Cannes or something.

Time Taken: 75 Minutes

Software: ArtRage

Based on: This photo of the Scottish coast

Still trying to occasionally do some good environment pieces.  They're getting better, but oddly the ArtRage ones always have a very similar look, right down to the colours I use.  

This one was more a study of the water than it was the land, and I learned quite a bit from doing it, so that's something.

Time taken: 170 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Personal photo taken in Indianapolis

Another long winded one, but I'm quite happy with the results.  Well, except for the large building in the background - that still looks sloppy to me, but the ground is quite nice.

I created three new brushes for this one - one for the grass and leaves, one for the branches, that I also used for the cracks in the foreground, and one for the fence.  Creating the brushes took a reasonable amount of the overall time.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: an old photo I found on my hard drive - I'll try and credit it when I do this properly

This one came about as I wondered if I could use the brush for the fence in the previous one for a whole painting. Not quite, but I do like the colour I ended up with.  One day I'll come back to this one and paint a lot more of her (hopefully looking more like the model so it's worth crediting).  I'll probably keep the colours like this though, which are quite different to the original photograph.