All New Year Old Sketching: July to September '14

Despite having quite a lot to post about, I do seem to have fallen behind on the actual posting bit.  This means that for the first time in a while I have quite a few pieces that need posting about, rather than just a handful of speedpaints.  I'm not going to be doing much catching up today though, instead I'll be doing some catch up a little on the other posts I've fallen behind on - the monthly sketch update.

From here on things will be done a little differently.  Usually I scan the sketchbook pages, and then cut out things of note for the month and compose them into a new image.  This has two disadvantages though.  Firstly, it takes bloody ages, and I don't think there's really enough feedback to warrant all the work I put into it (this time sink aspect is the main reason I've fallen behind so badly).  Secondly, it means that consciously or not I end up cutting out a lot of the stuff that's crap.  This gives a false impression of my current progress (actually, my progress about 11 months ago because I'm so far behind).

To combat these issues I'm going to take to just posting the sketchbook pages mostly as they are when scanned.  There will still be some minor edits, and the colour and contrast adjusted for legibility, but instead of a couple of hours per sheet, it's more like a couple of hours per post, which is  a lot more manageable.

Edits will happen for the following reasons:

• I drew something that's directly or indirectly linked with my day job, and might get me into trouble for posting (even if you don't know that it's associated and there are no clues that it might be), or is something I'm working on outside of that job and I want to save the sketch for the final review post.
• Something I like is upside down or at some other odd angle, and I want to show it off better (this will not apply to things that are crap).
• I am so unspeakably ashamed of something I've drawn that I just can't bare to share it (this will be far rarer than editing by omission as mentioned above).
• A piece I like got cropped off during the scan (the sketchbook is larger than the scan bed by an irritatingly small amount), and I want to include it in the main image.

Other than that, you'll get the lot - including the ones where the cat sat on my arm while I was sketching, or my son injured himself headbutting the coffee table and I had to stop, or I was half awake at the time, and so on.  I won't be giving explanations (unless it's an amusing tale, which I doubt), so if it's crap, just accept that it's crap and move on - there are occasionally good things.

JULY 2014

 

 

 

Notes:  None really. This was a fair time ago, so I don't recall a lot of what I was thinking when drawing these.  There's a head profile in the middle of one of them that may be the worst profile I've drawn in recent memory though.  Yuck.  The spaceman planting a flag right at the bottom is sort of adorable though.

AUGUST 2014

 

 

 

Notes: That page with the Minotaurs might be the best single sketch page I've ever done.  No references either, which amazes me when I look at the head on the right side and the decaying fellow next to them.  Other than that, nothing terribly exciting, but quite a lot of it.

SEPTEMBER 2014

 

Notes: A very disappointing month.  I drew more than this (finishing off that half page for one), but it was mostly things for work, so you don't get to see it.  Quite like some things on the full page, such as the chubby businessman the girl in the dress and so on, but it's not exactly exceptional stuff. 

Feeble Sketching - April to June '14

Far from catching up with my sketch posts, I appear to have fallen further behind given that the last one was in August <shudder>.  That's inconvenient, and not terribly well planned.  So in an effort to catch up, I'm just going to post some from the next three months (April through June last year), because there's really not that much to say about them (or, if there was, I've long since forgotten).

On the plus side, I did do a marathon scanning session recently, so I have everything up to last month scanned, I just need to compile them (or, if worse comes to the worse, just adjust the levels and post them as is - eek).

Though based on my current track record, I'll get the next batch uploaded sometime in July...

Feeble Sketching - January to March '14

Well, I have no idea where the last 6 weeks went.  I know I've been busy, but it's not like I have a lot I can show for it.  3 speedpaints since the last speedpaint post (I think that's an all time low), so I need at least one more before I can post about those; a book cover - which was a fair time sink, but not that bad - and again it'll be a little while until I can post about that; and a whole bunch of work stuff that's off the table for years to come, if I can ever show it at all.  So I've been busy, and when I haven't been I've been spending my time playing video games and watching TV.  I have sketched too, but not in a terribly constructive way.   All in all it's been a bad few weeks for anything worth putting on the blog, and let's face it, it's not been the best year for it either.  Hopefully things will smooth out soon.  Until then, here are some terrible sketches I did between January and March of this year.

So January was the most productive month of the three, but as you can see, there wasn't a lot of quality in with the quantity.  Of all these sketches there's only one I actively like (the woman close to the top left corner), and the rest is downhill from there.  I've been told the more fleshed out sketch on the right side (near the top right corner) looks a bit like 'Flowers' from Agents of Shield, and while I watch the show it wasn't consciously supposed to be her.  The only other sketch of note is the large headed tentacle fellow near the middle bottom.  He's actually based on a pattern of condensation I saw on the garage window one morning.  I should probably take him further one day, but for now this is as good as he gets.

February had some moderately better stuff than January, but not a lot of it.  This is basically everything I drew that month, bar a handful of thumbnails so faint I couldn't scan them.  Really not much else to say about any of them really.

Again, this is basically the totality of my sketching in March.  Well, I say that, but it's only if you don't include all the robots.  Nothing exciting, though I'm quite fond of 'bewildered superman' near the left side, and I really have a soft spot for the woman in the bottom left.  For some reason she reminds me of Michelle Pfeiffer, despite looking not a jot like her (Hmmm... I should do a Michelle Pfeiffer painting soon).

So that was it for three very disappointing months. I think the next handful were fairly sparse also, but things do pick up a little further along.  Maybe I'll get around to posting the next few next month, leaving only one post before I'm back up to date.  I actually finished off my latest sketchbook today; the first one that took over a year to fill (which should tell you something).

Sorry for the lack of, well, anything, recently.  I'm hopeful I can get that turned around fairly soon.

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.

And there we have her.  OK, all done, onto the next!




I'm kidding, obviously. Just because it's late doesn't mean I'm going to skimp on the coverage, though I've obviously forgotten some things what with it being 4 months since I painted it.  I'll do my best though.

Unlike the last one, or the next, I decided to actually do a sketch for this one.  'Save rework with repositioning things,' I said.  'Should be pretty easy to just measure it,' I said.  'What a complete idiot,' I said, two hours later.

You see I wasn't using a grid or just eyeballing it, but actually measuring things with my stylus, calipers and thumb.  I learned two important things: 1) Trying to measure from a photograph reliably without actually touching it is a mug's game (because the image is obviously skewed slightly in your vision, unlike a real thing, which isn't flat, so can't be skewed).  2) Lineart can be deceptive.  You see I thought that looked fine - I still think it doesn't look too bad there, but when I painted over it...  Well, see for yourself.

Arrrgh!  What have I done!  It is the end of times! The dogs are cuddling the cats! Rains of bloooood! Etc, Etc.  Yes, this didn't turn out right at all.  Was it because of the skewed photo effect?  Or a miss measure of a distance or an angle somewhere?  Don't know, don't care - the results are freakish either way.  Poor woman has had her head swelled up like a balloon!

See how deceptive that line art was?  Or can you see it even there (I can't, evidently)?  Well, anyway, I needed a quick fix.  Oh, how sad that I laid it out first to avoid rework later, for it was all for naught.

So, I threw up a big grid (4x3ish), and massaged things a bit.  The grid wasn't on the painting, it was mostly just to use to see what was lining up and where.  That helped a lot as you can see above, though her left eye was still slightly off (What is it and me with left eyes?), but I fixed that as I went along.  Oh, and remember last time I said about there being coincidences in these images (of course you don't, the last was in January)?  Well, two of them ended up being for people I've done images for before.  This one is of these guy's mother.

Just a good mid point to see a full image.  It was here that I think the most important part was painted too.  I really wanted to get her eyes right, and I think I got very close.  Lovely eyes, even on the original (fairly grainy) photograph, so I felt it vitally important to capture them as accurately as possible.

So here you can see more development in the face and hair.  I've broadened her jaw on the right image as it was a little flatter than in the original photograph, and was starting to make it look like she had no chin.  The hair I kept super rough - I felt that that way it wouldn't draw away from her face particularly.  Oh, and purple hair?  Totally badass.

After that I just roughed in her shirt and hoodie (not too much detail, for the same reason as the hair), and added her necklace.  I suppose I should go into how I painted this, as it wasn't my usual method.  I used ArtRage's oil brush (as usual), but this time I had it on a higher opacity paint (less thinners), but with very little pressure.  I thought that might capture some of the noise I was actually digging in the original photograph, and I think to some degree I succeeded.  Yay.

OK, off again now.  I have to send some text to someone that's been delayed by a week due to that bad back, and I also need to write another post  - but not for today, so don't come back too soon.

Really, I'm gone.  Try not to think of the balloon head stage when going to bed tonight m'kay?  Nightmare fuel right there.

Sketching - October to December '13

Yes, I've managed to go almost another month between posts, and in all honesty I didn't get as much done in that time as I would have liked in order to share with you over the next one.  It's not that I've been doing nothing, just that not much of it is the sort of stuff this blog covers.  One thing that is related though is that I've been doing some general 'housekeeping', and I'll get into that further down.  Part of the housekeeping has been to actually start compiling the 8 months of sketches I'm behind on sharing, and that's the focus of today's post.  There are also some speedpaints for me to share, but that will probably be next week's entry.

I'm ditching the usual format of these sketching posts until I get caught up.  Usually I compile all the sketches for the time I've been lax and they're organized into different images by what they're of.  This time there's one image per month, with everything lumped in together.  It's marginally more manageable this way, so I'm more likely to do it.

October
It's been a while, obviously, but I don't believe I used reference for any of these, which means that I'm quite pleased with a couple of them (for a change).  Not all of them, and most of them have issues that I will now address.  One thing you'll see wrong with a few of the sketches here, and in the next two months below, is that I do a poor job at getting the angle on the far side of the head right.  You can see it here most obviously with the chaps head on the centre left there, and the girls next to him.  It's like the far side of their head is half as wide again as the side closest.  It's something I've been working on correcting, but it still happens an embarrassing amount of the time.  The  backside on the figure near the top right is also severely malformed, as is quite a lot of the unfortunate woman bottom left.  These things I know.  Things I'm happy with are the portrait in the top right (She's odd looking, but fairly believable), the girl in the bottom right (I'm really happy with some of the cloth creasing there, even though her nose is a bit strange), and the robot, because who doesn't like robots? Yes, this was long before the robot mania of March this year.  The rest all falls somewhere in between.  Oh, and the reaper?  Well, it was October.

November
I didn't sketch all that much in November, so this is actually a good percentage of what I did.  Not much to say, except the arm and shoulder area on the guy top right is appalling, but I really rather dig the hair on victorian dude at the bottom there.  The rest is just somewhere in between.  I guess I was getting better at the torso stuff here, but I've back slid since then, which is a shame.

December
Used some reference for some of these.  That's probably obvious given Luke Skywalker hanging out on the right there.  Two above him is a girl I found on Pinterest.  Sadly I have no idea who she is or who took the picture.  Reverse image search just returns "Dyed Hair," and sure enough she's on the top row of that image search.  It's not a great copy, but I quite like it anyway.  A couple of the other small sketchy portraits were done on the plane when we were going to my Mother's for Christmas.  Pretty par for the course, and this time I did barely any sketching while away because Christmas meant having surprisingly little time to do so.   To the best of my recollection the rest were with no, or minimal reference.

Housekeeping
You probably didn't notice, but there have been a number of small changes to the blog; specifically in the sidebar.  Mostly this was just some reorganisation, but under Pages you'll find two new links.

One is to my other "blog" The Art of James A. Taylor.  It's using Blogger and it's fancy new interface, but it's basically just a gallery of some of my work.  Some of what I consider to be the more successful pieces.  Each post has one image, and where relevant there is a link back to the corresponding post on here.  Not everything I do will go up on there, but what does go up might be up there before it's up here, but I suspect I'll partly be using it as an easy access index to the posts back on this blog.  I've had the blog and URL for ages, but only got around to adding anything to it a couple of weeks ago.

Secondly is the My Useful Links link.  This is more for me than you (in case I need to reach my list of links on a computer I'm not logged into), but it is public, so feel free to take a gander.  It was actually a surprising amount of work to organise it and make it presentable, but I figured if it was going to be public I should at least make it pretty.  If you have any links you think I should add, or that I might be interested in, let me know in the comments, where the tumbleweeds usually hang out.

Other than that I also started going through my Anatomy board on Pinterest and labeling things so they actually turn up when I search them.  I haven't made it very far through that yet, but it's a big board, so it will take a while.

And that's all I have for you today.  Back soon with those speedpaints, and maybe some other things I've been working on.

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.

Time Taken: 25 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

So this one is clearly just a quick sketch.  I saw an image on pinterest, and as I often do I decided to paint it based on just the thumbnail.  Usually when I do this I pin the reference in order to call it out in one of these posts, but I neglected to.  This is the first of three occasions in this post that I do that, which is a bit ridiculous.  That said, I have tracked the image down and pinned it now, and you can see it here. Despite finding it I couldn't find anyone to give credit to.  It's just one of those photos floating around the net.  Google reverse image search has been known to help with that on occasion, but this time it came up blank.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, it's just a quick sketch, and I've now forgotten what I was trying to learn or accomplish with the two colours on white.  I quite like the look of it though, but since I've also forgotten exactly what I did to create it I guess it was generally a waste of time as I can't replicate the look.  That's what happens when I leave it three and a half months between doing a piece and posting about it I guess (Note to self, get the sketches from last year posted soon so you can catch up with this year too, doofus).

Time Taken:  15 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

As with the last one this was done in a hurry from the thumbnail of a pin on Pinterest.  This time, while I didn't immediately pin it I did know exactly where it was from, so tracking it down again to share it was pretty easy. Bear in mind this was based on the thumbnail of the image, not the full thing, so while it's a bit naff it's also not completely awful under the circumstances.  Maybe?  Oh, suit yourself.  If you're curious, the guy in the photo is Jordan Gavaris, who plays Felix in the show Orphan Black.  I like Orphan Black, a lot, so expect to see mention of it on this blog again sooner or later.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

This is my favourite of all the speedpaints this time around, because it's bacon.  If you're American you may be wondering what sort of freakish bacon it is - it's British style back bacon, which is completely delicious and a pain in the rear to track down in the US.  I did though, and that's it sizzling away.  This one was painted with the oil tool set to thick and wet, which worked OK, and seemed to work well for the subject, even though it took a bit longer than the equivalent would using my usual settings.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

So like the first two this is based on a Pinterest Pin (what?  Pinterest is an awesome source of reference).  Unlike those two I wasn't looking at the pin when I painted it.  I'd seen the pin on my phone a couple of hours before on my Phone, and had a go at painting something a bit like it without going back to it for reference.  

Obviously I wasn't going for an exact match (I could obviously remember the dress being orange for one thing), and I quite like the result, even if it's a bit rough and ready.  Oh, and as you can see above I remembered to grab work in progress on this one.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

Remember the competition I was entering with the image from the last post?  Well, this time the competition was about cats.  Since I'd voted for cats as the subject I felt duty bound to paint a cat, but I was up to my eyeballs doing other things (this was when I was drawing those Robots for my Son's birthday).  SO I decided to submit a speedpaint of one of our cats (we have two).  This is Cameron.  Unlike the previous two submissions to the monthly ArtRage competition this one got an honorable mention.  Is it ironic that the one that took ages didn't get a nod and this 50 minute piece did?  I don't know, I'll be sure and ask Alanis Morissette next time I see her.  Speaking of whom, do you think she'd make a good subject for a painting one day?  Never know, might happen.

Remembered to grab in progress images of that one too.

Time Taken: 30 Minutes
Software: Photoshop CC

So I just got CC at home and wanted to play around with the new(ish) brush tools and such - the sort of things I never get time to experiment with at work.  After a few minutes of the usual abstract mess of painting one colour over another with each brush in turn I started something a little more representational.  It's not based on anything, and I'll happily admit that it's a bit awful (her mouth in particular is a bit of a mess), but I can't help but think it ended up looking a bit like Natalia Tena, who played Tonks in the Harry potter movies and Osha in Game of Thrones.  Not a lot like her, just a little bit around the eyes or something - particularly as Osha.

And that's it for now.  Yes, I'm aware that six speedpaints in three and a half months is a bit pants, but I've been a bit busy with other art (much of which has already been covered on the blog) and work.  I wasn't as busy this last week, but I had issues with one of my monitors (my new graphics card wasn't compatible with it, so I had to track down an adaptor).  Working again now, although Alanis could tell you if it's ironic or not that the first thing I did after getting it working wasn't based on reference (that usually hangs out on my right hand screen).  Going to be busy for a few more weeks yet, but then, hopefully, I'll get enough of a break to do some more speedpainting and scanning and actual art study - something else that's suffered from everything else going on.

Okay, more soon (I hope), but until then, happy Easter Monday I suppose (since it now is, unless you don't do Easter, which doesn't change the fact that it's Easter Monday, but probably changes whether you give a toss that it is.  Edit: Okay, so it's Tuesday instead of Monday - I got busy and forgot to post last night).

Speeding Toward 40

Some of you may have noticed there was a bit of a gap between the last two posts. Since I started the blog there have been only five occasions that I haven't succeeded in posting more than once in a month. Last December was unusual in that the sole post was on the first day of the month, and then I didn't post again until almost two weeks into this month, so I think that's the longest gap in posts so far.

 Fortunate then that I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs the whole time, but managed a reasonable amount of productivity. I did some sketching, went on holiday, did some cool things at work, built a reasonably big Lego kit, knocked out that cover for Phil (it was basically finished already though), completed a commission (which I can't show for reasons I won't go into, but it took a reasonable amount of time and turned out reasonably well - it was reasonably challenging as well), and did a handful of speedpaints, the sharing of which is the focus of this post. For a change, I'm reasonably happy with the amount of work completed. There's that word again - I think I use it a reasonable amount.

Let's get started then eh?

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on: This image by Ahrum-Stock

I realised I wasn't terribly good are reproducing things in perspective without a great deal of time spent on measuring things out back when I was working on, well, pretty much every image I've ever done. I also realised recently that I've done very few paintings or sketches where the subject was human and they were not also white. A quick review of all the speedpaints I've done shows that before this one only 5 were of people were not caucasian (and of those you could only really tell with two of them). Out of about 160 pieces, most of them featuring people, that's pretty poor going. So when I saw the photo by Ahrum-stock linked above I thought "I should paint that! It's a really cool photo, it combines both of my weaknesses, and I really, really need the practice."

I quite like the result. I mean it's a long way from perfect. It's only looks vaguely like the subject in the photo, and the perspective is still a ways off (as it is for almost all of the speedpaints here - I think I may just need to suck it up and do the measuring for these types of shots - even if it means slower speedpaints). Still, taken on it's own merits it's a pleasant looking piece. At least I think so - and I think that so rarely it's probably true (Others have told me too though - I think that's probably a better measure).

I did capture a timelapse of my painting it - though it was recorded after the fact, so you only get the completed strokes, not what I was doing with the software at the time. Even current technology has some limitations, so it was this or nothing. If you don't want to watch it you'll probably do fine looking at the step by step image I posted further above.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on: A photo of Jung Se On I found via Pinterest.

Another 90 minute one, another person of a different ethnicity to my own. Not much to add except that I'd been meaning to paint this one for a while but kept chickening out as I didn't think I could do it justice. I was right as it goes, but there are elements of the color I think came out well - and some things that may require further exploration in future. Possibly with another picture of Jung Se On as I can think of worse people to be constantly staring at for 90 minutes.

As you can see I had to move and repaint her eyes a few times over the hour and a half, even though I actually did a little measuring before I laid down the paint (I need both more practice and patience with this part obviously - I usually do better when I'm not speedpainting). You can also see that I painted over her hair with the background colour at the last minute - this was to draw the attention back onto the face as personally my eyes kept being drawn to the top of her head, and I felt that might be a common issue.

Time Taken: 30 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on: The photo from this blog post (found on pinterest).

Decided to mix things up and paint a profile, using tools in ArtRage I wouldn't usually use (I think it was felt tip pen and chalk). I really liked the source for this - really nice colours and the combination of the scarf, her glasses and her hair made for an interesting composition.

For once I think the layout art I did was pretty good, but I can't say that for the end result. I'd challenged myself to do this in 30 minutes, and so it was done, but I spent more than half the time getting the lineart right, not leaving me with much time to actually paint.  I'd love to go back and do something similar with a bit more time spent one day.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on: This image by Random Acts Creative

Now I'm probably in trouble with the wife for saying that Jung up there was not hard on the eye, so I'd like to say that if I was into dudes I suspect Raj here, LL below and Ahrum at the top would likely not be considered munters. Just saying.

Anyway, this one is way off, but again looks reasonably good on its own merits if you don't compare too closely with the source. I have to admit, I mostly chose this one because he looks like he's doing Captain Jack cosplay (Harkness, not Sparrow), and that's sort of awesome.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on: This image by LL

Yes, I painted another white guy - I just liked the source material though - the colours were great and I thought I'd take the opportunity to experiment a little again. This time I pushed the colour far more than I normal would be inclined to, and I used much "thicker" paint.

The perspective is all wrong as usual, but there is some likeness to the source and I really like how I got the colour on his back and shoulder to work with the background colour - that's a look I like and would happily try for again.

If you were curious as to the title of the post, today is my 40th birthday, so these mark the final speedpaints of my 30's.  Did I improve since I started a few years ago?  Well, I certainly hope so - but I also have a long, long way to go.