Making of Chuck Berry

During speed paints I push myself to finish a painting in less than 1h30min. I usually spend the first minutes to block out the contours and main line drawing.

Flat colors come next: I reduce its opacity a little so I can see the previous line drawing and start the glazing process that will enhance the light and shadow perspective.

Another important thing: I do like to keep a maximum of 3 or 4 layers. For speed painting I do want to keep the brush flowing without having to stop and go up and down with layers all time. I also rarely use more than 3 or 4 brushes (including the custom brushes). Only when they will really save me time.For Chuck Berry I used a custom brush made previously for his shirt pattern. This saved some minutes from the total time.

One procedure I take differently from non-speed paintings is that with speed painting,I do spend more time painting the shadow and colors and quickly adjust some proportions in a later stage. This is very clear when you see the Chuck’s head at early stage and when I increased its size up.

This is to gain some more area to work on and have a more detailed surface when it is scaled down. You know, a raster larger detailed area may look good when you scale down, but a small picture enlarged is unlikely that will look as good.

Setting back the head proportions with all details added previously.

At later stage when I have most of the shadows and light spots of the image set, I do look at the clock and see how much time is left to 1:30 and try to make adjustments and add as much detail as possible.


Final Speed Painting