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.

All the speed, none of the finesse

Well, it's been a heck of a month, and somewhat exhausting.  I'll spare you all the little details, but they are much the same as ever, with the addition of three bereavements.  Again, I'll not go into details, this being more a reminder to my future self as to what I was doing when they left us than any seeking of sympathy.

In other areas things have been going better.  I did a portrait that I can't show you for some time (for reasons murky and unfathomable - I don't really understand them myself), and managed, with a bit of modification, to keep up with my New Years resolution.

This modification was simply to change the goal from one speedpaint a week to the equivalent of four speedpaints a month.  This has the advantage of requiring fewer speedpaints (3 less, since I'd already excluded the first week of the year), and also meaning that if any were missed I could catch up on them at another time, something I have had to do, somehow managing to miss one in January I made up for in March.

All of which is to say, there's a bumper fun packed* collection Speedpaints to follow.

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!

Robots Under Pressure

It's been a slightly packed couple of weeks.  It was my Son's birthday yesterday, and that will be the focus of this post (completely skipping over two other things I need to blog about, not including the sketching posts I have still failed to get to). The day before I had an important presentation at work (I wasn't doing the presenting, but it was my work - along with others - being presented, if that makes sense), and that might eventually be the focus of a post in about 5 years time.  Anyway, those two things were a day apart, and I was given the task for each of them a day apart as well, about 2 and a half weeks ago.

For work it was that I'd taken a screenshot of something from just the right angle that it looked good, and it was suggested that it be shown off at this presentation. Except not a still shot from just that angle.  What I was working on was in no-way ready to be presented in that way, but I said sure anyway, and then set out to make sure it wasn't horrible.  It was more work than I'd anticipated, but such is life.  I can't go into any additional detail, except that getting it to a state I was (fairly) happy to show took late nights and last weekend. This is not a complaint - it's just something that goes along with the job sometimes.  On it's own, not a big deal.

The day after this came up my wife suggested I do something for my Son's birthday.  He's been on a kick to get a picture of a Cute Robot for a while, and she's been looking at pictures on Etsy and such.  I'm generally loath to buy something I could do just as well myself (which isn't much to be honest), so she said "well, why don't you do one...  Or more?"  We ended up deciding on 7. She said 4 to 6, and I pointed out that since he was turning 7 it should be 7.  You may note there are only 6 below - explanation to follow.

Sketching for July/September '13

With over a month since my last post, you'd think I'd have lots to show.  You would be wrong.  It's not that I've not been active (though I've not produced anywhere near what I should have - almost no speed paints for example), just that much of that I either can't show, or can't show just yet.  Mostly though this month (and the end of the last) has just been a fairly tough slog.  Long time followers will know that October 5th marks an unhappy anniversary for me, and  as such the two weeks around that date are usually a pretty horrible time for me emotionally.   This year though I also had two friends pass away in the time since I last posted.  The latter was very close, and died on Thursday.   I won't post my thoughts on that here - it's best left to other places, but obviously it's affected me deeply.

But on to happier things, at least for this post.  We've had a house guest for a few weeks, and he's likely to be around for a while longer.  While his presence is obviously a minor distraction from the art thing he's also the model guest, and we're very happy to have him. I do also have some things coming up soon - I'm taking a new painting class, and I'll be posting the results before long.  One of the pieces seems to be fairly popular, (though of course, being me I can't see why) and overall there should be three or four paintings by the end of it.  I've also been working on a new book cover for Dr. Sandifer, and that should be hitting the electronic store shelves in the next few weeks - I'll have a post about it ready when it does of course.  There are also another two covers that are essentially done, and just waiting on a final page count.  Those I'll probably blog about in December and January when the books go live.  So yes, things are happening, even if it's not quite in the places I would hope (anatomy practice, sketching, that sort of thing - I've had no mental time for it the past few months, but hopefully that will change soon).  For now though, let's get the sketching up to date...

The Three Year (and One Month) Retrospective

As I mentioned last time, I did have quite a lot planned for the blog's third birthday.  I had images of all the major stuff I've done laid out for comparison, a sketch from each month since the blog began laid out in a time line and a few things more.  You don't get any of that.  Firstly the drive with those images on died, including the original scans from the sketchbooks, but that was OK since I had all of them uploaded.

Unfortunately on the day I went to get the uploaded images Flickr (where I uploaded the first years worth of images for reasons I've now forgotten) changed how things are linked so those early images also appear to have gone.  I have lower res versions on facebook still, but you can imagine I was a bit fed up with the whole thing by this point.  Oh, and my sketchbook fell apart, which really capped my lethargy for the whole thing.

Over the next few months I'll slowly transfer the images from facebook (those I also placed there) back over to the blog so there's still a record of the first year of progress.  No point having a blog about progression if the first year is a blank after all.  So after all that I've cobbled together two images for discussion below.

A Welcome Return to Speed

It's been a crazy few weeks. I didn't mention this in my last couple of posts, but the company I work for filed for bankruptcy and put most of it's assets up for sale. I won't go into the details (You can look up THQ bankruptcy if you have an interest), but suffice to say it was a stressful time all round, and while I still have a job (under a different parent company, but still with the same team in the same place), many people didn't, and that makes me very unhappy.
And given all that stress art has not been at the forefront of my mind. Even so I've sketched more this month than at any time since September, and given how little I'd drawn in December I felt I may as well hold onto that for a post in early February.  Which leaves us with the few speedpaints I've managed to cobble together over the last two months.  My last speedpaint prior to this was also in September, and I have no interest in leaving it that long again as the quality level drops sharply if I don't do them for too long.

Belated Sketching for September

It's been a while hasn't it? I skipped the first whole month since the blog began (actually closer to two months at this point if I'm honest), and I've not done much art in order to say "Well yeah, but check this out!" either. You may be thinking I've been resting on my laurels after that book cover, or that I've just been slacking. Those in the second group would be closer to the truth; I've totally been slacking, but not without reason.

Some of you already know that the beginning of October (and the end of September) is a particularly hard emotional time for me, and this year saw an anniversary that made it especially so. Before I could get over that little funk there was another emotionally trying time (Mostly for my wife, but obviously what effects her rubs off on me to some extent), and then my Son was sick, and then my wife was sick, and now I'm sick - but it's now more irritating than "feel like death", hence my finally writing a post.

So the emotional stuff basically nuked my inspiration and drive so I did very little for the month. I did enough to get some more posts, but no speedpaints and not much sketching. There goes my one speedpaint a week intent - I'll get back on it soon. Anyway, before all this I did scan in September's sketching, so I have that to show at least...

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Speedpaints

Back once more with the monthly speedpaint roundup. A little different this month, but we'll get to that in a minute. I decided at the Blog's birthday to try doing at least one speedpaint a week for the year, and so far I've managed to keep to that; so I have another four for you to see.

In other related news I'm taking a break from doing the commissions for a little bit in order to focus on improvement. People still want them, and I'd like to do them, but I feel bad taking peoples hard earned when there's improvement to be had (plus, they're a lot of work), so on with that for a few weeks before the money raking (hah!) can continue.

I've also co-started a group at work dedicated to that very improvement. I'm very happy with the response so far as we have artist and non artist alike all wanting to improve. We're not doing lessons and such (so far), it's more like a Weight Watchers type setup where we all admit that we suck and give each other support to improve. Expect to see some of my results appearing in the blog in future - right now I'm drawing a page of circles every night for two weeks, I'm sure you can hardly wait to gaze upon those those now can you?

OK, enough preamble...

Trains, Planes, Cars and a Boat

There, that wasn't so bad a wait was it? I'm back, obviously. Where've I been? The UK, again. Usually there's quite a gap between trips, but this one was a mere 7 and a bit months. We went again so soon because of my Cousin's wedding, and it turned out to be one of the most mental trips I've ever been on. It'll be a while before I go again unfortunately, but next time we plan for it to be a little more relaxing.

This post is going to be a little different from most as I want to get down things that happened on the trip so I can remind myself just how crazy it was compared to the usual ones (which are rarely boring). I'll fit in the sketching I did first though. I don't really care if you don't want to read all the text - this one is for my own benefit; feel free to check out the pictures and ignore the text if you want to.

The Great Depression

I have produced next to nothing this month. This is due to a combination of factors, among them is the aspect of pure laziness, the videogame Skyrim, and 'trouble at mill,' as Graham Chapman once said.

If you've been paying attention you'll know which company I work for, and if you frequent the right news sites you'll have seen that company in the news a bit with wild rumors and speculation flying around. It's all been very stressful. Don't ask me if the rumors are true, if I knew I still couldn't tell you and I'd be a lot less stressed...

Anyway, this just means I don't have much to show right now, but I did managed to pick up a paintbrush for the first time since I left school. I have to tell you the results were... well, see for yourself.

Sketches on a plane (and elsewhere)

And I'm back. Normal programming will resume shortly, but until then some short messages.

I don't have any short messages of course, but I do have some sketches I did while in the UK; which is where I've been for the last three weeks. I didn't sketch as much as I may have liked, mostly because I was either too busy running around with the family or I was drunk with friends (or of course recovering from being drunk with friends before running around with the family...). So, I'll post most of what I did and divide it up into relevant topics - From Life, From Photos, From Memory and Free Sketching; with a little write up after each. Ok,let's do this.

A Musing 4: Stress and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I've been away for a while. Had you noticed? Poor May, no love for May. Poor blog, missed it's first birthday. Why? Well, therein lies a tale, and I'm limited in how much I can tell you. But it does lead to this current blog entry, and I'll post some speed paints and such in with it as examples, but, as the title may lead you to believe, it's all due to stress. Nothing to do with Motorcycles though - but a more meaningful title would get me in trouble at work...