From speed painting to full painting!

Back when I was doing the art for Spooks! Welcome to the Great Beyond, I had to do a lot of speed paintings to fill up the book because the budget was low and so it was decided to go economy with some of the art, so the book would not feel unbalanced in art. I am working artist so of course if you are good at something don't do it for free, but on the same token you want what you do look good and to be helpful. Some of those speed paintings, since by contract I still own full copyrights, I decided I would revisit and turn into something wonderful. The last two days I lived up to that promise to one of those pieces.

As many as you know I am a Lovecraftian who often brings in Lovecraftian work into my art. One of the speed paintings I did for Spooks! was a NPC portrait of H.P.Lovecraft which I wrote into the book. This painting took my approximately 30 minutes to do, but it would just one among many that I painted for the book. The NPCs in the book are all historic people painted to look like a variety of different Spooks. According the game, a person rises as a certain type of spook depending on how they died or lived their lives. In the case of Lovecraft, he died of cancer and the book states that most who die from disease rise as zombies.

I loved the speed paint that I did of Lovecraft, not only because he is one of my favorite authors but because painting zombies is fun as hell! So I decided to return and make it something special. Now I mentioned that painting zombies is fun and I will tell you why! Zombies are like old people in that they have so much detail and texture to their faces to the point that it is beautiful. It is like exploring a map to some unknown land. For this composition at first I planned on adding a ton of references to Lovecraft's work like him holding the Necronomicon, as well as a syringe holding the reanimator reagent, and tentacles hugging him around the shoulders, but then I decided that it would make the piece to busy and that I wanted to keep it simple and straight forward. I did however keep the necronomicon in the painting but it is shelved. The syringe design I was going for a steampunk quality but it was really inspired by the memory syringes from the movie Dark City.


If you have any questions about my art please feel free to ask!


Also don't forget to check out the Kickstarter for the first expansion to Spooks!Welcome to the Great Beyond. We need all the support we can get!

Speed Painting Techniques Act 3

Continued from Speed-painting-techniques-act-2

It was one thing to talk about the techniques of speed painting and another thing to watch it happen. So I finally decided to record one of my speed painting sessions. This painting was done in an hour but I have sped it up so that it is only 8 minutes long. For best results watch it at 720p HD or higher, although if you do, depending on your connection speed, you may want to let it load a bit, so that it plays smoother. If anyone has questions I am willing to answer.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

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Speed Painting Techniques Act 2

Continued from Speed-painting-techniques-act-1

As from the previous speed painting post I said that I was a bit rusty, but thanks to the daily speed paint challenges from da-speedpaint on Deviant Art I not only knocked that rust off, but I am now oiling the squeaky wheel!
One of the big mistakes I think I have done was to try and sketch out a speed painting. Sketching is not a bad thing for speed painting, but I have found that I would get caught up in the sketch, which in turn, would eat up time and then I would get trapped by the sketch. If you do feel the need to sketch then keep it loose and keep it fast and keep yourself unconcerned about detail because that is not what speed painting is about.

Another tip I found to help my speed painting is not be afraid of using loose references. Go ahead and do a fast google search for the topic you want to paint. Grab one or two of them and set them up on your screen next to your blank canvas. If you have a Poser you can set up quick poses and render them out as references as well. I found that it also makes it a bit easier to drop such references into a blank canvas that is the same dimensions as the one you are working on. By have loose references you free your mind up a bit so that you can just react and counter-react to how you are painting. When using references in speed painting it is wise to not and try and match the color of your reference because odds are you are going to make changes anyways, so close is good enough. 

Lastly when you start a speed painting, don't be afraid to be a bit sloppy while you block in your shapes. It is best to throw down as much of the color and general shape of what you are painting first. It is kind of like planning out a pallet and composition stage. Once you have everything laid out for positioning and color pallet you can then go to town and refine your painting for the rest of the time you have allotted yourself.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

You should also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, Deviant Art,  or catch me on Tweeter at @TobiasWhite1

Speed Painting Techniques Act 1

Part 2 continued from SpeedPaintingForProgression

A while back I had let my speed painting skills rust a little bit, so when I jumped back into speed painting I found my self struggling. However, I am getting back into the swing of things and so I thought I would talk about techniques I have been relearning and relearned.

 One of the techniques I have learned to improve speed painting is to use a variety of different brushes, brush size and opacity. If you have Photoshop C5 or higher than the pressure sensitive opacity toggle in your brush control bar is very useful for this. By doing this you keep your strokes from looking the same overall. This also helps you create detail with out getting nitty gritty which wastes time and our goal is to paint quickly
Another technique is one I learned from Cliff Cramp. By laying down local color first and then applying an overlay of color you can create shadow and light rapidly. This also will keep your work unified. In Corel Painter you would want to use digital water, but in photshop you do it with layers. One layer will be set to Soft Light or hard light (at 60% opacity) for my light sides and the other layer is set to Multiply (at 75% opacity). However, while this technique I was taught was generally taught for longer paintings I found it greatly speeds up a painting because it
takes out some of the thought process.

In combination with the overlaying techinque when you paint your local colors you will want to just block in the general shape of what you are painting. Think of the shapes as silhouettes. If you feel that you must sketch out the form from the inside then keep it as simple as possible and then block in a little bit with in that form. When you do the overlay technique over this you will get near instant volume to your painting.

Lastly keep in mind that this is a speed painting so set a timer of some sort: one that you can keep track of. When you are nearing the end of your time this is the time you use to clean up or to throw in those last needed details for your painting to be done.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

You should also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, Deviant Art,  or catch me on Tweeter at @TobiasWhite1

Speedpainting for progression

 Almost all digital painters know what speed painting is and I am sure that speed painting is even practiced by other painters as well. There are no real rules when it comes to digital speed painting except do it fast as possible. A speed painting can take from anywhere from 15 minutes to paint to 2 hours, although some people like to take as long as 3 hours. There are plenty of arguments out there what the max time for a speed painting, but in reality --- it is all relative to the size or complexity of composition of the painting. Some ask why do a speed painting other than the reason for showing off. Well there are a variety of reasons. First off, time is money and if you can create a quite composition in as little as time possible then you can save time and earn more money. Another good reason to do speed painting is it is intense training designed to sharpen the compositional skills of the artist. Being able to speed paint is also vital for visual development in a variety of industries because visual development is about getting out images fast in order to communicate a visual idea that we as artists have in our heads. Lastly from my own experience some of my best portraits and other paintings have started off as a speed painting but which I just moved forward on. The reason I believe this to be so is because I am not thinking of what I want or need to do but instead I react and counter react as a speed painting I am doing develops.  Also when I am working on a speed painting I usually like having some kind of loose photo reference(s) as this allows me to react without having to think to much.












Before (1 Hour Speedpaint)

 After (2 Hours more)

Before (1 Hour Speedpaint)









 After (8 Hours more)

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

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Webcam Symmetry Paint Over

I forget where I first learned the technique but I was reintroduced to this creative process in my digital illustration class. Most webcams these days have programs that come with them that allows you to do funny optical effects. One of these effects is the mirror function and this can be a great art tool in creating fantastical creatures.
1. Simply set up your camera to mirror mode.
2. Crunch up some paper (junk mail is great).
3. Hold the paper into the field of view of the camera but from an
4. Angle where you hand doesn't show.
5. Rotate the paper until you see a form on your screen you find interesting. Think of it like seeing objects a people in cloud formations.
6. Repeat this process many times.
7.Open up these digital files in your favorite painting program.
8.Now start to do a paint over changing the shape into something more recognizable. Treat it like a speed painting but you have all you colors and values already there. Don't spend more than an hour painting.

These bottom two pics are just pieces of paper mirrored in a webcam.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

You should also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, Deviant Art,  or catch me on Tweeter at @TobiasWhite1