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.

Back to the 2015 Recap Post

I still have two speedpaint posts coming up soon, one for November, and one for December, but today I'm just going for something fairly quick and easy, one of those Review of the Year things that all the cool sites are doing these days, plus some thoughts on my goals for this year.

I don't recall ever doing one of these before (I have done year end speedpaint reviews, but those paying attention will know those usually come around in May, for reasons), so here's the format - I'll give a quick overview of what I've done, and then pick my 4 favourite pieces to show again and cover why I like them, and one piece I hate.  These are ones I personally like (or dislike) - not the most popular, and my preferences for my own work might seem a bit strange.  All good?  OK, let's begin.

This is almost every image I painted (outside of my day job) in 2015, with one major omission which I can't talk about except to say it exists (a shame, it would have made the top 4), and a couple of others I just remembered (but aren't worth redoing the image for).  If you click on it it'll blow up to a size where you can actually see what they are.  They're not in any particular order, and not all of them have had associated posts yet.

There are 72 images on the sheet, but some of them contain what I'd consider multiple pieces in one (and some contain multiple pieces I don't think count as more than one), so it's actually well over 100 things (I make it 142, depending on how I feel like counting at the minute).

Of those, 64 are speedpaints, which is awesome for reasons I'll get to.  The rest are commissions and random side projects.  That's not bad going for something I do in my spare time, and even then not as often as I feel like I should.

So of those, which do I consider the most successful pieces of the year?  Well, I'm surprised at how difficult it is to choose (you know I'm rarely a fan of my own work, but I have to admit, there's some good stuff tucked away in there), but I think, at least today, the following qualify:

White on Black

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 110 minutes, based on an older Skullcandy advertisement.

I liked this one so much I did a companion piece, and also considered doing others along the same theme (this may still happen).  This one was one that came about really quickly - I saw the image it was based on, thought "I should paint that!" and did it almost immediately.  In addition to that I made changes and choices that I wouldn't usually make, and I think the result, especially given the time I spent on it, is a quite striking and polished image.  Everything just sort of works together, from the one bold colour (pink/red) in an otherwise subdued palette, to the more graphic nature of the composition and pose (actually fully intentional for once), to the strong light shape of the headphones in the otherwise dark (but not fully black) surround.  One of the few pieces which turned out almost exactly as I planned, rather than turning out OK due to some happy accidents.

Me

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 120 minutes, based on a snap from my cellphone 2 minutes before.

Well, this one is awkward.  Not only is it a speedpaint I have yet to post in a speedpaint roundup (that'll be the next post), but it's also a self portrait.  I'm not the best subject for portraiture, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm generally available, and this was for Self Portrait Day (November 1st).
So, if I'm a terrible subject, why is this here?  Because despite the unfortunate subject matter I'm of the opinion that this might be the best portrait I've ever done, speedpaint or not.  Everything about it came together, and speaking as the person probably most familiar with the physog in question, it looks exactly like me.  The colours work, I like the feeling of depth that it has.  Really, the only things wrong with it is that it's of me, and I really can't remember how exactly I did it (I usually keep those step by step images for my memory's benefit as much as yours, and in this case I neglected to capture any).

So that's how my ego managed to make the top 4 of the year :/

Urban Assassin

Artrage Speedpaint taking 115 minutes, based on this photograph from DrunkHobo-Stock

Much like White on Black, this piece was a concentrated effort to do something a little bit different.  I worked looser, and with very different brush settings from those I'm usually comfortable with. This is the case for a handful of speedpaints - sometimes it works out, other times it's a disaster.  In this case it worked out, and I've used a similar technique twice since then, once for the book cover featured in the last post.

In this case though, I think the original worked out the best.  I'm slightly amazed by how well this piece works myself, given I know what went into creating it.  Small things, like exactly how little work went into painting the hands and face, but how they still came out looking really effective.  Usually capturing those elements takes quite a bit of work, but here there was very little repainting - what you see is essentially what I painted, stroke for stroke. Now if only I could work out how to do that every time I'd be set.  In the meantime, some of the techniques learned creating this piece led to two other fairly successful pieces, and that is enough to get it a spot on this here list (also, he does look pretty badass).

Not So Innocent

Photoshop work, based on this photograph by AmethystDreams1987

This is going to be a fairly short writeup.  There are actually a few elements in this picture where I think I did similar things better elsewhere (such as her hair), but I'm picking this one for one reason - that jacket.  It took a really long time to paint it, but the end result is probably worth all the time I put in.  That, combined with how much this piece transforms the photograph it's based on is really enough to place it in the top 4 despite its flaws.

Well, making that list was remarkably difficult.  Much more difficult than I was expecting when I started this post.  Looking at the four, I'm interested with how dark each of them is (in terms of lighting, but also in terms of subject in two cases).  Does this mean I just like strong contrast in a piece, or is it just a coincidence?  Blowed if I know.  

I do know the next section is easier though - what was the worst thing I did this year?  Scroll on MacDuff, and discover the horror:

Crap Tarzan

Crap speedpaint taking 25 minutes in Photoshop, and not worth a minute of it.

Really, I'm not even going to try and justify it, it's just pure crap.  There might be a kernel of an idea that could work quite well, but as it's own thing...  Yeah, no.  I can't blame the short time spent on it either - I've done a lot better in a lot less time.

So that covers the year, more or less, with one other thing to cover.  A year ago I said my resolution was to do more speedpaints - one a week.  I pretty quickly changed that to four a month, as that seemed more manageable.  

This grid (or at least 75% of it) was created then to track the speedpaints I was doing, but at the time all the green boxes were black.  Three columns of 16, so 48 cells, one for each image I needed to do - each time I completed one, I would fill in a box with green.  I'd filled those by mid September, back when I painted Bruce Lee, so I had to add another Column.  Since then I've done another 16 paintings, the last of which I'll be covering in the next two speedpaint posts. So I blew past my personal challenge to get a total of 64 speedpaints done (to varying degrees of success). Rather more than 1 a week - Go me.

One thing I realised while doing them though, was I'm still too reliant on direct reference.  Nothing wrong with that (especially when painting at speed).  I could probably work from nothing but straight reference from now until forever and nobody but me would mind.  It's not like I'm ever going to stop working from direct reference completely either - It's can be too relaxing for that.  

Even so, I want to go back to working on some of the fundamentals, and if that's at the expense of the number of speedpaints I'm cranking out then so be it.  This year's resolution is to work on those fundamentals, which will also aid my painting from direct reference in the long run.  Things like proportion, human anatomy, perspective, composition, and colour theory. 

I also realised that the speedpaints were getting to the point where they were less speed and more just paints. so I'm going to change my personal terminology a little.  Anything under 100 minutes can still be a speedpaint (that's still pretty fast for some of the things I've managed to do), anything over becomes just a quick painting.  The intent is to do more speedpaints, and just the occasional painting - even if that means they go 'unfinished' when the time runs out. 

This doesn't effect much as far as you're concerned - they'll still all come under the speedpaint umbrella as far as posts are concerned with the same internal gut feeling on whether they count or not.  There will also be Studies, which will be where I'm tackling something specific.  Those might be as little as a few brushstrokes, as long as I learn from them.  You'll get to see those too, but possibly under a different post.

Oh, and my other resolution is to get the rest of the sketch posts up to date ASAP - if some of this study is going to be traditional (and I intend for it to be) then it might be beneficial to get it up where I can easily find it - and by extension you can see it to.

So this year things are shaking up a bit while I go back to basics.  Back to the drawing board if you will.  Hopefully the only difference you'll really notice will be in the quality of the results.

Until the next post, Happy New Year! I hope 2015 was a good one for you, and 2016 is even better.

Time-Table 2015-16 Even Semester from 2015 Dec 28 to 2016 April 23

Time-Table 2015-16 Even Semester

A Psychochronography in Chrome

Well, this is a little awkward.  Usually I write these posts and time them to coincide with the launch of the book they're about.  In this case though the good Doctor Sandifer released it on Boxing Day (That's December 26th for those of you who don't know), which is also the day after Christmas, so I forgot.  Sorry.

Anyway, we're here now, so lets get on with it.  As ever you can catch up on the previous Psychochronography posts by clicking here and working your way back to the beginning.  You don't need to do that though; the short story is that I do occasional book covers for Philip Sandifer, who writes critical analysis of (usually pretty geeky) things.  This is one of those.  The explanation for using the word Psychochronography I'll let you dig out for yourself.

So back in June Phil contacts me about doing the next cover in his TARDIS Eruditorum series, and just as an aside he mentions this other book of essays he's working on called  Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: Thoughts on Science Fiction in 2015.  Do I want to do the cover?

After some general back and forth this was my reply.  I think I've already included this in the speedpaint posts over the last couple of months (since it was one), but that was without the text; this is the one I actually sent Phil.  He wasn't keen.  Well, maybe he was, but he wasn't keen on it for this book in particular. I was busy on the Eruditorum 6 cover then, so it sort of sat on the back burner.  He pointed out that the ship in the background looked like a Cyberman, was this intentional?  It wasn't, but in retrospect it really does.

A while later I had an idea of something to speedpaint and thought "If this works, it might make a good cover", so I did the speedpaint about three times the size I usually do them, and ended up with the above, but bigger - a lot bigger.  Slapped some text on it and mailed Phil the following.

He was keener, but felt the colours and layout were too similar to Eruditorum 5.

Well, easily fixed thanks to the magic of computers.  Phil seemed happy, I was reasonably happy.  I Did a new custom logo this time too.  I don't remember the genesis of it, except that the rougher paint style suggested wear and tear to me, so I wanted the letters of 'Weapons' to look a little chipped and worn.

Months pass, and I decide I should take another crack at the idea for the cover.  It's not that I dislike what I'd done before, just that I didn't feel it fit as well with the theme of the title essay as it could (The effect of the Sad  and Rabid Puppies on 2015's Hugo Awards.  Look it up, it was quite a mess).  The above was the first go at it - took about 35 minutes I guess.

And then I did this revision before cropping it and sending it to Phil.  More enthused than before!  Got what I was going for! The Hugo award is traditionally a Chrome Rocket (based on a 1950's hood ornament).  This doesn't look exactly like one, but close enough, and he liked that.  So all I had to do now was make it ten times larger and we're good to go!

This is the sad image.  I was going to extend the piece into a wraparound illustration, but for reasons I'll get to it didn't happen (yet).  Other than that this is basically the quick painting above (which I'm also counting as a speedpaint by the way), but with a little more work on the rocket design.  That left part may yet happen incidentally, but obviously not for the book, since it's available to buy.

I got busy at this point.  I had a lot on at work, and a trip to Russia to plan, and Fallout 4 came out, which basically evaporated a week of my life (I don't game as much as I used to, so 20 hours in a game is a big deal these days.  I've played a lot more since, but not with quite so much focus).

Right before I was going to head to Russia Phil emailed me.  Could he get the cover in two weeks?  Not the whole thing, just the front, for the Digital edition.  For some reason if you don't get your final cover set a few weeks before they cancel your preorders, and there were some.  The slight ridiculousness of the Digital version needing to be finished before the Print version is not lost on either me or Phil (since, in theory at least, a print version is more immutable than a digital one).

I wrote off the back cover part of the painting at that point.  I realised there was just no way I could get that much done in time.  I hoped I could get it done for the print version, but realistically it wasn't going to happen. With that in mind I knew I should focus all my attention only on what was on the front.

One thing I wasn't terribly keen on in my sketch was how the rocket was lit, or more technically how it was reflecting (pure metal has no diffuse response y'see?  It's all just reflections).  To combat this I made a rough rocket and made it chrome.  Took about half an hour, and gave me a rough lighting reference (this was from Marmoset, using one of the default environments).

Then I started on the trees.  The colours were taken directly from the rough, and I built them up in three layers.  I knew there were going to be more trees in front of them, so I deliberately kept them sketchy so as not to take too much time or to draw to much attention to them.  With the background trees done I turned my attention to the rocket, adapting the rough to the sketch I had, and to the environment, and to the colour scheme I was using.

Then I went to Russia.

I could write a lot about Russia - Saint Petersburg to be more precise.  I'm not going to though (at least in this post), but suffice to say I had a lot of preconceived notions about what Russia was going to be like, and other than the Airport (which was very much as I expected) I was wrong.  The city and it's people were all wonderful (at least that I spoke to), and the food was amazing.  Also a shocking number of people speak flawless English, and even those who speak less still speak it very well (and they'll tell you "My English, it's not so good," when it's clearly exceptional).  Anyway, digression over.

Jetlag is no fun.  I've had Jetlag a number of times over the years.  Usually on a Trip to the UK I'll get it for a few days, then relax and enjoy myself, and then get it again on the way back.  Well, Saint Petersburg is three hours further away, and turned a fairly unpleasant  thing into the most crushing fatigue I've ever had, and just as I got over it I came back and had it all over again.  And I had a front cover to get finished, now within 48 hours.

I had planned on the Jetlag being the same, more or less, as what I get coming from the UK, just lasting longer.  Well, that was wrong. It was hellish. Did the cover anyway. I just can't remember much about it to relay to you.  You'll want to click on that image to enlarge it by the way - you can do that for most of the other images in the post too.

The only thing I can really remember about the process, as shown above, was that I used a technique and setup much closer to that I use when I paint Acrylics with real media.  I'm fairly confident I could paint something pretty close to this on a canvas; just much, much more slowly.  In ArtRage (which I used) this basically means taking the Oil Paint tool and lowering the pressure and the amount of thinners, then making the brush a lot harder.  The result felt a lot like the real thing to me, except I could sample colours from the image, instead of needing a palette (the initial colour scheme being defined in the rough of course).

After that lot, all that needed doing was adding the birds, and them putting it in Photoshop to apply the rest of the cover trappings before cropping it and sending it off to Phil for publishing.

So I got it done on time, with a few more days to spend on the rest of the cover for the Print version (most of which I spent at work or asleep, because Jetlag).

It was only after this that I noticed that due to my being drowsy while working on this version of it the logo had an issue with spacing and I wanted to get it fixed for the print cover.  It's minimal, but it bugs me, and will probably bug me every time I see the Digital cover - or maybe I'll forget and bever notice it again.

And here is the final cover for the print version.  The shape of the rocket ended up being a motif elsewhere, especially on the spine, but also as part of the area for the Barcode, and as a silhouette on the rear cover.  Other than that there are some minor layout differences to the version shown in progress above, and for the first time (since it's not era inappropriate) there's the address of Phil's site on the back, as well as a credit for me.  Overall I quite like the result - the cover painting has just enough retro to it to evoke what I was going for, but the overall design of the logo and the cover feels pretty modern and fairly fresh (IMO).  Mission accomplished.

Now I just need to get around to finishing the rest of the painting...

You can by the book from the following locations:

US Kindle   US Print
UK Kindle  UK Print
Smashwords (epub version)

And Phil's launch post is here.

Covers so far for Philip Sandifer:

SUPPLEMENTARY EXAMINATION JANUARY 2016 NOTICE

Supplementary Examination January 2016 Notice

Results of Examination November 2015

Ug Nov 2015 Results

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.