The Speedpaint Hangout Blog

A week in Speedpaints

2011-09-11T14:27:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy week and I have some more speedpaints to share with you. Before I get to that I want to mention that I am in the process of building a new website where I will stream my hangouts from. That way even if you can't get into the Hangout you can still watch. I have a few more things in the works as well.

I also want to say thank you to all of you who have supported my Kickstarter Project. I am now more than half-way toward my goal. You guys rock!

OK without any further ado here are this weeks speedpaints:

Moritz Tolxdorff

Maro Mascaro

Adam B

Kim Beasley

Nathan Weinberg

Pete Johnson Community Manager for The Longest Hangout!

I am not entirely sure yet but I am hoping to hold another Cliffathon next weekend. I will keep you posted.

The Cliffathon!

2011-09-05T16:31:00.001-04:00

In order for me to drum up interest in my Kickstarter Project I came up with the idea of doing an 8-Hour Speedpaint Hangout session that I dubbed the 'Cliffathon'. I made an announcement on my page and the great Cam Meadows offered to stream the whole thing live at HangoutParty.com. How awesome is that? Thanks Cam!

During the event I painted 10 fellow Plussers and interacted with many more.

First up:
Willie Bido

Next up was one of my earliest backers Mike Quillen! Thanks so much!

Next I had the honor to speedpaint the man behind G+ Recommended Users, Alireza Yavari:

Here is Tim Clary

Next is a fantastic storyteller and humanitarian, Bruce Garber. Thank you for keeping us entertained while I painted your pic and for the contacts you have set me up with I can't thank you enough.

Next up is Ahmed Zeeshan followed a few paintings later by his girlfriend Caroline Hale:

Here is Chris Lira:

After waiting patiently for several hours it came time for Tony Rouse who recorded his and posted it:

This one was probably the most fun to paint, the man in the fuzzy pink hat, Mike Stenger!

The last one of the night that I did was of poor Robert Anderson this one was so unsuccesful I didn't bother saving it. The reasons it was an epic fail are many among them: bad cam, bad lighting, but most of all it is really hard to paint while laughing hysterically as I was during it. If you were there or were watching the Livestream than you know why. I will definitely be doing a proper one of him soon.

Thank you to all who either watched or hung out. I hope to do another one of these soon. Stay tuned for time and date.....

It's Friday Friday

2011-09-05T14:49:00.006-04:00

I held a Speedpaint Hangout Friday night during which I painted:

George Rodenbaugh

William Pitts

And Srikanth Chandrasekaran

Monday Funday

2011-08-30T06:34:00.000-04:00

Here are three from yesterdays Hangout:
Kristopher Jordy

Lucas Johnson

Amanda Blain who runs Girlfriend Social

Thank you all for making my Monday more fun!!!

Hurricane Hangouts!

2011-08-29T00:25:00.001-04:00

We just had a visit from Hurricane Irene. Thankfully, there is little to no damage where I live, though in many surrounding areas there is major flooding. Near the beginning part of it I logged into G+ planning to just check things before what I thought was an invevitable blackout instead I was invited to Hangout with Ricardo Lagos. This is the Speedpainting I did of him during it:

After painting and chilling out for a bit I bid farewell and enjoyed the rest of the night with my family. Sunday morning I was back at it again and painted the following three:

Davide Cassenti

Paul Bucalo

Christa Laser

Thank you all for making the weekend that much brighter!

P.S. for those of you interested in funding my Speedpaint Hangout Project I launched a Kickstarter project!

Two nights, Four pieces.

2011-08-27T20:46:00.000-04:00

I have been getting home around midnight this week and each night I have done a couple of speedpaints (with the exception of Tuesday). Here are two from Wednesday and two from Thursday (well technically Thursday and Friday):

Idrialis Castillo

J.D. de Leon

Sky Daniels

Josh Flynn

Monday Night Craziness!

2011-08-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

Monday night was a first for me. Being broadcasted live via YouTube across the webisphere. What an insane adventure.

Earlier in the day I announced that I would be speedpainting rising star Daria Musk around midnight EST. I knew it would be a busy hangout but I didn't realize how busy it would prove to be.

When I got home from my 'day job' at 11:55 I logged in to find that the amazing body painter, Paul Roustan had the forsight to invite me to a Hangout in order to guarantee his spot. Michael Haider who has sat in on several Hangouts was also ready and waiting (though he graciously bowed out when he learned it was going to be streamed in order to let others in). I joined the Hangout and invited Daria in. Wasn't long before the place filled up (actually it over-filled somehow we managed to have 11 people in there).

Michael Mozart of Jeepers Media is one of those that joined in. He is the one responsible for broadcasting it live. He took awhile to set up which is a good thing because it gave a chance for some of my nerves to settle.

Finally I began speedpainting Daria. While it didn't come out as great as I would have liked given the wide audience, I think it came out fairly well for laughing the entire time. Mike is one very funny person. Coming back the next day I noticed that I kind of skewed her face a bit because I wasn't diligent about constantly mirroring the image to counter-act that so I made a few slight adjustments. Here is the result (I accidentally saved the file over the original so I no longer have the unaltered version but it is in my G+ album):

After finishing the one of Daria I couldn't help but speedpaint Mike himself:

A big thank you to Daria and Mike and everyone else who joined in. I had a blast.

4 More!

2011-08-22T12:53:00.000-04:00

Last night was a great Hangout, thank you two all who joined in. I promise I will get to those who I couldn't paint last night.

To start the evening off I painted Dennis Bullard What a great subject. Not only did he have a good cam but he stayed still practically the whole time. I don't know if I could stay still that long.

Up next was Robert Simpson

Next would have been Lance Miller but he was having connectivity issues so lucky Vishwas Pethe got bumped up the list:

Finally, after she waited so patiently I got to paint the ever-awesome Shirley Lo though I couldn't possibly do her justice in only a half hour...

A Big Day

2011-08-21T17:35:00.000-04:00

I left my 'day job' early and got home around 4am early Saturday morning. Too awake to sleep I hopped on G+ and announced my availability for a Speedpaint Hangout. Ryan Crowe took me up on the offer and this is the result:

After getting some sleep I started an evening of Hangouts during which I did the following Speedpaints:

Dizzy Wiz

Paul Terry Walhus

Ash Mogg sorry it took so long for our schedules to jive.

Daymond Decker

Guy Kawasaki If I remember correctly Guy said it was his first 'successful' hangout. When he said that it began to dawn on me that a lot of the people I have speedpainted have said the same thing. I tend to get a lot of first-timers. Truly an honor.

Thank you all for participating. I am beginning to go from speedpainting to warm-up to warming up to speedpaint.

Friday fun.....

2011-08-20T05:06:00.000-04:00

Started the day out with this one of Benoit Spacher, check out his site The Art of Anime:

Later on in the same Hangout I did this one of Chad Kovac of K. Ink Tattoo & Piercing

2 more

2011-08-17T08:50:00.000-04:00

Here are two more done over the last couple days.

For this one I ended up spending an extra 15 minutes or so.

The Process

2011-08-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

The other day I mentioned that I have been using a new process for my speedpaints. Instead of starting from a blank canvas and than filling it with a midtone, I am starting with a pre-textured canvas as seen here:

This is two different 'concrete' textures overlayed on top of each other with some tweaking. On top of that is a color layer with various colors in the corners. Starting with this pre-prepped canvas gives me all the tones and colors I need so that I don't have to worry about mixing them. This helps make the process that much faster.

Here is a video where you can see in 3 minutes the 30 minute process:

P.S. The textures are from this site.

Morning with Le Mailloux

2011-08-15T09:10:00.000-04:00

This morning (my time EST) I got a chance to speedpaint Olivier Le Mailloux during a Hangout.

Secret Identity

2011-08-14T14:57:00.000-04:00

I think this one worked a bit better than the last one speed/quality wise. Though I didn't exaggerate as much as I would have liked since I was concentrating on my speed. I need to work on that a bit more. I started a new method which has streamlined my process greatly. I will post more about that tomorrow.

Here is Alejandro Matos:

In the reference I was using he didn't have glasses on but in the cam he had them on so I decided to add them after the initial 30 mins were up. Gotta protect a super heroes identity after all....oh wait I already gave it away.....DOH!!!

30 + 10

2011-08-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

Got a chance to hangout with Steve Macintyre last night. Here is the caricature speedpainting I did of him.

This is after the first 30 minutes:

The quality level wasn't quite where I wanted it to be so I worked on it for an additional 10 minutes to see how far I could push it. This is the result:

Art Zen Hangout

2011-08-13T13:49:00.000-04:00

Last night I joined a Hangout in which the podcast Art Zen was being recorded. While listening in I did this speedpainting of Sean Cowen (Thanks Sean!!).

While overall I am happy with how it came out, it took twice as long as I wanted and isn't nearly as high quality as I am aiming for in that time period.

Welcome

2011-08-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog. I will be your artist for the evening (or whatever other time it is in your corner of the multiverse). For those of you who don't know me yet, my name is Cliff Roth and I am a digital painter. The software I use is Photoshop CS and Sketchbook Pro and the hardware is an IMac coupled with a Wacom Cintiq. Though most of my work is digital I also use graphite, charcoal and colored pencil with the occasional foray into acrylic.

One of the excercises I do to warm up is speedpainting caricatures. For a long time I would stick to painting celebrities as decent reference is only an image search away. These I have been posting to my FB fan page and more recently in an album on Google Plus. A little while ago a fellow Google Pluser Tarah Gaa posted this comment on a Danny Trejo speedpainting I did: "These are simply wonderful! Makes me wish I was famous. ;) "

This single comment got the wheels spinning in my head. Why not speedpaint caricatures of fellow Google Plussers live via hangouts? Since having this epiphany I have hosted several Speedpaint Hangouts. While the results are good the paintings are no where near the level of my full fledged paintings. I want to narrow that gap as much as possible.

My goal is to be able to do a fully realized caricature painting in a half hour live via hangout. This blog is where I will chronicle my progress toward that end.

If you are interested in getting one done please let me know and we can set something up.