Faster than a Speeding Bullet

It's all about the speed right now isn't it?  That should be sort of funny, since very few of them are terribly speedy of late.  Still, here I am with another update.  Next post I'll (probably) cover where I've been for the past two months, and for a change there will be photographs, rather than paintings.  Yes, I'll be doing a dull as hell travelogue... sort of.

For now though I'm going to try and catch up on all my speedpaints at once (there aren't that many compared to last years pace), with minimal blathering about them (more because I've forgotten in all the excitement than just laziness, but some laziness too).

Time Taken: 95 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Various references

I think the fact that it too an hour and a half is far more depressing than that I don't think it's terribly good.  I'm trying to get better at pulling from multiple sources though, and this is the start of that.  I'm still going to work directly from single photos sometimes, because I find it more relaxing, but less direct copying is a goal, and if I don't work on it I'll never improve.

Time Taken: 240 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on:  Well, it's the Man of Steel isn't it?

Speaking of direct copying.    For me Christopher Reeve will always be Superman, with every other actor playing the role just being Actors who play the role.

Hmmm...  Actually, a series of paintings just of people who've played Superman seems appealing.

Yes, that's a timelapse YouTube video for you right there, instead of just an image.  There's another one coming up later too.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on:
This Photo - http://tinyurl.com/hnxb9rc
From this page - http://tinyurl.com/hlt6qt3

Speed wise, this is a little more like it.  I was working on playing around with some techniques in Art Rage that it's not really used before.  This one was done with a wet, non-self cleaning brush.  Not a worry if you don't know what the means, it mostly means the way I blend and mix the paint, and the way the paint flows is very different from my usual stuff.

 I did a version with a few minutes Post work in Photoshop too - mostly to give it a little soft focus.

And here's the step by step of it.  You can't see here, because I didn't save a shot of it, but I painted her head twice, because the first effort left he looking like she had the moon on a stick instead of a face.  Corrected for it pretty quickly, but it did not go as smoothly as this image makes it seem.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on (badly): http://tinyurl.com/hvq4tbd - Victorian era star Minnie Ashley

Despite not being a particularly good likeness, I really like this one.  It's another one with post processing, which I should really dial back on (don't want it turning into too much of a crutch), but in some cases it really adds to the final result (other times it doesn't, in which case I don't tend to show the post processed version.

In the step through you can see that I had her eyes further apart until right at the last minute, when I pulled them in a bit.  It wasn't wrong as such (beyond not looking like Ms. Ashley),  but I prefered the look of the closer set eyes.  You can also see that the post processing increased the brightness, and also softened the gradients a bit.

Time Taken: 130 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Various Pinterest pins - See the end of the video for the most significant.

So the previous image was done almost two months ago, so this one was mostly one to get me back into the swing of things. I've started a couple of pieces (about a month ago), but nothing that got very far due to other distractions, so I needed something relatively simple to work on. This, like the first speedpaint this time, is a combination of a few sources to make something fairly new. I think it turned out better than the previous effort, but it also took longer, so there's that.

Like the Superman painting there's a YouTube video to go with this one, but I'm trying to make them look a little more polished at this point - hence the little logo at the beginning, and the inclusion of the timer and webcam view. Eventually I might do voiceovers on them or something, but one step at a time. The main references used are shown at the end.