SPEEDPAINTING CHALLENGE nr 1.

[Michael]

Ok, so HERE WE GO!!!

The task of this week's challenge will be - SELF PORTRAIT.

Try to as creative on this as it gets. No general time limits... well, it has to be speedpainting, so 3 days is definitelly too long ;.

Every participant has three trials for this ( BUT in the end everyone has to choose the one piece that he finds the best ), since it's about the speed... but one can also make just one entry, that he finds the best he can do.

But PLEASE - don't post roughs that are in VERY EARLY STAGE, cause there will be nothing to comment yet and let's try to keep the thread clean. Let's not forgent that not everyone has a high speed connection. ;)

Be positive, be creative and ... have FUN! That's what Art is about!

Oh, one thing - the deadline is July 16th. :)

[3dGator]

Cool!! It begins! :p :) Just one question: what medium/software are we allowed to use? Can we photoshop it, or just leave it at anything non-softwared?
Keep cool!;)

[Michael]

Any medium is allowed. It just has to be in a digital form, so that you can post it here :P

[Dridon]

Hmm only digital thats a shame :(. So no pencil drawings?

[JHarford]

pencil - scan - save as jpg = digital form

[Fusion]

paint - digital photo - import as jpg = digital form

. . . .you always find a nice little way to cheat your way around things stripe :D

[Michael]

Ice - look above ;)

[TheOne]

Guess I will start:

40 min in PSP 7 :)

http://takuan.de/self_portrait.jpg

Hope you like it! :)

[Jon]

That's very nice... Only thing I would criticise are the lips

[davie563]

hi, here is my -SELF PORTRAIT-

5min for rough shape with pencil, and about 25min on the dots for shade and stuff, 15 of those min was on the hair, my wrist is killing me :(

:halo:

.

[TheOne]

Hey cool one! :)
Cant wait to see some other portraits!
Where are all these guy who do such great 2d art? :lame:

*Calls for avatar, aedilhum, fusion, androgs, corky, gator and all the other guys...* :D

Where is your contribution michael? :halo:

:xyz:

[davie563]

:D - Cheers -

by the way, nice drawing to TheOne

hehe, yeah, cant wait to c everybody elses :p

[Wampyr]

well....this was started out as a speed painting but I got really into it and it ended up taking me three and a half hours...

anyway, it's done in photoshop cs, with a mouse, using a mirror I placed next to my computer for reference.
http://matrix.senecac.on.ca/~bmlarond/selfportrait.jpg

[Michael]

OK. Glad to see first works :) Great work, guys.

TheOne - The main thing - first block out the basic colours when you paint. Don't be affraid of hard borders between them and contrasts, you can blend them later.

Davie - nice, just be carefull with the teeth - don't ink them all with borders. They look... unhealthly, as if there are large spaces and shades between them.

Wampyr - great eyes, great overall shape :). The thing I would change is the mouth, it's too strong, too red.

Generally guys - when you make shadows, try to use more colours than just adding black to the base colour. You can check the tutorials on www.3dtotal.com - I think you can look up something useful there.

[Wampyr]

did some quick fixes and changes, took down the saturation in the lips and i painted my hair down(it was tied back when i first painted it).
http://matrix.senecac.on.ca/~bmlarond/selfportrait2.jpg

[Michael]

The lips is much better. Still - the colours are not very alive. Tell you what - for now try to add a bit of yellow to the highlights to brigh them out a bit and add a bit of red to the shadows. Also I would make brighter background or just outline the head a bit... to bring it out more :)

EDIT - when I looked at your entry again, I realised what seemed wrong - the the clours are OK, BUT you painted shadows with the darkest shade colour but with little opacity. That always makes the impression of "dirtyness" and looks almost dirty in the blends. Try to pick the exact shadow colour that you want to put there... make blendings with mor than just two colours - normal and shadow.... I hope you know what I mean. :) and I hope I didn't get you down... the entry is great. :) :D

[Androgs]

:) Great Entry all!!! this thread gonna help a lot for develop a sketch/ painting!! cool!!
here's mine:o, about 4 hour, draw from mirror with pencil and the rest with Painter + photoshop.

EDIT : Thanks Michael, I decide to fix the error.:)

[Michael]

Androgs - Looks really good. :) The neck looks a bit strange... but good entry nevertheless :) :D

POST SOME MORE, GUYS!! :D

EDIT - A lot better, Androgs. :D

[Wampyr]

I know what you mean about the dirtiness thing. i was doing it quick and really just the burn and dodge tools for a large part of the light and shadow, adding other touches of colour later. i'm gona try some quick blending and see how that turns out.

[Chokin Hazard™]

Done in painter 8 + wacom tablet in aprroximately 10 minutes

I hope u guys can recognise this. lol


EDIT Michael - 3DT - I was forced to delete this attachement. Read below.

[Michael]

Umm... did you read the first page of the thread? It's self portrait CHALLENGE. I know it's about fun, but ... too much is too much.

And please - don't post that kind of images anywhere in this forum, you're just making it messy.

[Chokin Hazard™]

Sorry for not reading the front page. I thought this was the old speed painting thread. Im really sorry.

But anyway I am actually spiderman!:cool:

[Michael]

LOL :D No problem. Just... if you want to post something - finish it more. ;)

[insect]

Pretty awesome self portraits here, guys! :)

Wampyr - concidering you've done this with a mouse, I'd say great work! Michael is right about the shadow shades though, adding darkest shade in low opacities also washes out the color. Then there's the lips... Somehow my eye expects sharper edges and more contrast there. As far as I know eyes and mouth are the main focal points in a portrait.

Androgs - looks very and clean, with a style. Love the way you've done the lighting. :)

Davie - That's some fancy dot work!

TheOne - When blocking in the main colors with a 100% opague brush or before that, make sure that your canvas is not white. Sometimes starting with a 50% grey background and then blocking in the main colors can work well.
Also, as an excercise try painting with 100% opague brushes the whole work. It might not be very comfortable at first, but it'll help you get the hang of getting the right colors right the first time. Believe me, after doing a couple of works like that world looks brighter. :)

------------------------------------

Even though I'm far from being good, here's my contribution, just so the thread appears more active.

http://members.lycos.co.uk/insect666/selfportrait_01.jpg

Painter7 - 2 hours - Trust tablet.

Yes, I totaly messed it up, I've done several very bad mistakes here, such as:
a) not blocking in the main colors first. I drew a line sketch and then added color on top of that, as I've found out, that's a bad idea both cause of the result and of the fact that it's more time consuming to work this way.
b) not being creative... Just how would a jerk with a goatee in a general portrait pose be interesting?
c) missing some stuff, bad proportions, etc. This might have been fixed, but I forgot to flip the canvas horisontaly during the 'painting blindness'.

Atleast it's a great learning experience. Well worth joining just for that. ;)

[USED]

insect-3DT
"Even though I'm far from being good, here's my contribution, just so the thread appears more active."
um yeah far from good, how modest :) this is good and I would have to say that its great! Has a great style and I really like the lighting. I should give painter a try. I have seen so much great stuff with it!

[insect]

Thanks, Used.
Well, that was my opinion, I know that there's plenty of room for improvement and I just can't forgive myself for forgetting and doing stuff that I know is wrong when that could easily be avoided. :dunno:

And do try to paint a self portrait. Besides having fun, you learn alot by painting one, both 2d, 3d, general art and even more about yourself. And what's the worst that can happen? Most often failure is just another great opportunity to learn in 2D. :)
And btw, don't worry if it doesn't turn out the way you want the first time. Portraits are just so... You can always find stuff to pic on. ;)
Btw, here's a little tip I heard that improved the portrait painting skill alot: the most important parts of the face are the eyes and the mouth, pay attention to the exact shape and proportion of those. If you make those right, lots of other stuff can go wrong, but the likeness will still be there.

Good luck to you, will be waiting for your sp! :D

And People, do join us! It's not wether you succeed or not, not wether you're better, it's all about the fun and improving your skills and this topic is great for those. :cool:

[Michael]

And People, do join us! It's not wether you succeed or not, not wether you're better, it's all about the fun and improving your skills and this topic is great for those.

Saint words. Exactly what I had in mind while creating the thread :D

Insect - great entry. There are a few thing that I would change, like the neck looks a bit weird ;). But good work with colours. Maybe try to use in some fragment a more saturated colour, so that attracts more attention and is the main point of focus in the painting :D. To make the detail somewhat more important then the rest of the painting... :)...playu a bit with it :D.

[Aedilhum]

Wampyr and insect-3DT, nice portraits.

Nice thread here. Hope there gets to be some more activity. Here is my contribution.
It took 37 minutes in photoshop with wacom, while watching mystic river.

[LittleFish]

Aedilhum -- Wow.

Here is mine, my first actual painting with PS 7. I am "still" figuring out a lot of things, like "What is a brush?" and "Which one should I use?" The recent tutorials helped a LOT, and I also did about an hour of experimentation in the last week or two.

I regret if it doesn't look like me, but it's as close as I could come this time. EDIT: (My, neck, my ear, and from there...) Of course no one will ever know. (I think I gained about 20 or 30 lbs there.) Oh, and the neck - that just came out all by itself; it was a happy finish.:)

EDIT: Almost forgot - took 1 hr 10 min

[bray]

now... I know this is a challenge.. so don't laugh at me.. this was challenging.. wampyr kept making me add things and I really only use MSPaint to draw... I made a monkey once.

http://www.geocities.com/awefq1/brayselfportrait.txt


Hope you like it!
~bray


edit( it took about 8 minutes.. but I was done me in like 3.. damn wampyr.. good thing I like bricks.)

[bray]

okay I got bored again.. and decided to try out my wacon tablet that I bought for 20 bucks then cashed my 12 dollar rebate in on.. (yes an 8 dollar wacon tablet that I got at radio shack..) so anyway.. I've never really drawn in photoshop before so this.. more or less is actually a first for me.. I normally just splice other pictures together in a really ugly manor..

anyway.. it took me about 1.5 hours.. hope you don't think it sucks horribly.. lol.. oh and sorry about my first picture.. but honestly that's how I normally draw lol :)

http://www.geocities.com/awefq1/bray-p-shop.txt


You Dig?
~Braydon

[3dGator]

okay, I know this took ****** long, but as some of you may know, I'm doing a 3d movie with 8 other ppl from the forum. Been very busy, but here's my contribution anyway.
Its me in anime style. took 4 hours cuz photoshop keeps slowing down (not enough ram:roll: ).

[Michael]

3dGator - nice. I would think about cell shading it :)

Aedilhum - You did it WHILE you were watching a movie? Heh, you got some great attention split ability. :D Good entry. :D

bray - I will just comment your second work :roll: - some parts of the face look OK, like the eye, the nose and some of the shading. But I would use thicker brush for bigger areas, cause it's really messy, when shaded with those thin lnes. Also I would think about the background if I were you. The face looks painted over with black around it. Also the face is too big for the composition. You should either make it smaller, or a lot bigger. And yopu know - I love painting and drawing. I make it, because I want to. Not because I'm bored. ;) Art really deserves attention, focus and love. Without it....

About the second post - you didn't read the thread, I see... You would know, that we try to keep the thread and forums clean.

[Aedilhum]

Originally posted by Michael-3DT
Aedilhum - You did it WHILE you were watching a movie? Heh, you got some great attention split ability. :D Good entry. :D

Thanks, Yeah I do everything while watching movies, paint, draw, sew,read...sleep (okay, maybe not sleep). Anyway, it keeps me from becoming bored and wanting to run off outdoors and do something else.

[bray]

Originally posted by Michael-3DT
bray - I will just comment your second work :roll: - some parts of the face look OK, like the eye, the nose and some of the shading. But I would use thicker brush for bigger areas, cause it's really messy, when shaded with those thin lnes. Also I would think about the background if I were you. The face looks painted over with black around it. Also the face is too big for the composition. You should either make it smaller, or a lot bigger. And yopu know - I love painting and drawing. I make it, because I want to. Not because I'm bored. ;) Art really deserves attention, focus and love. Without it....

lol.. that's not the worst -- I got bored doing it too! As far as art goes... I'm a musician first, then somewhere after math (which I failed) I do visual art. hahaha.. anyway yes I made the outline bad and then just painted black around it because it was easy and I wasn't worried about much... thanks for the tips though.. if I get unlazy enough next time I'll try them out! ;)

thanks Mike

~braydon

[LittleFish]

2nd try - this time with a shaving mirror, which I didn't look at while doing details, but mostly while blocking

edit: *directs attention to hair, with its sheen* well, got it up. This portrait took about 1 hr 30 min or so. I payed crucial attention to the shape of my face and the lines on it and everything, but will someone please tell me how to block in colors while preserving the lines that I drew to approximate the shapes? (or is that really supposed to come afterward?)

[bray]

Hey man, looking good! great improvements! :) goodshow!

[Michael]

Little fish - don't be affraid to use outlines. They won't bite you ;). Seriously - don't be affraid of it. Use darker colour for it, maybe not black, but darker local colour. It will add features and details to the face :).

[LittleFish]

*cries* I did use outlines. I just colored over them.:( Next time, I will block my colors over the big shapes, and then use the little shapes.

Question though: How do I outline the face, to make it more contrasting, especially along the border, from the background? edit: oh, I just read your post again. I will try that. Thanks.

[Michael]

If you want me, I can shade it for an example how I would do it and then send you to your mail :). Or look closer to the other entries, how they use background and contrasts to outline the shape. Not everything should be made with a contour. Try to use the background - when you have light hair or they are lighted - use dark colour in the background around it, when you have shade on the face - make lighter background to bring out the face. Play, have fun with it.

[3dGator]

So, when will we know the winner?;)
Any other competition coming up?

[Androgs]

yup, when will the new topic release?:)

[Michael]

Well - the winner - you have to vote. I'll make the thread for it today. About the next one - we'll make a brainstorming - what do you want to paint... maybe there will be more participants... :)

[Sessy]

Originally posted by Michael-3DT
Well - the winner - you have to vote. I'll make the thread for it today. About the next one - we'll make a brainstorming - what do you want to paint... maybe there will be more participants... :)

Your pet? Your flowergarden! :D

Your messy desk.


Anything that doesn't involve showing themselves will do well on this forum ;)