Aug 6th, 2012

<<Previous entry Entry nr.10

Believe it or not, but it's not until now that I've gotten into doing speed paintings for practicing purposes. All these years I've heard how great they are for developing one's basic painting skills, and I've swore to myself over and over that "from now on, I'll do at least one speed painting every day/two days/week/whatever" and yet none were ever done. Maybe it was too intimidating so I kept putting it off. But now I've jumped right in, since I need some serious practice in drawing urban areas for "Stand Still. Stay Silent", and it's been some great fun. The first few one's were kind of difficult and I'm aturally not completely happy with the outcome, but I'm starting to feel more relaxed about the process.

Here's the one's I've done so far, beginning with the earliest one's (done a couple of weeks ago) and ending with the most recent three (drawn this week):

The very first one, took me over an hour even if it's kind of weak on the detail part.

Second try, this time forcing myself to stop at only half an hour.

Third time's the charm I guess, because this one I really like. The colors turned out really well, and I even got some details in, yet it only took 45 minutes.

Then the newer one's, which are all a bit more elaborate than the first three: they all took at least and hour to finish. But that's okay, they all looked pretty nice well before the magic one hour mark, but when you've got some excess inspiration why not let the pen fly for an extra half hour or so.

First one, 2 hours.

This one: 1,5 hours.

And the final one: 1 hour and five minutes.

The brush I've used for all if these is a square, kind of rough one, I think it's supposed to simulate the feel of chalk of charcoal. It's great for these kind of paintings since it makes drawing details a complete pain in the ass, forcing one to focus on the overall picture rather than small parts of it