Speeding into '17

Happy New Year!  Hopefully.  And with the New Year comes the inevitable New Year resolutions.  One of mine?  Blog more, as I've been terrible at it over the last 12 months (you may have noticed).  'Blog more' is a bit vague though, so perhaps 'Blog at least once a month' works better.  Other ones are 'draw more' and 'draw/paint worse' (I'll explain that one in a future post, but it boils down to me doing more quick experimentation to improve, without always worrying about the end result as much, so it's more enjoyable).

So, here I am blogging, with actual art, for the first time since July.  Ugh, that's terrible!  Some of the upcoming posts might be about things I did a year or more ago, because I didn't mention them at the time, and in some cases I'd almost entirely forgotten about them until I stumbled across them on Facebook (or whatever).  Since the blog is as much for my memory as for your (possible) pleasure, I should probably write a post covering them.  This is not that post - this is a speedpaint post.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: http://tinyurl.com/hz6bfhv

With 5 Months since I last posted a speedpaint you'd think I would have a great many to post to catch up - well, I have enough that I don't want to write much about all of them, so I'm not going to.  This one doesn't have a step by step or anything, so take it as you will.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Nothing

I did this while messing about with Photoshop's new(ish) Mixer Brush, which I hadn't tried before.  The guy on the right came from just sort of scribbling, and finding a face in the result, while the guy on the left was more planned, but only a little so.

Time Taken: 140 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Jesús "Chuy" Alanis of Circulos de Nada

I got to meet Chuy, and most of the rest of the band Circulos de Nada, on my trip to Mexico. They invited me to attend one of their rehearsals, and this is based on some of the shots I took there.



I recorded me painting it here, but the capture crashed after an hour and I didn't notice until I was done. So that was annoying; Still worth a watch if you're interested though.  The music is by the band, if you were wondering and didn't watch to the end.

Time Taken: 150 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on - Bit of this - Model Stefania Ferrario

Not terribly keen on this one, though I think the hair came out pretty well.  I was trying to do something with more vibrant colour than my usual, and also something a little 80's feeling.  Mixed results.

I think I actually preferred it before I added the round frame around her head actually...

Time Taken: 145 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: See video

Personally I like this one a lot, but it seems to have passed by unremarked upon in most places I've posted it.  No accounting for taste I guess.  Anyway, I like it, so there.



Not a lot to say about the process - really happy how her hair came out, despite it not being remotely realistic, and done so rapidly.

Time Taken: 225 Minutes + 170 Minutes + 190 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4 and Photoshop
Based on: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing

A sort of sequel to last year's halloween triptych.  That one was of  Horror icons of the 30's, while this one is the late 50's early 60's, and yeah, it was done in October.

None of the three is pulled from a single photograph, and Price is sort of a 'generic creepy Price' from the era, rather than a specific character (Lee is Dracula, and Cushing is Victor Frankenstein).  Price was also the most difficult, as there are surprisingly few high quality colour images of him online from that era (Except from Fall of the House of Usher, which in retrospect I should have gone with, but then he lacked the beard I personally associate with him - painting for another day I guess).

All the painting was done in ArtRage, with a little postwork in Photoshop to get the grain and such.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage (Minor post work in Photoshop)

Usually I don't remember my dreams, but on this occasion I did, or at least this weird vision of a nurse with red skin.  I was ill and had a fever at the time (this may explain the dream), and decided to paint it.  I'm not terribly happy with the result, but it's not like I can call it inaccurate.



I recorded the painting of it, as I thought it might be interesting one way or another, and it's the first ArtRage recording I've done with my new setup too.  I just did a quick search for a few references and went for it.  I would not be surprised if I revisit this one day.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: http://tinyurl.com/gpjqhp7

This one was one I 'fixed' at the last minute with judicious use of Photoshop's Liquify tool.

I think he actually looks like a nice enough fellow before I made the proportional changes, but it wasn't capturing the aspects of the original I was trying to, hence the quick fix.  Not a favourite of mine either way though.

Time Taken: 150 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: Very loosely on a photo of model Keiko Inagaki

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.

Time Taken: 120 Minutes

Software: Photoshop
Self Portrait

So, if you've been paying attention you may recall this one from the previous post.  November 1st was Self Portrait Day, and apparently this has been a thing for a while, though I knew nothing about it until last year.  I thought I may as well take part as it had been a little while since I'd had a new profile picture (which is what most of my selfies end up being - just like anyone else's really).  I wanted a picture from that day, rather than one from a photograph taken before.  Sadly by the time I decided to participate everyone else had buggered off to bed, so I had no one to take a photograph of me to base it on.  Briefly considered using a mirror and working from life (I've done that a few times), and then decided I'd just take a snap on my phone and work from that.

It being late I completely forgot to save any progress images.  I mean it's usually late when I paint, but this time I was also up against the clock to get it done by midnight.  A shame, because as I mentioned last time it's one of the better pieces I've ever done in many ways.

Time Taken: 120 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: Selfies of a friend of a friend

A friend of mine linked me to the photo this is based on shortly after Halloween saying it looked like something I might paint. Turned out she was right. Despite being in a halloween costume I thought the photo and costume looked quite festive.  I asked the friend to ask her friend if I could paint it - the answer was yes, and I got some additional photographs to work from should I want to. I did.

The end result is  a combination of three of the photos I think.  The face and hair is the original one I saw, the angle of the shoulders a second, and the headdress a third (it was cropped off in the original).  Originally I was going to have a very graphic background, but around the time I reached the second row I realised the whole thing looked like the sort of Meme that would have Impact font text top and bottom. Something like "What if Harry Potter is real... but sold to us Muggles as fiction?"  So with that in mind I went back and made it more snow like at the end.  Not much else to say, although I was using a different bunch of settings from the usual, which I also mentioned last post, and will mention again when we get to the rodeo.

Time Taken: 135 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: Various Rodeo Pictures

A friend of ours runs a Facebook Secret Santa group.  She does most of the organisation, because she's a lovely person, and assigns everyone in the group someone else to get a present for.  The present should be from local stores rather than chain stores, and the intention is for everyone to mail their gift to their recipient by a certain date.  You get a little bio about the person you're getting a gift for in advance.  My gift was fancy chocolates from the Bay Area for example (and they were very fancy indeed - yum!)

The person I was assigned to loved horses, and especially rodeos.  I though that might make an interesting subject for a painting - not my usual type of subject matter, and an opportunity to do something a little more impressionistic.

The intention was to get more of the movement of the horse than a crystal clear image of one.  I had the initial image in my head fairly firmly, but needed suitable reference.   Surprisingly it was quite difficult to find a shot from a rodeo in this pose, so in the end I think I cobbled together two horses and two riders, with the costume and face of a third rider.  In order to help me keep it loose I went back to the technique I mentioned in the paint above, which is to have thick paint and low pressure with a stiff brush (these are digital settings you understand, not actual brushes; though it is closer to the way I might paint in reality).  I did do a little colour switch at the end, as I wanted a cool bluer look rather than  a more purple one, though I had both the blue and the purple version printed to give the recipient options.

Since it was for printing I painted it rather larger than my usual speedpaint, and this image shows it at actual size - is also gives a good idea of how impressionistic it is.  Sadly it printed really dark - much darker than I was expecting (blue usually prints darker, but not by this much).  She didn't seem to mind (I said if she wanted a lighter version to say so on FB, but she didn't).

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Software: ArtRage

This one you may have seen before, as it's one of the pieces I did for the last book cover before finalising the design.  There wasn't any reference for it, and unusually for me I didn't use the Oil Paint tool at all.  The piece came about using the Roller and Palette Knife tools, with a little bit of chalk.  This was actually done quite a long time ago, but I couldn't show it in the last post as the book wasn't out yet.  Now it is (with a different cover), so I can finally cover it under the speedpaints.

And that's all for this time.  Hopefully next week I can tackle the paintings I did in December.  Since I started the post I have actually managed to do another speed painting (somewhere between a study and a speedpaint), so maybe I will have something to cover next month as well.

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.

Time Taken: 110 Minutes
Software: Artrage
Based on: Photo from the '60s of model Linda Morand.

I didn't want to do a direct copy for this one, feeling I need to be less afraid of stronger stylisation when called for.  This was the result.

I don't like it much.  I think it could have worked well if I'd spent a lot more time on it though (clearly stylising things takes a lot longer as my brain is doing things it's not used to doing while painting, or something).

Time Taken: 150 Minutes
Software: Photoshop

This one was sort of fun actually.  I didn't have a vision for it to begin with, I was just doodling and one of the doodles led to this.  Might lead to a more complete painting one day, but I just wanted to see how well I could translate the sketch into something more dimensional in a fairly short timeframe.

The sketch in the top left was done independently of the rest of the picture.  I just stamped it into a pleasing compositional place and started sketching around it.

Time Taken: 20 Minutes
Software: Photoshop

Just mucking about with some colour choices and brushes.  I don't even remember which picture I based it on.

Time Taken: 120, 175 & 110 Minutes
Software: Artrage & Photoshop
Based on: Boris Karloff as the Monster, Elsa Lanchester as The Monster's Mate (AKA The Bride of Frankenstein), Bela Lugosi as Dracula

So, it should be fairly evident that I painted this one for Halloween, except it's three separate speedpaints that happen to fit together.  The Triptych format was always intentional, with my coming up with the background before I painted any of them.  What wasn't so certain was what I was going to paint.  I wanted the classic Universal Monsters (hence the era appropriate Deco style background, created in Photoshop), but didn't decide on which ones, or which shots to base them on until I started each of them.

The Monster was first, and is probably the roughest of the three.  I din't use a grid of any kind for this one, relying instead on the pattern itself and measurements to get things in the right place.  It's taken from two separate photos of the monster (all three are taken from at least two photos), to give a relatively unique image.  Other than the background everything other than the final image is done in ArtRage, with Photoshop used in that last stage to give a little bloom, noise and subtle colour to the image.

Dracula came next, and the process was very similar to that of The Monster, except this time I used a crosshair grid to aid in getting the likeness.  I was actually happy with how quickly that aspect came together: the third image here is recognisable already, and the likeness actually takes a brief step backwards in the 4th.

Finally, The Bride.  I have to admit to never having actually seen Bride of Frankenstein, and despite her place in pop culture it was only while looking for references for this picture that I realised how damn striking Elsa Lanchester actually was; attractive in a quirky way that puts me in mind of Jennifer Tilly or Debi Mazar.  Anyway, I was originally going to do Karloff again as the Mummy, but quickly changed my mind when I realised the Bride's hair would be infinitely more interesting to paint.  For this one I used a 4x4 grid, and based it on three images.  I think it came together fairly well.

Time Taken: 65 Minutes
Software: Photoshop

Another piece that's mostly just my playing around with various brushes.  The picture is based on two thumbnails sitting next to each other on Pinterest: a man in a Parka, and a striking looking woman.

I don't claim it's terribly good, but there might be something worth revisiting at some point.  I think I actually preferred it in the early stages, when the palette was more muted.

That's all for now.  This only covers October.  There is another post with November's paints to come.  I haven't actually done a single speedpaint so far this month (I was away, but also working on a book cover), but there are still a couple of weeks left to rectify that.  November had 3 though (or 4, depending on how you count it), so I'll cover those soon.

Sketching - October to December '14

It's a bit ridiculous that I simplified posting sketches so I could more easily keep up with it, and then haven't posted any for 5 months.  I shall post now, although this still puts me a year behind.  Same rules as last time - Scan page, adjust levels, post image.  Edits allowed for rotating something so you can see it better, or cutting something out you're not supposed to see (for work or whatever. Not because it's bad - you get to see the terrible stuff, or there wouldn't be much to see). So, let's see what I was up to a year ago...

October 2014

Notes:  I quite like TV man, and sweater girl, as well as knife woman on the bottom image.  Jack-o-lantern on the central image wins it though really.  I need to do a painting of that one day (maybe for next Halloween).

November 2014

December 2014

Notes: Chap in the middle of the lower one is based on my Brother (not a good likeness).  It's the only one based on a photo I think.  I quite like a couple here (especially fur collar Aria up there), but nothing is really standing out as amazing.

I think next year I'm going to do with sketching what I did with Speedpainting this year, since I've been sketching less but painting more.  Next year I'll give over that time to more sketching, but it will be study sketching, rather than free form stuff like this.  Hopefully that will get me out of the rut I think I'm stuck in right now (really, this years sketches, few as they are, are no better than these from last year).

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.

Okay, so that there is the piece under discussion.  If you want to skip to the end or just glance at the pictures I'll get the big details out of the way first.  Painted in Photoshop, based on this lovely stock photograph by AmethystDreams1987. Took about three weeks on and off.  OK, we're good, off you go.

For those that are sticking around, I guess we can go into a little more detail.

The above isn't the painting, it's a rare time I'm posting a reference right on the blog.  So the idea came about for this one when I was trying to work out a good way to paint blood, for entirely unconnected reasons.  I picked an image and started painting over the photograph.  Got the blood looking pretty reasonable, and then thought 'well, if she's got blood all over her hands she should probably have Vampire like eyes.  And the background should be black, and maybe she's been crying.'  Which is how I arrived at the above image, Which is of course what I based the actual painting on.  Why did I chose that particular image to test the blood on?  No idea, it just appealed at the time.

 So I decided to paint that, and started working on the line art, using a grid to lay it out (4x4 if I remember correctly - might have been 6x6 though).  You may notice one of her eyes (the left, on the right) looks better defined than the other, which is thicker and darker.  That's because I zoomed in to do that one.  The rest of the sketching was done zoomed out so I could see the whole image.  This resulted in an interestingly inaccurate scribble when I zoomed in later...

You can see that there's a box over the sketch.  This was when I wasn't sure if I wanted to change the composition, and was trying to work out something that might work better.  In the end, I liked having the box there more than the idea of cropping it more, so it stayed, and morphed into what you see above.  The horns came about because I've been trying to paint something with horns for a while, and I thought it would be more interesting if she wasn't just a Vampire after all.

Colour wise I used the technique of throwing down fairly random bright colours so they show through the final layer and get a little mixed into the 'paint'.  Gives the flesh a little life it might otherwise lack.  I was going to leave her jacket black, but at the last minute thought red might work a little better (I'm sure a combination of Michael Jackson and Akira played their part on my subconcious).

The next stage was more or less to just speedpaint in the bold strokes for most of the picture.  This left me with some observations.  I'd made her finger too long, but maybe that worked with the Demon thing - I'd decide later.  The back of the jacket, even when more fully rendered, was going to be a big distracting white space, so I'd need to throw something back there.  Was her hair reading as blonde?  Or was the colour choice swinging it toward green?  I realised I hadn't remotely captured the shape of her nose too, but I sort of liked it like this.   For the most part I thought I'd just keep going and work things out as I went.  I don't think I touched it for 10 days after this though - I was busy.

When I finally came back to it I started working on what I thought would be the most difficult bit (it was the most time consuming): Her jacket.  The 4 stages here probably took about a week to do, at around an hour a night.  There was some extra cleanup later, but not all that much - this was mostly it other than the addition of the skull afterwards.  The toughest bit wasn't all the wrinkles surprisingly; rather it was the elasticated sleeve.  Getting that too look soft enough was a real challenge.  The actual jacket looks to be cotton, but in painting it it began to look slightly satin.  Well, that worked out fine, so I ran with it instead of trying to fix it.

Part way through that lot I did a quick mockup of how I wanted things to end up.  We'll get to the logo on the back and the neon later, but here you can see I'd started to work on those things fairly early, and then hid them as distractions.  The skull emblem was just quickly warped in Photoshop to fit on the back at this point.  In some ways I prefer the more subdued neon and the blue background to what I finally ended up with.  Ce la vie.

There's a lot going on in these two pictures, so let's break it down.  On the left the main change is the hair, and the rough in of the horns.  The method for the hair is more or less the same one I usually use:  Start with  the big shapes (you've seen that bit above) and then use progressively smaller brushes to add smaller and smaller detail.  The only real difference this time was the few strands hanging over her face - for those I painted a strand quite dark, and then masked it and went in again for the highlights.

On the right I've added the rimlight and neon as well as detailed out the horns.  I've also fixed the length of her finger, and gave her mouth a bit more of a pout (more like the reference).  The horns are the only part of the image where I've used a textured brush (other than the background).  I was having real difficulty getting them to look gritty enough with just my usual flat brush.  You'll note that the overall lighting is basically the same as that in the roughout - I just built layers of light and texture over that until I got bored.

The rim light was tricky, because I couldn't find a reference of a decent resolution where the subject wasn't completely silhouetted.  In other words I had to guess how much penetration the red light would have through her hair.  Since I'm doing this in Photoshop I took advantage of it here, and painted that on a separate layer with the screen blending mode on.  This let detail show through, rather than having to manually retain it while painting.

So now we get to the skull.  I'd done this earlier of course, but I'd needed a skull that was a bit cool, a bit creepy, and potentially sort of feminine.  My answer is above - A screaming demon skull with a bow in its mouth.   It's not all that feminine really, but this is 2015; it doesn't have to scream pretty princess or anything. The skull isn't pulled from anything by the way, I just doodled a skull and then cleaned it up a little bit.

Here is where I've started hand painting the skull in, but you can also see the blood, additional rimlight and where her makeup has run.  The blood and the rim light are sort of the inverse of each other.  The rest of the rimlight is done with the same Screen  mode system I mentioned earlier, while the blood is the opposite - a Multiply screen mode over the existing form.  The highlights on the blood were just picked out with a light hard brush.  Easy.

So the skull here isn't just a straight trace of the warped one I'd done earlier (which you can see as a faint pink I'm working over).  Instead I tweaked it as I went along to better conform to the angles and folds of her back.  This means I essentially drew the skull from scratch again, with the earlier warped  one as a rough guide.

For the neon sign I used Photoshop magic again - It's a path set to outline, and then the outline treated with some outer glow layer FX.  Very quick to do, but the downside is it slows PS down quite a lot at this scale, so I had it turned off while actually painting.

And here's the final again, so I can talk about it.  Most of the changes between this and the last were 'post' effects - layers on top of the actual picture meant to tweak things that would be slow to do in other ways.  There's a colour modifying one to push the foreground a little cooler for example (the rimlight is unaffected, because it was on that separate layer in the first place).  There is some work by hand though - the smoke is a large textured brush (it's the one I used before to paint the Reese from Terminator speedpaint), but then painted over with a regular brush for the highlights.   All done!

And since I don't think I've put the original size image up anywhere, here's a snippet of it, matching the snippet of the original reference right at the top.  You'll need to click it to get an actual full size look.

You know, I typed all that and only now do I realise I have a thumbnail as the thumbnail...  And I did get it all written today, so Happy Halloween!