Speedpainting : A Lost Girl, Spirits and a Rainy Night

So this is a quick 30 minutes painting I've made some time ago. I think it's for a challenge in an art group called "Spitpaint". If I'm not mistaken, the theme for that daily challenge was "Rainy Night" :

I took another 15 to 20 minutes more to improvised the overall picture for my own finished collection of artworks. As I proceed to fix on top of that original file, I overwrite all the layers involved without any thoughts that I might need them for a later use. So the steps I'm about to show you is this fixed version, with each step took an average of 2 or 3 minutes :

I love how weather affects people emotionally, of which I created several artworks that revolve around this theme. I'll share another one in one of my next posts. For me, a downpour sends me to childhood memories. There was a strange melancholia just before the rain, when the nimbus clouds blanketed the whole sky. I would kneel on the sofa by the window, my younger sisters would occasionally be there too. I could almost smell the sweet breezy fume of air, even now. The chill. The slow tickings of the old clock. The sound of distant trees rustling in the wind, flashes of lightnings blindingly lighting up the heaven and the earth they touched. A comforting crescendo just before the first raindrops. Sometimes it came so abruptly with a loud cracking sound, and my late grandma - there was always my grandma in these - would benignly remind me not to close my ears, which I absent-mindedly did when there were thunderstorms. Embrace the whole experience and praise be to God. And so I did. Then my sisters and I just looked at the rainfall. Seeing how the water flooded the low parts of the ground in front of our house. The countless hypnotizing circles of tiny ripple on the water's surface. Two thick streams of water gushed down the front porch's W-shaped roof and into the overflowing large vases. The housecat would stare at the rain too, but with a dazed look on her face. Or curled up on the half flight of the front door stairs, dozing off. There were seemingly silence and stillness in the worldly affairs of human, at great odds with the roaring force of nature. Those days, people would stop and still be thankful for the rain. For the rain always reminds us that we're at the mercy of the Creator, or at least should wash, sooth, or heal our inherent sorrow of our insignificant existence.

Ok, thank you if you read that. I rarely write nowadays so I try to dust off my writing skill and improve my vocabulary, the little that I have. :D Back to the subject; though the visual outcome of the piece came out randomly, I think the trick for a speedpainting is applying what you have already known or familiar with, technically. It is a time for you to perform at your most efficient way to avoid as much mistakes as u paint. It is the opposite thing u do if you're practicing, which you may use the time to try and learn new things. In practice, artist can afford mistakes as they can teach us to do better and maybe gain new territory and insight in your artistic journey. For this speedpaint challenge, I tried to imagine some elements that would end up in the final image. I saw a girl in the rain under a lamp post, there would be some green and an overall bluish background. I use my own custom brush that I've made to easily paint with quite interesting color strokes.

Here is how I've customized the brush. The shape is just a square with 5 rows of dark to light tones. If you want to try the brush, just let me know. I'm excited to see how my brushes can be applied to others' works.

First, I just laid out huge strokes of the brush to get some idea of where this was going to go. I picked a cool hue (blue) to be the dominant color of the whole picture. Then I painted the bushes with a cool green using the same brush. The scattering and color dynamic in the brush preset are wonderful settings to get some exciting effects. You'd be surprised. In the third step I use the lasso tool to block some shapes into small pools of water.

Later, I painted the girl, which was improvised in the same layer of the 30 minutes painting. U can compare the difference. As a fan of Ghibli (who doesn't, right?), I made some amber-like nature spirits in reference to "Kodamas" the forest spirits in "Princess Mononoke", and definitely some "Bloo" from "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends". I darkened the sky with a quick gradient tool.

In the original 30 minutes, the spirits didn't have eyes and they are a little sketchy on the forms. Perhaps the eyes came later in the process so please excuse the arrangement. When I painted the lamp post, I made sure I would take less time than I would normally do, which explained the basic design. I use light color on top of the lamp with "Color Dodge" blending option. But be careful with dodge effect as it can overcook the colors.

Finally, I softly visualized the rain hitting the outlines of the characters with low-opacity brush. A quick blurred foreground sillhoutte of a plant. And apply the rain effect, also set in color dodge layer setting. These stuff were familiar elements in my previous works including the rain. I will show you how to make easy rain effect in the future if you're interested, but my guess is that you already know there are plenty of tutorials for that.

So that's it. I was quite happy with the outcome, which was a rare case. A lost girl, crying in the rain under a street lamp. She thought the light meant as a sign of life. A shelter and a beacon to call for help. And indeed, she wasn't wrong and she's going to be alright. My fiancée, love this piece. Maybe because of the effortlessness of the artwork (or maybe because of her biased view, don't you think of that?). She has her own narrative of it. Maybe the girl was a nymph because of her sad nature, singing and luring the spirits with an enchanting voice. The lost kingdom of dream echoes her like music in the background. The spirits danced in rhythm with the song and the falling rain, detached from their sense of being. If listened carefully, the songwords were verses of eerie yearning for a long awaited lover. No one knew for how long. but the song went on. Well thank you for that bit of fantasy and mythology, I always appreciate any interpretation of my work.

And thank you everyone who keeps supporting us. Until next time.

• @Afique

Credit to @zomagic for the steem-cartoon WO-OWL banner!