A Balance of Speed and Quality

I'm somewhat amazed to find it's been almost two months since I last did a Speedpaint update. Unfortunately I don't have that many good pieces to show, but I do have a lot of awful ones. You see, I don't post every speedpaint I do. Oh, I post the bad ones - there's plenty of evidence to that fact, but I also start a lot of speedpaints that I realise are dreadful early on and then don't bother to finish, or that get interrupted and I don't get back to, or I just realize I'm not feeling it and stop. Usually I'll post them anyway, but a handful have slipped through the net. Today I'll gather them up and post them to get them out of the way - an admission that I probably won't get back to them so I can move along with a clean conscience that I've been true to the mandate of the blog. To make up for the horror to follow you can see a couple of nicer ones though, bringing the speedpaints up to date.
The Good
These are recent one's I'm relatively pleased with:

Time Taken: 25 Minutes
Just a quick sketch with no reference. Quite like the tone of it, although the brushwork could do with some refinement.

Time Taken: 1 hour
This is actually part of a much bigger stock photo by jademacalla on Deviantart. Jade does lots of seriously awesome stock photography - generally himself (I'm guessing it's him) dressed and posing like an action hero. He's good at it - almost always looking badass rather than a scrawny Bruce Willis wannabe. Anyway, this one was a nice quiet one, which I liked, but got caught up in painting just his head - That's fine, it leaves the door open for a more finished piece, and I learned a surprising amount, so it's all good.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
Another reference-less piece, this time in colour of course. Not much to say about it really, it has some issues but isn't dreadful. The hair turned out quite nicely.

Time Taken: 2 Hours
A little long for real classification as a SpeedPaint (by my own definition anyway), but I don't have an issue with stretching the rules from time to time. This one is unusual for more than just the time spent on it, it's also the first ArtRage piece I've done with just (or even primarily) the airbrush tool, and it's one of the rare pieces I've done smaller than the native res of the screen. The preview isn't much smaller than the final image. If you don't know what this is a picture of then you've never seen Robocop clearly. This is ED-209, the precursor of the titular cop (sort of). My Brother suggested I paint it when I was fishing for ideas; I think it turned out pretty well.


The Bad
Best not to talk about these all that much, just show with a quick comment.

Time taken: 55 Minutes
There are elements of this I like, but when compared to how the picture should look (in my head you understand, this is not from reference, which is probably part of the issue) it's dreadful.

Time Taken: 15 Minutes
This could have gone some interesting places if I'd given it more time, but my body decided it was time for bed at this point, and who was I to argue. I might reuse the colour scheme or subject some time, but probably not together.


The Ugly
Really, I'm not saying anything about these at all (other than how long I wasted on them). They're not complete, not even approaching a presentable state - you get to see them anyway (very little click to zoom here - what you see when you click is barely more than is shown here).

Time Wasted: 45 Minutes

Time Wasted: 20 Minutes

Time Wasted: 40 Minutes (yes, really)

One Little Pony

No, I failed utterly to make a post about the Blog's birthday. I would say I'm rubbish (but you already know that), but instead I'll point to the slightly hectic couple of weeks I've had with dental work and surprise birthday parties and Mother's Day (which we did bugger all for, as usual), and my Son's best friends planned move to Canada (and his sister's utter terror of my very presence)and my wife's car breaking down, and her entrance exam things for College in the Autumn, and so on and so on... What do you mean that sounds like an average week in your household? You need to lay off the caffeine dearies.

Anyway, so I got a bit swamped, but I also got a commission. Have I mentioned this before? No, I have not, if I mentioned anything it was an entirely different commission that I've not started yet (I need to schedule a photo session).

Now I think anyone who commissions me has got to be a bit bonkers, but lucky for me I know a lot of people who are ever so slightly off their rockers. After the last commission I sort of decided that I wouldn't do any more for a while (because it was hard), and so of course I've taken on another two (because I am thick, or at least a soft touch). So, I present to you the first commission I've ever done for which I will get paid (actual job work not withstanding).

And there we go. OK, until the next time!





You didn't really think you'd get off so easily did you? Of course not! on with the pointlessly detailed breakdown of my ineptitude.  As usual you can click the images for larger ones.

I needed to use the fax machine, and despite once having been a technician and my current job involving heinously complex computer things I am utterly useless at using the 131 year old technology (yes, really, although they didn't take off until Xerox made them in the 60's - the more you know...).

So our receptionist gave me a helping hand with it in order to get me out of her face since the Fax machine is right by her desk. When we were getting done she asked if I would do her a portrait as she needed cheering up (I thought she was asking the wrong artist if she wanted cheering up, but since I work with about 100 of them they're not in short supply, so I must be doing something right).

Naturally I said "Yes, if you pay me a THOUSAND DOLLARS! Muahahahah!" And then I told her the real price, and she said sure. I won't mention the sum, but as it turned out I spent longer on it than had planned, so she got a bargain (she helped me with that fax though, so I guess we're even :)). It was significantly less than a thousand dollars.

I got her to sign a contract on the Friday. I know, what a bast right? I have read that the hardest things to get used to doing is to charge friends money and get them to sign contracts, but if you're to work as an artist without going bonkers then it must be done. It's a horrible experience. If you've ever grabbed a warm water pipe in one hand and a cold one in the other you'll know it's a decidedly peculiar experience (If you haven't then just visualise peeing in your pants). Imagine that, but in your brain, yuk. So, with the contract signed I told her I'd get something to her in two weeks, and then I got it finished by Tuesday, having started it that very evensong (I don't actually pray, I just like the word evensong).

Pretty early into it and I'm actually pretty pleased with the likeness. It's not on the money, but it's pretty close. I almost wish I'd just tightened this up a bit because I like how I painted her eyes and mouth here, and I kinda love how her hair just sort of bleeds into the background. Incidentally, I nabbed the reference picture from her Friendface account (with her permission of course) but in the reference picture she was resting her hand on her cheek and wearing glasses. I had to do a fair bit of filling in the blanks on this one. This was close to the time I sent her an in progress shot, but it turned out she'd gone away for a few days so I didn't get any feedback until it was almost done - ah well, I was on a roll and I wasn't going to wait for her to come back.

Here I've added in her top and a bit of cleavage (it was in the photo, but I swear this is not why I chose it). I actually look some visual measurements here (I really need to write a post about that, I've mentioned it before to do with tracing). Up to this point I'd just been going by eye, but I finally held up my stylus (that's a fancy word for a digital pen BTW) in that classic artists pose with the arm extended and one eye all squinty. I discovered that I'd made her chest to small. I know, this doesn't seem possible, but it actually happened. I only mention this so you don't think I'm just making things bigger all willy nilly when you see the animated image down below, I really had just misjudged and corrected. I've also made a start on her right eye, and other than some minor tweaking it pretty much remains like this for the rest of the painting.

Jumping from that last step to this one makes it look easy, but I actually spend ages on her left eye. First I messed it up so it didn't look like her any more, then I got it right but made it to small, and then finally I got to this point, which I decided was pretty close (I still prefer the rough one I did right at the start though). I've also cleaned up her nose and the shadows on the left side of her face (that's her left, not yours).

Cleaned up the right side of her face, started detailing her shirt (the bit where the creases stop at the bottom is where her arm was obscuring the picture, so I had to guess the rest), boosted the colour a bit and OH MY GOSH! Where'd that hand come from? OK, I just felt it needed a little something there, and a hand was a logical choice. It's not her hand - it's a hand from an entirely different photograph that was all small and blurry and lit from the opposite direction - I feel I actually did a reasonable job of relighting and detailing it. Except the Thumb, which I change later.

Almost done. Really started on her hair, detailed the rest of her top and left arm, tweaked the thumb. Still not happy with it. Oh, and painted her mouth and added a hint of freckles too.

Lots of general fixes, fixed her thumb and I was ready to call it done. I wanted something else though - something else to make it more about her. She had a perfectly good hand doing nothing there, she could be holding a necklace or something (possibly a small effigy of me in a noose, I mean she might hate it). Then I realised that she loved horse riding. Horse on a chain it is then. I decided on a silver chain because I'm not a big fan of gold and it would just disappear into the background. Not having any silver chains handy at the time I just winged it. I don't think I did a great job, but it's fairly obvious what it's supposed to be, and I wanted to go to bed. The horse isn't in this picture, but it is in the final one at the top.

Here's a step by step GIF of the process(happy birthday animated GIF by the way):

And finally a recolored version I came up with diddling about with Photoshop afterwards. I sort of like it, it has a bit more drama.

So there we go, another post another portrait. I may get another post up over the weekend if all goes according to plan, but no promises - they're far to easy to break when it comes to blogging. Until then... go read another blog?

The Best and Worst Sketching of March and April

So this post took longer than planned, but it's taken me two weeks to work through all the sketches I did in the previous two months. As usual I had vastly underestimated the number of sketches I'd managed to do in that time.
April had very few sketches of course, which you could have guessed since I was away for a good chunk of it, and what I did while I was away was covered in the previous post, but March had far more than I expected. I could have posted something else I suppose, but in all honesty I had nothing else of interest. I have some stuff in the works, but I wasn't (and I'm still not) in a position to write them up yet, and while it was the blog's 2nd birthday the other day I was too busy to do anything for it - maybe the next post will be a belated birthday post.
But for now, to the sketches...

Figure and Perspective Practice
Not a lot to say about this - I really need to work on my anatomy still (I keep putting it off, and then learn a tiny bit before putting it off for a while again and then coming back to it - not the most conducive way to learn). There are a couple here I'm really pleased with, but in the main it's all a little meh. I am getting happier with the proportions though, but I think my heads still tend toward being a little small.

Free Sketching
While the figure sketching was all a little dull, there are some free sketches I'm really quite pleased with. As usual they're predominantly heads, because I like drawing heads and I'm still a long way from getting them right, but here I think I got a few good ones. Oh, by the way, there are two images there, you need to enlarge them separately, if you have a mind to.
So, in the upper image I quite like the profile picture of the girl in the lower right, as well as the rather angry looking woman above her (or is she in pain... I think she looks ticked off either way). There are a handful of caricatures (The large girl, who was more a study in shadow than anything, the chubby chap to Miss Angry's right and the girl in the trucker cap), and the triangle of guys in the top left are pretty natural looking - I'm particularly pleased with the lowest of them.
In the second image things aren't quite as good (in my opinion), but I do like the elven girl in top right (Elf ears are cute, alright?), and the girl next to her - the others are all varying amounts of OK, but not really worth dwelling on.

Works from Reference
Not a lot to say beyond what I referred to, except that there are more misses here than hits, particularly with the eyes of the two guys - neither is dreadful, but the eyes are wrong so they don't look like who they're supposed to. Working clockwise from top left the pictures are:

• Bore by Ictoa
• Figure 5 from Katlovestock
• A poor sketch of a model I found on a pic site (where they never give credits unfortunately)
• Dean from Supernatural
• Jeans Stock 47 - Contemplating from Akissi
• Dirty Harry (with bad eyes and no gun)
• My Mother in Law (she was watching children's TV with my son at the time)
• Another sketch of the model I mentioned above, but this time more stylized (I prefer this one, though it's less accurate)  

The chances of Akissi turning up again are fairly high because she has a wonderfully expressive face, and lots of cool stock. katlovestock will probably pop up again too, because she does really phenomenal poses with good lighting and, well, she's appeared before.

Oh Dear 
Really, words fail me - these were actually the worst, as well as the most disappointing. I think the most irritating thing about them is how close each of them comes to being not terrible in some ways. Really though, Stretch Armstrong Waist, a Hermaphrodite and a man with eyeliner... if I ever actually need to draw any of those things I now know where to look for reference. Yuk.

OK, until the next time... I'll try to do that late birthday post, and I have a couple of other things I might be able to do - but the next fully finished piece of work is probably a few weeks off at least. Sorry.