Pearboobs

Meet pearboobs.
This lady was my first practice digital speedpainting from reference.

Limitations:
- no color picking
- only use one hard brush
- no lineart, sketching and such; apply color directly

So...

• I finally found a comfortable solid brush for speedpainting - hard, flat, sliiigthly texturized. Check out the next post, "Brush test" 
• The limitations are helping a lot in learning how to get colors right and honing proportions
• I started noticing I don't like the framing and those edges being so randomly chopped off

•  The framing is bad - I stuck to the reference picture, but I need to find a better solution
• Low contrast, again
• Many traits and proportions aren't as accurate as hey should be
• I did use the picker a couple times, but I swear I've dropped it completely since this speedpainting D:

Experience gained: 3 points!

- Still need to work on smiles and expression lines 

- No more color picker. Never again! 

- Framing and composition need some planning - I could try to cut off some parts of the background and only paint patches of it in a relatively small spot behind the character, so as to contextualize it without extending the background completely

Discoveries

During summer 2012 I found out fineliners and copics are practical and fun sketching media. Here are my first attempts at portraying chubby models at the local beach.

... there's something disturbing here.

• Fineliner & Copic markers are easy to carry around and look effective
• Quick merciless sketching without the luxury of an eraser is VERY useful
• I've learned new things about cast shadows

• That little girl
• These look pretty stiff
• Perhaps a hint of context would make them better

Experience gained: ? points

This is from one year and a half ago so I don't really remember what meaningful lessons I drew out of it, except that I need to get faster and less "clean" if necessary. And

FOR GOD'S SAKE IMPROVE ON CHILDREN AND SMILES 

Outdoors speedpainting

Grabbed my laptop, sat under a tree and speedpainted what I saw. This was my first excercise of this kind and I improved a lot since then.

I'm still not happy with my landscapes and similar things, but this first attempt sucks big time compared to the latest crap :D
Let's break it down:

• Although I couldn't use any form of color picking, the colors came out quite faithful
• The building looks more solid than I expected, for someting I painted with a soft brush with a lot of Transfer

• Soft brushes: they are BAD for this kind of things. In my experience, that is
• Those tiles are horrible - that soft brush didn't help
•  I'm seriously bad at stylizing foliage

Experience gained: 4 points!

- I'll avoid soft brushes for environments and speedpainting in general; solid ones help block out volumes fast and find new graphic solutions
- I need to create some good brushes with which to paint foliage effectively...
- ... AND practice on drawing and painting foliage without them!
- My environments need more contrast - something to keep in mind during next painting sessions

Mustang

This came galloping on a lonely Photoshop blank canvas in a few seconds.

It's not good, it's not accurate, it's just a few brush strokes. But it's fast and spontaneous and I think this kind of random outbursts can give out a lot about our inclinations and what we need to improve on.
Analysis!

• More dynamic and fresh than my usual stuff
• Values seem decent for a very loose sketch
• Took very little time

• Anatomy is off here and there. I wanted to keep this one as it came out, but if I were to pick up from here I should really grab some references and fix neck, legs and whatnot

Experience gained: 4 points! 

- I should start doing (very)speed sketching from reference and concentrate on communicating values with just a few quick spots of color. This should boost my skill with perspective, volumes and synthesis
- When planning an illustration I should let loose more often and produce a wide arrange of spontaneous dynamic sketches, hoping to be able to keep everythng fresh while progressing...
- ...then prepare a nice set of reference pics and fix what doesn't work
- Using a heavily texturized brush helps keeping some elements out of control and favors happy accidents

Cold days

First post. Let's not formalize this too much, I'm already quite tense thank you. 

These are from last winter, Florence.
Staedtler pigment fineliner and copic - my favorite for sketching outdoors. Not being able to erase makes everything harder (as well as better, faster and stronger, I promise).
It's nothing short of a trauma at first, yet it's great for training my confidence, styilization and space planning/management. This is something I'll go through more accurately in a few future posts, showing how my strokes and general sketching style changed (for the better? We'll see) from my first attempts at this techinique to the more recent ones.

Notes:
- I need to improve my stylization of foliage. I have a hard time synthetizing leaves and branches. I'd like to lean towards a slightly decorative solution - especially with tree bark. About that, I'm gonna put together a few snaps from the local park and analyze different surfaces a lil' bit.