PG Results January 2016

Post Graduation Results 

January 2016

Pg Results January 2016

Speeding to Catch Up

I've decided to stop giving reasons as to why posts are few and far between lately, and just post when I can.  Eventually things should calm down enough that I can make them more frequently.  Until then, I have some catching up to do.

To simplify things a bit I'll just post the images of the last three months of speedpaints, and only comment when there's something of particular note.  For the most part the methods used are very similar to previous ones I've posted about. There's quite a few of them (10), so this might be a long one.

January

Time Taken: 85 Minutes
Software: Artrage
Based on: Very loosely, a photo of Bella Thorne (I think)

Did some colour correction at the end when I painted in the balloon.  Also a rare case of me working out the pose structurally, instead of by eye.  I should do that more often.

Time Taken: 140 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based on: Nothing specific - Space doodle perspective practice

Time Taken: 65 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Nothing in particular, just a doodle.

More colour correction at the last minute.  I've been doing that a lot lately - I should work on getting it right in the first place, but sometimes it can help an otherwise insipid image, especially when it's not fully planned out when started.

Time Taken: 145 Minutes

Software: ArtRage

Based on: Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation

February

Time Taken: 15 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Nothing, just a quick loose doodle.

Time Taken: 170 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Swiss/British/Korean Model/Actress Clara Lee

I kept thinking I would get around to removing the red, but in the end it added something I liked so I left it.  Did a fairly large rejig midway through using Photoshop's transform tool to pull some of her proportions in a little.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Another doodle, some minor reference

Time Taken: 140 minutes

Software: Artrage

Based on: A Photograph (Source Unknown)

Painting rocks is time consuming it turns out. I have no idea where the photo this was based on came from, and Google is not it's usual helpful self.  Looks Eastern European or Russian though.

I did a colour pass on this one too, to get a different feel (more like dusk), but in this case I liked the warmer one more.

March

Time Taken: 20 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Nothing, just a pose sketch to get it out of my head.

Time Taken: 135 Minutes

Software: Photoshop

Based on: Small Pinterested image of Christina Ricci

Some heavy modifications on this one.  You may not immediately notice, but between the second and third stage I narrowed her head and arm, and then on the fifth I cut her head out and scaled it up quite a bit.  Actually using some of the power of the tools lately.  Not useful for when I get back to traditional work, but very handy for a digital piece in a hurry.

April isn't over yet, so this months paints will need to wait until next time.

ವಿಚಾರ ಸಂಕಿರಣ - ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ದಲ್ಲಿ ಸೌಹಾರ್ದ ಮತ್ತು ಸಂಘರ್ಷದ ನೆಲೆಗಳು

ಎಲ್ಲರೂ ಬನ್ನಿ

ಗೆಳೆಯರನ್ನೂ ಕರೆತನ್ನಿ

ವಿಚಾರವಾದಿ ಕಲಬುರ್ಗಿ ಒಂದು ನೆನಪು ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ

ಮಹಿಳಾ ದಿನಾಚರಣೆ : ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ಗೋಷ್ಠಿ-ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಭಾಗ

A Psychochronography in Chrome - Addendum

Well, yes, I suppose I should write another blog post, given that it's been over a month since my last. Why so lax of late? The usual; Just been busy, and blogging ranks fairly low on my list of priorities (right above Cleaning the Toilet, which is something I do more regularly - I didn't say it was a list of most fun things!). So this puts me about a year behind on the sketching posts (not actually that bad, since I've not been sketching much either, which is worse than not blogging about it), and two months behind on Speedpaint posts. I have at least three other things to write about too, so hopefully things will calm down a bit soon so I can catch up...

This post actually returns to something I've posted about before - one of Dr. Sandifer's book covers. I wrote about the cover, but I also mentioned that while the cover was done, the full illustration was not. I've rectified that over the last week, so now I can close out this chapter with a write-up. See what I did there? Chapter? See, it's a post about a book? Oh, never mind. If you need to recap about the other half of the following painting you can read about it, and the book, here.

Okay, so the cover was finished, and probably nobody would have minded if I'd done no more work on it, except me, and I did mind.  I thought it might turn out to be a great painting, and really it did turn out fairly well.  I was busy for a while after Christmas (still am - see above), but I really wanted to get this done so I could clear it from my mind and move onto something else, so I got ArtRage running again and got back to it.

The first thing to do was to work out how I wanted it to look.  I did this by going back to the original speedpaint and layout sketch, and then doing some more work on it.  This part was in Photoshop rather than ArtRage. I also used this as a test bed for some of the lighting I wanted to do.  I knew I wanted the woman lit mainly by diffuse light, except for some points where the light was breaking through the leaf cover, and he was half in and out of the shade.  This was enough to proceed on, but since I was busy it was a few weeks before I sat down to work on it properly.

Step one was laying down the flat values on which the rest of the painting would be built.  Not very exciting, so I've skipped that here and shown the second stage, which was filling out some of the detail on the tree.  Here I've also filled in some of the coverage behind the woman.  I intended to do a lot more work back there when I was done, but in the end I barely touched it, as I didn't want additional detail to draw away from the woman herself.

Next was painting the rocks, which turned out to be harder than I thought in this style ( I have trouble with Rock generally - I should do some studies).  I got to a point where I was happy with it though, and started on the man. I should mention that the Man is mainly based on this image, by the always incredible mjranum-stock, but I didn't adhere to it as much as I usually might, using it more as inspiration than trying to replicate it exactly.  I've based speedpaints on both the photographer's work, and on this exact model before, so don't be surprised if either of those links look familiar.

Not much to add here that wouldn't equate to 'Draw the rest of the owl', so we can skip on pretty quickly.

Unlike the man, I didn't have one solid reference for the woman.  I had one woman that was half a pose reference, and another two for the rest (photographed from different angles, of wildly different body types, clothed and unclothed, with different lighting), and then another handful of images as reference for her robe, none of which were remotely close to the pose or lighting.

This was a little intimidating, but I thought I'd give it my best shot anyway.  You'll note that her leg changed angles between this image and the next - I realised that her foot was at completely the wrong angle for her leg here, and it was easier to redo the leg than work out how to repaint her foot (I hate doing feet).  The man also got mostly finished here - The predominant thing of note was that I shortened his neck from the layouts as it looked a bit odd in actual practice.

More owl (no actual owl, obviously, though in retrospect that would have been cool).  Her head and hair were painted with no reference at all though, hopefully that's not completely obvious.

Originally I was going to be quite careful with the sun dappling, making each patch match the contour and shading of the surface the sun was hitting.  After a couple of them I realised you couldn't really tell, so I just splodged on some brighter areas, and that more or less did the trick.  I'm halfway through doing the bloke's head here so it does rather look like someone just threw scrambled egg at him.  I also refined the end of the stump on the tree, right above the man's head.  A subtle thing really, but it makes a difference.

After that, to reach the initial image in this post, I finished up the sun dappling, refined  the rocks immediately in front of his feet, added strappy sandals to both of them and arm jewelry to her, added a new tree, and some branches to the right of the main tree trunk, refined her hair and the belts, painted his staff and signed it.  That sounds like a lot, but really it went by quickly enough that I didn't save an in between image other than the tree appearing in the background.

The lighting is probably a little off, as for the sun to have them in the shade the way I've depicted you would either have the sun higher in the sky than the way the reflection appears on the rocket, or there would be greenery poking in along the top edge of the painting.  That would change the composition a fair bit though, so I'll go with the questionable lighting for the overall effect (and I'll bet until I mentioned it you didn't notice, and now you have you can't unsee it - bugger).

Finally, here's 4 closeups of the final piece, that you can better understand how loosely the whole thing was painted.  This is similar to the Rodeo Girl I did before Christmas, and obviously the previous part of this painting I'd done for the cover.  It's quite a different look from the style I usually use, and actually takes longer even though it looks less refined, because I don't yet know exactly what the result will be when I make a stroke - I like it though, so it will probably join my list of things I do on occasion when the intended result best suits it.

Painting at the Speed of Fail

Clearly I lied in the last post and did not get to writing another, until now.  I should stop trying to predict the future in my posts, because it's shocking how often things I predict don't come to pass.  Or maybe I should predict things I don't want to happen, so there's a lower possibility of them occurring.  Either way, here I am again with another update on some speedpaints, only two months after I actually did them.  Back to December for this round.  For the sake of my schedule though I'll try and keep this one fairly short.  On the other hand though, videos!

Time Taken: 25 Minutes
Software: Photoshop

It's a monster taking a selfie.  What more do you need?

Time Taken: 90 minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: http://fav.me/d4q8kuy from randomactscreative.com

Loved the lighting and colour on the original reference, so I had a go at recreating it.  I also had a go at capturing one of those fancy  timelapse videos, and finally got it working out.  So, no step by step, just a video.  Fun.

So as you can see, I have the original image open on the left while I paint on the right.  I used to have the reference open on my right monitor while I painted on the left one, but since I've started working with a Cintiq having a reference on my other monitor is only good for the occasional glance, so this works out better.

I have the images set to the same resolution, which means I can zoom in and then scale the other one to match with a keyboard shortcut.  You'll see my cursor appearing over the original image fairly regularly, especially at the start - this isn't me colour sampling it (I didn't sample any colours from the original here), but rather how I measure it.  Hover over a point, and then flick my hand to a second point.  Do that a couple of times and then use the muscle memory to do the same on the other window, but this time while drawing a stroke.  It's not as accurate as measuring properly, or using a grid, but it is fast and usually close enough.

If it's worth me doing more of these (there's another one along in a minute), let me know in the comments (you may need to brush aside some cobwebs down there).

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Software: Photoshop

Not a finished piece by any means, but what I'm hoping to do more of from now on.  A piece from which I could develop something more finished from should I want to.  It's not really based on anything specific, though the pose is similar to one I saw on Pinterest.  Mostly I was just interested in blending some Medieval looks with some sci-fi tech.

I don't love the piece, but I quite like the outfit for the most part (not sure about the stomach region though, but it's better than just showing a midriff I suppose).

Time Taken: 190 Minutes
Software: Photoshop
Based on: A photo I took in St. Petersburg

Part of my Designated Area series, this is from where I had to stand outside the hotel if I wanted a smoke.  There were more people around in the original, but I left them out to save time.

Due to jetlag I was outside at some fairly strange times of day.  Twice while I was out there I encountered a young woman seemingly taking her horse for a walk.  She offered to let me ride it for a fairly small price.  I'm not sure this would have been pleasant for the horse - I'm a pretty big guy, and it was a fairly small horse - so I declined.  The young woman did not seem terribly impressed by that.  I was mostly impressed that she started off speaking English, but I suppose there's a reasonable chance a tired looking white guy standing outside a St. Petersburg hotel at 4am is a jetlagged visitor who speaks at least some English.

Time Taken: 130 Minutes
Software: ArtRage
Based On: A photo of our Foster Dog, Molly

We fostered a dog for a week after Christmas.  She ended up going to a new forever family after that, because right now we don't have time to introduce a dog into our lives full time (I can barely find time to write blog posts!).  Anyway, if it wasn't for our schedules we might have taken her ourselves because she was the most ridiculously well behaved Dog I've even met.  OK, enough about Molly, here's another video, this time from Artrage.

As you can see, I use a quite similar setup in ArtRage as I do in Photoshop.  Ref to the left, paint to the right.  The main difference is that I can't easily scale the ref to match the canvas size (I left the bit where I try and get them close at the beginning out of the video).  There are a couple of jumps here and there - that's where my recording ran out and I didn't notice to start it up again for a minute or so.  You'll note I moved one of here eyes at one point - I like to avoid doing that, but I quite liked how the eye looked, and didn't want to repaint it.  I think this one is recorded at a more frequent rate than the previous one, so you're seeing it at a slower speed.

And that's it for today!  No promises, but I'll try to be back before the end of the month so I'm only posting paints after a maximum of a month, rather than two (ugh, I can barely remember painting half of these ;))