Speed Painting to Improve your Artistic Skills
You speed paint when you constrain yourself to create a full painting in a limited amount of time. Artists practice this as training to learn to work quicker. Usually, you take between 20 minutes and 2 hours to do a painting from A to Z. You can start with a sketch, but you will always have to color and render up. This technic allows to fix an idea on canvas. Some say it is a challenge to see how far you can get in one sitting. In the entertainment industry, the schedules are tight most of the time, so you must find a composition and a mood fast. When you have 15 environment thumbnails to create in a few days, being used to speed paint helps a lot.
As we mentioned, practicing this technic regularly allows you to work faster, but which specific skills do speed painting improve? Generally, this exercise makes you more efficient in your thinking, in your drawing and in your time management. Complete a painting in maximum 2 hours teaches you how to go straight to the point. You must select what you will emphasize in your composition, make color choices… without detailing everything. By having an allocated time, you must make quick decisions on what to do and in which order. In other words, you will learn to organize your thoughts.
Speed painting teaches to create faster without feeling in a rush and making unnecessary mistakes. It makes you control yourself. Maybe at first you will still paint slowly in the chosen direction, but you won’t disperse in several ways. You can find it hard because you didn’t finish on time, you’re not satisfied with the result, you made mistakes being in a hurry… These errors will help you get better, but don’t expect immediate effect. Improvement comes by practicing this exercise regularly. The key to manage your time is to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses and push them to the maximum. To find more time management tips, you can click here.
Here is some tips to help you create amazing speed paintings:
-use fundamental knowledge: basic shapes, sketching skills and color theory; combining them, you’ll be able to build a simple composition quickly;
-select a few brushes before starting. Some prefer bigger ones not to be tempted to detail too much, but it depends on your habits;
-choose a small number of colors, and focus on contrasts, textures and light;
-flip various elements on your canvas to capture the best composition possible;
-don’t zoom in too much to keep in mind that the overall is important;
-if you consider your canvas satisfying and you have time left, you can start getting into details.
If you are a concept artist in the entertainment industry, being used to that technic is a real plus. Don’t forget the most important: have fun while practicing speed painting because that’s how you boost creativity and skills. Making this effort, you will paint faster (and better)!