new questionnaire for previous exam Octber 2011

thanks for your request. we will work on this.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

os there figures or drawings given during the examination?

no figures or drawings are given as part of problems in the examinations except for Math.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

top or percdc ?

perc is good in electronics. i'm not familiar with top. anybody who can provide feedback about top?

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

where can i find neet assignment answers to module 3 & 4?

we will upload it soon. keep yourself posted.

Ask me anything, I will answer it.

The Best and Worst Sketching of December

Oh, all right, I'll bring back the bad sketches!  No, nobody has actually asked me to bring them back; nobody ever posts any comments remember? You're allowed to if you want to though, I don't bite. Well, my blog doesn't at least...  And yes someone did comment on the last post, but I'm married to her so it doesn't count ;).  Anyway, I just felt guilty for not showing them.  One of the things I decided way back when I started the blog was that I would show a good sampling of everything I did, good and bad, so I'm letting myself down.  You probably don't care, probably see them and say "Why'd he post that? It looks like I spider sneezed on the page and then died!"  before moving on.  Really I have no idea why anyone would read the blog that by it's very concept is admitting it's full of dreadful pictures, but you do, and I'm happy for that.  And since you do read it (presumably) and look at the pictures (hopefully) I'd better post something for you to look at.

Figure and Perspective Practice
We'll start with the Figure Perspective practice this time, although now it's Figure and Perspective practice thank you very much. Yeah, that "and" makes all the difference doesn't it? Not much to say about this that the images can't say themselves. I still need to work on hands and feet, especially from certain angles, but there is some improvement in them shown here I think. I also came to the realization that people do have another half on the opposite side of their chests and abdomen, so I started sketching people from behind - only one of these was any good, and it's down in the bottom left - I think it may be my favorite single image of the month in fact - except the hand, which I made a bad mess of. No reference used for any of these by the way, though I'll have to start using some soon for this or I'll just continue making the same mistakes over and over.

From Reference
Sketches from reference. The only one I recall where it came from was the profile of the girl on the right - that's from Stockness on DeviantArt. It's recognisable, but not terribly good, mostly because I made a mess of her eye I think (I adore this stock shot though, and another side shot of her in her gallery, so don't be surprised if she pops up again sooner of later). And yes, I do occasionally draw men, as you can see here.

Free Sketching
Actually, I think the balance of guys to girls in my sketches is starting to work itself out, as this image shows. Yes the girl in the lower right was supposed to seem basically anorexic (not a look I like, but interesting to draw). Yes, that is another elf/sprite/fairy in the top left, and the guy next to her with the top hat is the Doctor. A sketch for a painting I was planning, and may yet do one day. Yes, I was frustrated when drawing that scribble in the lower left, I still like it, so there.

Sketch Faliures
So these are not the worse sketches I did this month as I decided that actually showing the *worst was pointless since something that's scribbled down inside of 10 seconds is never going to be good, likewise something that's just an exploration for something else that I didn't actually intend to be any good. So the straight up bad has now been replaced by the most disappointing. These are works where what I had in my head just refuses to translate to the page, or where it was all going so well and then went terribly wrong, or where I just utterly forgot some basic principle of anatomy or perspective or proportion and... well, you get the idea.
I actually do like a couple of these as they show potential, but they are not, in and of themselves, remotely good.  By the way, you can't really enlarge this one, but the rest are embiggable.

Until the next time! Which will hopefully be in a few days.

And a Small Hat

It was only supposed to be a speedpaint, and turned into my favourite piece so far.  You may not agree, and that's entirely fine, but I'm really pleased how this piece worked out.  It's not perfect of course - there are aspects that make me cringe, but as an overall piece this, in my opinion, is the best I've done.  The major problem with it is that it's quite small, because I usually do speed paints at screen resolution, so when you enlarge this one it might not enlarge as much as you'd expect - that said, it will give you ample scale to see my wonky brushwork.  After all that build up I suppose I should show the piece then eh?

And there you have it.  OK, looks like I can knock off early this time...  No?  Oh, okay, then I'd better go back to the beginning.

I found this nice texture in one of my reference folders.  I have no idea where it came from, but seeing as some of my texture references are 12 years old or more this is no surprise.  Still, I like the texture and thought it would be an interesting one to paint on.  I think it's plywood or something.  Anyway, I made a mental note and when I stumbled across this stock art from SenoritaPepitaStock on Deviantart I thought "hey, that shot would make a good speedpaint on that wood texture".  In my head I could see it as a caricature, so I got started.

As I said in the previous post I don't usually draw a rough for a speedpaint, but in this case I felt it would be prudent given that I was planning for exaggeration of the proportions.   Since I was still planning to spend maybe an hour on the piece this was done rather quickly; maybe 10 minutes.  You'll note there's a blob of paint where her left eye is - I'd plopped it down before I decided to paint on a new layer, and since I didn't save at this point it's there for all eternity now.  If you're wondering how I have this if I didn't save it, it's the next image with the paint layer turned off - the wonders of modern technology.

35 minutes in, or there about.  It was going well, but I didn't like her face (in the painting, Senorita Pepita's face is just fine), so I decided to repaint her eyes and nose, and in a rare decision, I decided to save it.  So, this is what speed paints look like halfway through - this didn't end up being a very speedy paint, but I didn't know that at the time.  Anyway, I repainted her eyes and nose and tweaked her mouth.

At this point I was 50 minutes down and realizing I wasn't going to finish all the other bits inside an hour.  Usually I would just say to myself "Fine, this one can run 90 minutes," but in this case I was literally out of time as we had to go out after the hour, so I saved the piece here and figured I'd chalk it up as a gonner (I've only ever had one speedpaint I didn't finish in one sitting, and one I've never finished - I'm trying not to make a habit of it).  I was going to show it at this stage, but I had no intention of doing any more to it.  Yeah, that worked out...

Anyway, just in case you're not seeing huge differences in the face in the last two images here's a shot of them side by side.
So, obviously I did continue with it.  The image was stuck in my head and I wasn't going to be happy until it was done.  It was at this point I decided to spend more than another 40 minutes on it, but at the same time I didn't want to end up with 20+ hours spent as I did on the piece of Aimee (more news about that piece at some point by the way, but not today).  In the end I probably spent about 5 hours on it, but I'm not 100% sure exactly how long .

Here's a shot of her hat roughed in, and a start made on her jacket.  This makes it look like I painted the jacket detail in about 10 minutes, but it took ages because I couldn't get the level of contrast in the satin the way I wanted it.  I think in the original image she's wearing brushed suede or something, but I had no clue how to paint that, so I went with satin instead.  The shape of the jacket has also been cleaned up quite a bit from the speedpaint version.

She's no longer suffering from baldness, although I've added no detail to her hair at this point, and the rest of the jacket is roughed out (the left side, towards us, is pretty much finished though).  I also painted over the background to give a more textured look.  Nothing exciting, but it focuses the eye on the centre.  By the way, you may notice the cropping is different from the finished version I posted - this is because I painted it at screen resolution and I have a wide aspect ration monitor - I felt the squarer cropping would work better at the end, so these are just cropped so she's central, rather than to match the final image.

And here she is almost finished.  I've done more work to her face (see below), finished the jacket and corset (though I painted it as a flat to the jacket as I felt that was more interesting), given her a nice clossy head of hair and completed the hat.  After this I painted a lighter spot in the background (for contrast) and her jewelry.  She has no earing in the original photo, and I felt that she didn't need me to be adding one - that ear was a bugger to get right by the way.

Finally here's the 4 stages of painting her face and hair.  The last image is just small tweaks, such as adding highlights to her cheekbones and making her lips a little more delicate, that sort of thing, but it does show how it went from being speedpaint rough to looking quite nice.

And there you have it - my last painting of 2011.  Only sketches to go and we're all caught up and ready to roll with 2012.

And a Happy New Speedpaint

I haven't posted a speedpaint in quite a while, which is partly because I haven't painted many. I'm back in the saddle now, but back around October I'd hit the dry spot I've spoken of (lots of sketching, minimal painting) and hadn't really got back into doing them for a while. I said last time I'd post fewer speedpaints more often, and I thought that since I hadn't done many I'd only have a handful to post now. Wrong! 12 of them (10ve if you want to get technical). Curses, so much for my short post.  Better get on with it then eh?

Time Taken: 60 Minutes (35+25)

I'll be the first to admit that this one is crap. Well, technically it's two, but we'll get there. My son wanted me to paint his picture from life, which I thought would be an interesting challenge (speaking of my Son he's right here asking me to go and play "'Sackboy' or Lego Star Wars, right now Daddy, please!" must type faster). It was an interesting challenge because my son is 4 (looks 6) and is physically incapable of keeping still for more than a few seconds. It'd be like painting one of the blurry head demons from Jacob's Ladder.

Turned out it was even harder than that: he sat there for about 3 minutes (head bobbing the whole time) before just getting bored and leaving me to paint the rest from memory. The result looked nothing like him (the left image), so I ran off, found him, took a long look and then ran back to try again over the top of what I already had. The result was different enough to show them both, but neither looks remotely like him or remotely good (although he did just recognize himself while nagging me to go play, so that's something).

Time Taken: 40 Minutes

It's supposed to be Lola from Run Lola Run. Looks almost nothing like her, but I like the piece a little anyway.

Time Taken: 6 minutes

Look, I know it's ghastly, but it is recognizably the 11th Doctor if you squint your eyes and tilt your head a bit. I wanted to know if it was possible to do a recognizable portrait of him in the time it took his theme to play.

It sort of is I guess.

Time Taken: 30 Minutes

After I found Deviant Art one of the first images I saw was the source for this speedpaint. You can find the original here (might be filtered for adult content, I dunno). Anyway, usually I'm turned off by gas-masks because they creep me the hell out, but this one was so striking I wanted to paint it. Given the gas-mask and the dreamlike feel of the image I thought I should paint it very roughly and with an off kilter palette. The result is far from the best thing I've ever done, but there's something I quite like about it all the same.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes

A while ago I posted a sketch of what appeared to be a black fairy with an afro (I guess she might have been an elf - I can't really tell the difference) - this was my attempt to expand on that. I felt she wouldn't be just be dark skinned but also greenish (due to being a fairy/elf/imp/thing). The result loses everything I liked about the original sketch, but does have some redeeming qualities, especially as I wasn't working from reference other than the original sketch. Fairy/elf girl may reappear at some point, because I think she has the potential for a cool image.

Time Taken: No Idea

I already covered this one. I guess it's technically not a speed paint, although the actual painting bit was done in a hurry and led directly to the next one.

Time Taken: 35 Minutes

Another slightly creepy image. This one was done for Halloween. She was supposed to be a vampire, but I forgot to add the pointed teeth (I know, daft). The roughness is done in the exact same manner I painted the previous piece, and I guess it's related to the gas-mask piece too. I suspect I was in a funny mood generally around this time and it's reflected in the work. Anyway, it's intentionally rough and not many people who've seen it like it but I actually do, so there.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes

A huge gap between that last one and this (about a month), but I finally had enough inspiration to sit down and paint something. The image is completely out of my head, although when I finished I realized the subject looked like CJ from GTA: San Andreas thumbing a lift. Sub-conscious, or coincidence? I have no idea. Quite pleased with his anatomy and skin tone, less pleased with everything else.

Time taken: 60 Minutes

This is the worlds slowest speed paint. It took 60 minutes, but that was in two sessions about a week apart. The first session was interrupted by my son having a bit of drama, and I didn't get back to it for a while. I like the result though, especially the face. It's based on a small (100 pixels-ish) thumbnail from a photo taken in the 60's I had saved - I know nothing more about the source than that.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes

Since I wrote the bit above several hours have passed. This is neither here nor there beyond my son finally getting his 'Sackboy' fix.
I mention this because that's him there, giving his friend a hug. Yes, it's a bit late for Christmas now, but this was done for my family and friends on facebook and I did it in the hour leading up to Christmas, posting it at around midnight.
It's a bit lacking in subtlety, but if you look at the thumbnail for this and the original picture it's hard to tell them apart. You can't do that of course (unless you happen to be a friend of my wife's since it's her photo), so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Time Taken: 55 Minutes

I've painted a lot of women recently. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's just how it goes - I find painting and drawing women preferable to drawing and painting men. That said, I don't think I should ignore my own gender completely so I made a point of doing a male portrait. This is it, obviously.
It's base don yet more stockart, and it's not terribly good (my work, not the stockart). You'll note his brow is wonky for one thing, though I am quite pleased with the colour and lighting and his general expression.

The wonky brow does bring up an interesting point about speedpaints, at least the way I do them. Part of the point of them is to do them quickly. ArtRage lends itself slightly better to this than Photoshop because it has a far more accessible colour picker (at least in CS3 which I use at home), and so less time is wasted in picking colours. Other ways I save time are not sketching the image out beforehand (usually anyway, there are times when I do), and not really checking my proportions and angles the way you're traditionally supposed to. Usually you're supposed to use your paintbrush or pencil or stylus to measure your source (be it from photograph or from life) and then transfer that measurement back to the picture you're working on. I'm not a stranger to this, and I've done it many times (most recently here), but it does tend to slow you down, so for speedpaints I just judge it by eye..

One advantage to ignoring the checking of angles and proportion for speed paints is that I'm increasingly getting better at doing it without, and taking into account the optical illusions that tend to happen when working from perspective or portraits. I'm a long way from perfect at this of course, but I think I can often get a reasonable likeness without measuring now, which is far better than I could do a year or so ago.

The result of all this though is that things like this poor fellows wonky brow line occur in the pursuit of speed, but sometimes things go really rather well and a good work can result.

Anyway, the mention of speedpaints being sketched out before actually painting segues fairly well into my next planned post. Until the next time, have a very happy new year,