Coloring Practice

I'm reasonably happy with this (probably my favorite 'speed painting' to date) so I'm breaking it out into a single post. My reference for this particular piece is Victorria Johnson (the model for Morrigan in the Dragon Age: Origins.) While I was doing the usual Google-Fu for references I happened across an interview she did and she seems like a huge Bioware/Dragon Age fan and all around interesting person so that certainly added to the fun of making this. 

Victorria Johnson

 Total time: ~4 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Bonus~! 
Dragon Age: Origins Sacred Ashes Trailer ... because I think Blur did an awesome job with this and so I love to share it.

Coloring Practice

James Harrison 

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I started doing this one for one of my friends but then I got kind of lazy and frustrated since the reference image is really small so when I would enlarge it I'd end up with a really grainy reference. Maybe one day I'll give him another try with a better reference photo to start with. 

Coloring practice

Yvonne Strahovski 

 Total time: ~3 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I started this one because there was a lot of Mass Effect 2 going on in the background at my house so every time I would look up there was Miranda booty on the screen so I figured why not. I feel like I should go back and finish this one because I like the way it looks so far. 

Henry Clavill

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

This was the beginning of my "Wait... the guy they cast to be in the next Superman is really handsome" phase which has subsequently resulted in my recent addiction to The Tudors (aka Sexy History) on Netflix. Go figure. 

Henry Clavill

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

This one ended up really stylized and spent a good bit of time looking like "Sheploo" from Mass Effect because I had made the over all shape of the head wrong. Ah well, live and learn :)

Coloring Practice

Another backlog post... I ended up changing the format I was coloring in because it was an incredibly long week at work and I was doing good to keep my eyes open much less anything coherent.

Simon Pegg (day 1)

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I think I was at work for about 10.5/11 hours on the day that I was trying to work on this so all things considered the progress was okay. I really want to go back and use him as a reference again when I'm a little more coherent. 

Simon Pegg (day 2)

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I ended up going back the next day and adding a little bit of hair and detail but that was about as far as I got with it..

Helen Mirren

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I think this is one of my least favorite attempts thus far but, I figured I might as well post it anyway as it's still good to document my progress... even when it's a step backward. 

Coloring practice

I got seriously behind on posting my daily painting practice so I'm going to try to lump 2-3 days worth into a post until I manage to finally catch up. In this particular post I'll include days 12-15. I think I'm up to around day 28 of solid practice at this point. 

Amy Acker

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Monica Raymund

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~3 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Freema Agyeman

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~3 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Coloring practice

Bryce Dallas Howard

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~3 Hours?

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

So far I've made it 11 days in a row with the painting practice. I'm pretty amused at the differences between this one and the John Wayne I did on the first day. I'm thinking that I really need to focus on coloring hair and picking out dynamic reference photos... hopefully with teeth showing. 

Coloring practice

Lena Heady
Reference Photo

 Total time: ~3 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

... I'm not terribly happy with this one. I might go back and tweak it some later if I have some spare time to do so. 

Coloring practice

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~4? Hours... I lost track of time since it's the weekend.

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Well, I love Leverage and since Parker (Beth Riesgraf) is one of my favorite characters she seemed like an excellent choice for my painting practice today. The blue really helped to make this a little more interesting... it was a little flat and weird before I added it. 

Coloring practice

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I figured I would start out my week of coloring females with Claudia Black because I'm a massive Claudia Black fangirl Farscape fan... not to mention it goes along with my Dragon Age love since she does the voice acting for Morrigan. How great is that? At any rate, I'll probably revisit her once I've managed to polish my skills more because she has some seriously amazing features. 

Coloring practice

Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Photo

Keith David / Wikipedia

Coloring practice

I think I went quite a bit over my little 'time limit' but I'm not worried about it. I might try to switch it up and do a week of females after tomorrow's piece. I'm honestly quite amused about how different my stuff looks from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. 

Total time: ~4 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Photo

Coloring practice

I hit my two hour limit before I got to the hair so I might have to revisit this one later to add the majestic MacGyver mullet. On a side note, I really need to work on my hair skills... I am really lacking in that department so I need to pick some photo references that'll force me to work on it. 

Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Image

Coloring practice

Well, 4 days so far. Today I decided to use Taylor Knox as my reference. He's a professional surfer who also served as the face model for Francis in Left 4 Dead.

Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Image

Bbonus art that I did while eating my cinnamon toast crunch today:

Total time: .5 Hour

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Coloring practice

Well, so far that's three days in a row taking time to do a ~2 hour speed painting for practice. I'm a little hesitant to start calling it a 'project' as such as it seems like each time I attempt to do a daily thing in some sort of announced capacity I end up having something horribly distracting come up that throws me off after about 2-3 weeks. But... at any rate, so far so good with this. On the plus side I am having a lot of fun so that does help keep my momentum going. I keep wanting to go back and work on this one more but I'm trying my best to keep my hands off of it for now.

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Image

Coloring practice

Total time: 1.5 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Reference Image

I'm thinking I might try to keep this ~2 hour portrait thing up for a while to see what sort of results I end up with. I feel like I am learning a little something new with each piece so it's a lot of fun.