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.
The above is the complete record of the 198 'finished' speedpaints I've done in the last 4 years and 7 months. I consider ones unfinished if I just gave up on them completely, or got interrupted while painting and never went back to them (I don't mind still calling something a speedpaint even if I took a break halfway through, as long as it took less than X time of actual painting. usually they're done in one sitting though).
I've included the 'Christmas Paints' I did in the first year in the lineup, since in retrospect they fall well within the window of what I now consider speedpaints, but I'm not including the facebook portraits I did a while back because of the fairly arbitrary reasoning that they're in a different folder on my hard drive.
I was tempted to include a couple of the unfinished ones (there are only about 6), just to bring the number up to 200, but I then decided I'd rather do something different for the 200th paint (You'll see it next month, unless you're here from facebook or DeviantArt, in which case you've already seen it). Many of those unfinished 6 have already appeared on the blog in one capacity or another, and have usually been labeled as such.
The shortest took 5 minutes (or less! I always round to the closest 5 minutes), the longest 190 (that's about 3hrs and 10 minutes, if your maths are as bad as mine), but that was an unusual case, and I mentioned it at the time. Usually I try to keep them at under 2 hours, and usually feel increasingly guilty as the time gets close to that. Sometimes I just get into painting though, and don't really notice the time passing until my butt gets sore, which generally seems to be at about the 1 hour and 45 minute mark.
The majority of the paintings were done in ArtRage, with the first use of something else (Photoshop) being in the third year. Since then I've used it more and more (especially since I created a brush similar to the one I like in AR), but still regularly use ArtRage. To date 26 Speedpaints have been in Photoshop, and 169 in ArtRage, with a mere 3 being in Sketchbook pro (I'm not a fan).
One of the images in the lineups is one I've never uploaded before (for reasons I won't go into, because they're boring), so its thumbnail here is the first time I've shown it - there will be no prize for picking it out of the lineup, but feel free if you want to challenge yourself.
Year One
One minor problem with the method I used to compile these images is that they aren't in any particular order other than the 12 month block they were created in. I would have liked to sort by when they were done, but I also didn't want to spend the time doing it manually. That's the case for all of these collective images, but this is as good a place to mention it as any.
So year one stretched from October 2010, through to May 2011, and in that time I did 50 paintings. Some of them weren't terrible! In fact the first I did (girl in a blue dress, second row down), is still one of my favourite pieces. Oh, sure, I can do better now, but I'm not sure I can do better in half an hour! Well, OK, maybe - I should make an effort to do some rougher speedier paints more often to find out.
Most of these took an hour or less, with only 3 going over that time (The Die Hard one and the girl in the pirate outfit on the first row, and the Two Ronnies, which is the first image on the second row). There's an average of 1.72 paintings a week. If I had decided to work out the years based on the October start date then the first year would have had 74 paintings, making it by far the most productive (even keeping up my current rate this next year is only going to end up with 48... maybe a handful more if I'm feeling particularly inspired). But then, at the time I was doing less comission work (none in fact), and fewer 'bigger' pieces in general.
Year Two
More pictures, but less to talk about. The pieces averaged out at one picture a week, which is actually better than I'm aiming for this year. This is especially surprising to see given that the first image on this sheet was part of my "Stress doesn't help when speedpainting" post, so I think there was a fair chunk in there when I didn't paint anything.
There are two self portraits in this lot, both of which I'm still fairly happy with, and both of which I think I was coincidentally wearing the same T-shirt for. There are also two pictures of my son, though you'd never know in at least one case, because it's an awful likeness. Another awful likeness is that of George Clooney, three rows from the bottom. Oh, you can't see George Clooney on that row? Point made then. Even now likenesses in portraits are extremely hit or miss for me to get.
Incidentally, the 100th speedpaint I did was the second portrait on the last line, though I didn't know that at the time, since I wasn't really counting back then.
Year Three
This year was by far my least productive, but also contains a lot of my favourite works. In fact, from a quality vs quantity perspective this may have been the most fruitful year, as the ratio of ones I'm pleased with to those that I'm not might be higher than at any other time.
Not much else to say about this year, although it does contain the first Photoshop and Sketchbook Pro speedpaintings; The monotone portrait at the end of the second row down, and the parrot at the start of the next, respectively.
Year Four
Not much to say about this year either really - Productivity was up, while quality was... well, about the same, I guess. fewer pieces I like compared to those I don't, but those I like I might like a little more?
This year also contained the longest speedpaint featured in this post - the blue haired girl in headphones - at a colossal 190 minutes. I almost didn't count it as a speedpaint. I ended up doing so. since it was done with a speedpaint mentality at the time, and 3 hours and 10 minutes is still pretty quick by the standards I've held other pieces to. That was also one of my most liked pieces by other people until recently - I'm still quite fond of it myself; I think the hair came out really well.
Year Five
This one brings us up to almost the current day (Since this image was compiled I've done another two paints, which I'll post about next month). This last year has seen a sharp rise in the number of Photoshop paints, for no particular reason that I'm consciously aware of (maybe I'm just getting more comfortable using it for painting, or it could be because of the aforementioned ArtRage like brush, or maybe even that they finally overhauled their Color panel to be slightly useable).
If I had continued at the rate I began the year it would have been the slimmest yet, but a resolution has kept up a steady flow since January, with my forcing out a paint a week even when I've been otherwise busy, though as a result some of them are very rough and ready, like the Sumo Wrestler looking fellow on the 4th row down, or the final image in this set.
Those pieces are also examples of pieces I've not used reference for, or at least haven't used a direct reference for (three of the ten original pieces had plenty of reference, but it was referred to, not copied), which is something else I've done more of in the last year, though the quality is way behind those I've based more directly off photographs.
Lastly, this year also saw a huge increase in the number of environment pieces, rather than those based on people or animals (twice as many as the previous highest - 8 instead of 4).
And The Rest
These of course were not the only art related things I've done outside of work since the blog began, but they are the only ones I'm counting as speedpaints. Apparently this means I've done a speedpaint every 1.2 weeks for the past 5 years (alright, 4 and a half years), which is actually a lot more than I would have thought, especially with the other pieces I've done in that time (I'm not going to calculate the averages there, at least not tonight.
So there we have it! If this were one of those fancy popular blogs that people earn a living off these days I would say something like "Which was your favorite? Leave a comment below and let us know!" But since it's a perfectly ordinary blog, and I get a comment less often than I get a haircut, you can just make a vague decision in your head and keep it there if you'd like. Oh, I neglected to mention it before, but you can click on those compiled images above to enlarge them.
