Fassinating

Hey, didn't I say I was going to post more, right before I vanished for 4 months?  Yeah, sorry about that.  Won't Might happen again.  I'm not going to go into why it's taken me so long to write a new post, mostly because I'm not entirely sure myself.  I have a fair bit of catching up to do though!

So, what's happened since I've been away?  Well, I presented at GDC, got a new position at work (I'm an Associate Art Director now), which also means I completed the project I was working on, and did an album cover (sort of - I think I was working on it when I wrote the last post).  More on some of that next time.

This post focusses on something that I did before all that though, even before the last post.  Last August in fact.  I thought I had posted about it at the time, but I guess I hadn't since there isn't one.

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.

Painting at the Speed of Fail

Clearly I lied in the last post and did not get to writing another, until now.  I should stop trying to predict the future in my posts, because it's shocking how often things I predict don't come to pass.  Or maybe I should predict things I don't want to happen, so there's a lower possibility of them occurring.  Either way, here I am again with another update on some speedpaints, only two months after I actually did them.  Back to December for this round.  For the sake of my schedule though I'll try and keep this one fairly short.  On the other hand though, videos!

Fumbling the Speed Ball

It's been a while!  Over a month since I last posted I think, which means I never posted the Speedpaints for October during November.  This is not caused so much by laziness on my part (though as ever, it's a contributing factor), so much as I usually post on weekends, and the weekends were full.  Obviously Thanksgiving was in there, but also two weekends of travel (to St. Petersburg) - the most arduous trip I've ever been on in terms of actual travel, but the most surprisingly pleasant time once I got there.  Not the best trip I've ever had, but perhaps the one I'd most want to repeat, if I could do it without the jetlag.

So that's three weekends accounted for, and I can't honestly remember why I didn't post on the other ones.  Some form of busy or other, I'm sure.

So, since the following were mostly quite some time ago I'll write what I can, but it might not be much.

Not So Innocent

Well, this has been an odd month.  Not the number, obviously October is an even month numerically (but with an odd number of days... why am I typing this?  You know this).  No, it's been odd in a "things that I have done" sort of way, which is that I've been really quite busy, but don't have a whole lot to show for it.  I dislike that - if I'm going to be busy I like to have something at the end to say "Yes, I was busy, here is what I did," Instead this month has been "I've been really busy, but I'm not entirely sure what I was busy with."

Still, I'm finally managing to write a blog post, and it's Halloween!  Fortunate then that I have a creepy picture to share today.  That I finished a month ago, but haven't had time to blog about really (and may not today - there are halloween things occurring outside the webosphere of course).  Let's start; see how far we get.  You can, as always, click the images to see them enlargerized with Embiggen-O-Ramavision.

Pink Petals

Another way of catching up on the blog a bit is to just post more, so two in one day (if you missed the previous one due to my posting twice in a day being an unusual occurrence, it's this one here). Like the last one I'll be saying as little as possible in order to get it done in one go. This post's subject has been seen in a lesser way before, in the last speedpaint post. I said I'd get to the results soon; this is the post about it, so let's see the result.

5 years at speed! 2010 - 2015

As promised this post will be a brief recap of the Speedpaints I've been doing over the past 5 years.   Some confusion has occasionally come up because of my use of the term speedpaint though, so before we review let's first define.

A speedpaint is a painting, usually digital, whereby the piece is created in a limited amount of time. It's a painting, done at speed. Simple.  Sometimes the time is decided upon before starting, sometimes there's a general maximum time beyond which it's not considered a speed painting, sometimes it's just the frame of mind the piece is created in.  Sometimes these are termed as Studies (and I do so myself in some places to reduce confusion), except a study can actually take a really long time, yet remain a study.

What they aren't, in my useage at least, are timelapses.  This is where someone records themselves painting and then they play that back at an accelerated rate. So you can see someone painting something that took 20 hours in a mere 5 minutes (or whatever).  Sometimes those are timelapses of speedpaints, and I've done a handful of those myself.  I think it's because of this that the timelapses have also become popularly known as Speedpaints (seeing someone paint, at speed),  but that's not what I mean by it.

OK, so now that's sorted out, lets go look at some, small ones, briefly.

A Missing Month of Speed

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts last month.  I have no real reason why that occurred; last month was one of those strange ones that seemed to last a long time but also go by extremely quickly due to my being really busy.  Odd thing though, I don't actually remember particularly what it was I was busy doing.  Never mind, such things are bound to occur occasionally (the last time was 4 years ago), and as a result of some of that busyness (this part I remember) I have plenty to keep me busy with posts for this month, and possibly next month too.  Which is good, because it's anniversary time!

Technically the blog's anniversary was the end of last month, but that post was just saying I was going to do a blog. It wasn't until May that I actually posted any art, so I consider May 2nd the blog's birthday.  Also, even though I didn't start speedpainting for a few months after that, I count the same day as the tickover day between one year's speedpainting and the next, because I suck at remembering dates, so may as well collate them.

So today I'll go over the speedpaints I did this last month, and in the next post do an overall review of the last 5 years (actually 4.5) of speedpainting, unless I don't because I decide to do something else instead (5 Years!  Where'd the time go?)

Gimme More Speed!

So my New Years Resolution was pretty simple - do a speedpaint a week.  There were some more details in there, but the rest of it was just icing - the important bit was actually doing the painting. One a week should be easy!  I know one guy who does one a night!  I've said that before though, and you'll note that in all the time I've been working on the blog I have yet to crank out 52 speed paints in a year.  Time will tell if I can keep the resolve and get it done.

I did say I'd be away for a while didn't I?  I've not been idle though; mostly I've been sick, or on vacation, and at one point both at once.  I did get a speedpaint done each week this month though - except the first week, but it only had three days and I was away for most of them, so the resolution came into effect on the 4th.  I had one left over from December though, so you still get 4 in this post.

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.

Social Profiling № 10: Headphone Fun

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention this year, so instead of prattling on about it I'll just get on with the post.

This is the last of this years Facebook Profile pictures, and given how long it's taken me to get through them this year I don't know if I'll be doing another set.  Certainly not next year, although I might still paint the occasional similar picture just for fun.  If you've no idea what I'm warbling about click here and work from the bottom up - all will be explained.

This latest one was one of the smoothest of the lot.  As a result there aren't all that many images in the following post, which is a shame in a way, but great for me as I've less to write.  Oh, and there's a short tale behind this one too.

12 Squared

You may recall a few months ago I entered an Artrage competition on Deviantart.  I didn't win, and wasn't terribly happy with the entry anyway.  Well, I entered one after that with a picture of our cat Cameron (we had two, but the other one, Ferris, ran away and we've not heard anything of him in months), and then I got too busy to enter.

Last month I was still busy, but I wanted to paint something fairly finished before I went crazy, so I made some time, picked a picture of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor to paint, and was all set to go when I saw the latest Artrage contest was for "grids." One quick, and minor, rethink later I was all set to go.  You can see the result I entered below.

Less Haste, More Speed

Well, hopefully this is the start of a turn around, as it's only been a week since I last posted. With three speedpaints done then; not enough to show, and seven to show today that's four paintings in a week!  OK, it's actually not since I found one of them down the side of the virtual couch, but still.

Basically last weeks post showed me that I'd been neglecting things far in excess of the amount of other things I had to do, especially for speedpainting.  Usually I wait until I see something I want to paint, and then think "I should paint that."  Time allowing I do so.

Recently though there's been a disconnect between when I see the thing, and when I have time to paint, and with other things crowding my brain I've forgotten about the likely image, or my mood has changed and it doesn't appeal any more.  So now I'm going to make a more concerted effort to stack up likely candidates separately from the rest of my references, so they're easier to go through when I want to paint something quick.

Anyway, you don't care about any of that, you just want to see pictures, right?

Social Profiling № 9: Smile!

And here, finally, is the post I was planning to put up last week.  All the prep work on the images was done for that post, so this should go fairly quickly.

Before I begin though, I'm going to digress and mention (for my own future reference, as much as your general interest), that in the last week one of our cats has gone missing, and we have a large hole in the house boarded up with plywood from where the new sliding door was supposed to go in, but couldn't because of rot in a support beam.  The frustrating thing about the later being that the former could have come home, but would have no way of letting us know because his usual entrance is now covered with boards.  Bugger.

Oh, and a stray cat showed up at one point (possibly to relay a message from the missing one, which was useless since we don't speak cat), stayed over night but ran away when it was time to call animal control.  One of those weeks.

Anyway, enough about me, and on to the wonder of fake paint!

Social Profiling № 8: All in the Eyes

Well, this was embarrassing.  I'd started prepping for today's Social Profiling post, when I realised I hadn't written the last one! So now this is that and I'll write the new one later.  How did I miss one? Well, I painted it way back at the end of February, and as you may recall March was, well, a little full, so I honestly thought I'd already written the post, when in fact I'd not even prepped the images for it.   It's been that sort of year.

So, anyway, I'm getting to it now, just over 4 months later.  Oh, and I didn't post last week because it was a choice of painting the latest Social Profiling picture (not this one, remember?  I just mentioned that, try and keep up), or writing a post, and painting won.  Then I hurt my back, so that painting took longer than planned (in terms of days from start to finish, not actual hours spent).  OK, all up to speed now?  Good, lets look at this picture then.

Speeding Through It All

Whenever I do a speedpaint post I think to myself "Well, I only have 4 or 5 images to show, how long could writing that take?" and then I actually go an look and it's more like 6 to 8 images, so it's going to take longer than I thought.  6 to 8 isn't bad going, especially since it feels like I've barely set aside any time for them recently.  And I really haven't - most of these are very, very quick studies, for various reasons.

I still have a lot on my plate  over the next few weeks, but it's not always easy to find the time in between my day job, and the stuff I do for Dr. Sandifer.  Last week, as an example, I was working on an image for work in my spare time. It wasn't an official image, but I needed to demonstrate something at a presentation, and didn't have time to both write the presentation and do the artwork without working on it at home.  No, you can't see it, at least not yet.  Maybe one day, when what it refers to is no longer under wraps.

SO yeah, I've been falling behind on my art practice, and I'm honestly at a bit of a loss to where all the time goes, but it does go, and it goes fast.   Speaking of fast...

A Four-Colour Psychochronography

I 'complain' that I'm busy a lot.  This is mostly because I am often busy.  I'm not always busy with art, or with my day job (although of course these two things combined account for the vast majority of my time breathing), but other things as well, like relaxing in front of the TV, trawling Pinterest for references, keeping on top of my messages (in various places), video games, reading, eating, and sleeping.  You know, life? It tends to add up. Fairly low on that list of priorities, but still a priority, is writing blog posts.

Phil Sandifer on the other hand, has blog posts as one of his main priorities.  Blogging, and subsequently making books from those posts (with many additions and edits of course), is his day job, so he blogs a lot.

Previously I've done book covers for his collections based on his still ongoing TARDIS Eruditorum series of blog posts, and also on the book he wrote about Wonder Woman (A Golden Thread), which didn't appear on his blog.  A series of books and a blog covering every episode and a huge amount of tangential material of the 50 year history of Doctor Who (with some of those episodes being covered in 12,000+ word essays) is not enough for Dr. Sandifer though.

Yes, he actually is a Doctor, in English, and possibly in awesome.  A doctorate of awesome would be a useful thing to have, come to think of it, I wonder where you'd get one.

With his blog rapidly approaching the present time of the show he's cast around for something else to cover when he catches up, and found it in the form of the passive feud between writers (and self proclaimed magicians) Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.  Now I can't pick sides there as I'm an enormous fan of both their works (though not enormous enough to have read everything by them), and Phil doesn't pick sides either.  His work is presented as the history of a war distant enough that there are no stakes in the winners.  Not dry and dispassionately though, but with a wink and some dry wit and humour.  The 'war' is really just a framing device for a vast and sprawling canvas; the actual chapters covering topics as diverse as the influence of J.G. Ballard, Robert R Crumb, and Edward Blake, to the narrative structures of aristotelian literature (and so on), as well as the works, and influence upon them by 'the war', of other writers, such as Neil Gaiman.

It sounds insane.  It is insane.  The good Doctor is a self proclaimed Mad Man With a Blog after all.

Writing blogs doesn't make money though - as a Day Job it's pretty low income stuff, unless you have a huge and sprawling readership and lots of ads.  Phil's blog has minimal ads, and a moderate following among a certain type of intellectual nerd (as well as less intellectual nerds like me, who just like his writing style), so he's running a Kickstarter to fund it.  And since (to paraphrase C3PO) he's worked with me before, he asked me to knock him up a nice banner for the jam-jar shaking.

The Speed of a Lost Weekend

Somehow it's the end of the third week in April, and I've yet to make a post.  This would be fine if I knew where the previous two weekends had gone, but I'm honestly not sure.  Last weekend we had visitors down from Chicago, and had some delicious barbeque, but the one before?  No clue.  Clearly I was busy or I'd have posted something, and it has been a busy month (only partly with regards to art though), so that doesn't surprise me one bit.

Never mind, I'll make a post today, which is Easter by the way, or write most of it today and post tomorrow.  Either way works, as long as there's a post out.  And the subject of this post is, as you may have noticed from the title, speedpaints.

Orange

I was tempted to write this entry using nothing but the word 'Blog,' as in Blog, blog blog blog blog, blog blog blog? Because ultimately there is very little in this post that you haven't read in previous posts one way or another, and I'm not a huge fan of the resulting picture (though it does have things going for it, and I did learn a lot painting it), so why bother?  Well, as I've said, I did learn some things, and some of it may be of interest, but I'll keep things fairly brief.

So DeviantArt, of which I am a member (Despite the name, the majority of art there is not deviant) has groups, one of which is the official ArtRage group, of which I'm also a member, because ArtRage is awesome, and extremely affordable for what it is (I'm not kidding, it's crazy cheap for the available feature set).  The ArtRage group started having competitions, so I thought I'd enter the first, the theme of which was "portraits."  I entered one, a commision on which I've posted here already, but I wanted another, so I came up with the following.

Just a Couple

Hello, good evening, and welcome, to another enthralling post.  Yeah, I had trouble keeping a straight face over that too.  Anyway, despite the title there is only one picture for your perusal today, but there are two people in it - plenty of step by step stuff though, if you're into that sort of thing.

I still haven't compiled all the sketches from October to December to show, and now of course I have January's to do, and then February's in a couple of weeks.  I'll get to it, and probably not all in one post either, but this weekend I'm working on another painting (digital), and then there's another facebook portrait to do, and I want to get a traditional piece done and work on my perspective skills and speedpaints too, so as you can imagine, things are a little cramped for time right now.  Also, TV show season, not helping...

Anyway, on with today's performance.