Speed Painting Study

This lesson was about developing our eyes. We were given a copy of a digital painting and had to do a study of it, judging the proportions, colours and values. Also, we had to work quickly and learn to block out a painting by colours and build on that instead of drawing each detail first. 

I started by adding the green to the black background layer, then on the painting layer above, I blocked out some greys for the hair and top and some skin colour for her head and body. I didn't want to use too many different values and colours here because I wanted to get the overall idea of the image down first. 

Once I had done this, I added the lighter and darker values on the face and hair, also trying not to focus too much on any specific area and keeping up a good speed. I tried to work in a way where each part was as developed as the rest and build on it.

Here I started to really paint and refine all the details, also on the rest of the body. I also added the white highlighted areas and added some shine like in the original image.

I had a lot of fun with this speed painting. I spent about 2 hours on it and stopped there because the point of the task was to practice painting faster. I will definitely practice this more so that I can get quicker at laying the foundations down for my own paintings. Due to me stopping at 2 hours, though, some parts are not as detailed as the others. For example, the ear is not very refined, but the nose is. I also spent a lot more time on the head than the torso. Next time I'll make sure to treat all areas equally. Also, although my colours are very close to the original, I think some areas are not as saturated. With more practice, I'll get better at picking colours using just my eyes. Overall I am really happy with this outcome and have learnt to trust what I am doing early on and not start drawing details to imply form, instead relying on the shapes I am making. By doing this, I was able to just get on with it, instead of fussing around with details in the early stages, which would have taken me even longer to finish in the end.