So, I’ve decided to try and improve my speed/technique/art in general by speedpainting. I’m PLANNING to try and do two speedpaints a day for a week or so and see how much I (hopefully) improve by the end of it all.
I’m only allowing myself one hour per pic and if it’s incomplete or if it looks crap at the end of the hour…well, it doesn’t matter, I’ll post it anyway.
Any critique given would be marvellous! 
Photoshop CS
1 hour from reference
Thanks Ferril, I struggled a bit with the water to begin with but it eventually resembled what it was meant to be!
I have a new speed paint to post! I actually have three more to post…but two of them are actually so terrible that I could never post them anywhere…even though I said I would -_-
Anyway! the pic that I will post was actually really easy, infact it was so easy that I managed to finish it in under 30 mins!
Also, does anyone have any tips on speed painting people? I gave it a little go but it was harder than I expected…
Photoshop CS
25 mins from reference
Here is a tutorial on speedpainting, hope it helps 
http://www.area-56.de/chapter56/2006/11/speedpainting.html
btw, interesting concept of a lone tree, I’d like to see more from you 
Thanks for the link to the tutorial Ferril, I’d seen it before but thank you for reminding me of it! ^^
Ok! next speed paint!
Photoshop CS
45 mins with reference
Ahhhh!! I got a little carried away and went over the time limit for this one!..and even then I didn’t manage to finish everything I wanted to do 
Thanks to whomever the reference for this pic belongs to on DA…I can’t find the link and I’m too lazy to search again!
Photoshop CS
1h 20mins from reference
EDIT: I couldn’t just leave it the way it was! I made it a little warmer ^^
If I had more time I could have done so much more with this one…I may go back to it in the near future and finish it off.
Photoshop CS
1 hr with reference
As always, any tips/tutorials would be great! ^^
Ok, here’s speed paint number two for today!..Well…you could call it a speed paint as it started out as one, but the original hour that I set myself soon became two. But it was two hours well spent as this is easily one of the best pictures I’ve ever created =)
Photoshop CS
2 hrs from reference
Thank you Vivien! ^^
Here’s today’s first speed paint
God those clouds were tough…I almost gave up because of them!
Photoshop CS
1hr from reference
Today’s second speed paint turned out really badly…it even looks crap in thumbnail form. sigh oh well, it’s all part of the learning process I guess!
Photoshop CS
1hr 10mins
for today’s first speed paint I actually tried doing something from scratch to see how much I’ve learned from this speed painting practice. Though it seems that I still haven’t actually learned anything about speed since this took somewhere between 1 and 2 hours ^^;
For this picture especially, I would love some real harsh feeback. Hit me!
Photoshop CS
1-2 hours
Gday Byren! Some nice work you’ve got here, I’m impressed with your work ethic above all. In regards to your latest piece, a problem I find with it is the shading of the stairs.
The upwards faces are being lit by the red lightsource off to the right, but the vertical faces of the stairs which are facing the lightsource are kept in shadow. I reckon it should be pretty much the other way around.
Along the roof, as it gets towards the mouth of the cave, the colours sort of lose red, and then gain red again right towards the end of the mouth. Just seems a little strange, I’d probably cut the red back there.
The girl seems overly bright, and the highlights on her look too yellow, I get the feeling like they should be more red, and her shadows should be darker, basically. It feels like the two figures should be casting shadows on eachother, him on her legs, and her on his cape, maybe.
For the mountain in the background, towards the left edge of the piece, it seems a tiny bit bland, just being that straight up green. It looks to be rather steep there, maybe the green could give way to a desaturated grey to imply a rocky slope, or something.
Towards the top of the stairs, on their left edge, theres some somewhat strong green highlights, then more to the left on the bare stone there’s an absence of any continuation of that light, which seems a little off. Maybe try adding similar highlight there to make the stairs seem more a part of the stone.
That’s about it for my crits, keep up the solid work!
wow, thank you for your detailed and well thought out comments!!
I think I’m gonna re-work the cave picture to your critique if I have the time later, I hope that you’ll come back and tell me what you think =)
Right now I have a different problem…last night I tried to do my second speed paint for the day, and I may as well strip the “speed” from it right now.
I started at about 11pm and gave in 3 hours later. I had done little more on this following picture than the face. =(
The problem was that I couldn’t get her face looking right no matter what I tried, so I got stuck on getting it 100% correct while prettty much abandoning the rest of the picture. This didn’t pay off at all since I still think the face is off.
Here’s the original reference. I would appriciate it if someone could offer a few tips/crits!
Photoshop CS
3 hrs so far :-:
For practice on future caves and such I decided to speed paint a cave from reference.
This particular cave I actually visited about 5 or 6 years ago. It’s the melissani cave/lake in Kefalonia, it’s absolutley beautiful inside and the water is 100ft deep! Photos and paintings simply don’t do it any justice!
Photoshop CS
50mins
Here’s the altered cave. I think I managed to hit all the bases, although I wasn’t usre what was meant by the highlights on the steps… ^^;
Ok, I cleaned up my Hayden Panettiere picture a bit (just enough so the rest of te picture looks ok) but the face is still wrong. Anyoneone got any reasons why? =\
I’ve gotten lazy! I didn’t get around to doing any digital work yesterday and today I’ve only managed one speed paint so far…dunno if I’ll have the time/energy to do a second.
Here it is anyway…it’s, um, another cave! Icy this time though!
I think freud would have something to say about all of these caves…that filthy man! lol ^^;
Photoshop CS
45 mins
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well-done 