Painting Speed
 

A painting's complexity , the amount of detail and one's painting method often dictates the amount of time it takes for a paintings completion. With that in mind, I am perplexed why it takes me forever (several months!) to finish a painting. I am glad I don't work in an agency :oops:

What do you do to force yourself to pick up the pace? How long do you work in average on a painting?

I have a sign in my office that says "Work Expands to Fill the Time Available". So true. I set up a schedule for myself with a deadline for each painting, a goal that I want to meet.

A one-person three-quarter-length painting with some kind of background typically takes me 100 hours of painting time. I keep track. That doesn't include photo shoots, planning the composition, client meetings, doing color studies etc, just actually doing the painting on the canvas. I can usually get one done a month, fitting easel time in around all the other stuff involved in "running a business" as a professional portrait artist (marketing, paperwork, etc.)

I know other artists who can get 20 to 30 portraits done in a year. One person in particular has a wife who is his full time assistant, though. He also may do more head and shoulders portraits than I do and he may do only very simple backgrounds.

Michele,

Thanks for your reply. Keeping track of "hours spend painting" is not a bad idea. This might actually help to see exactly how much time each painting takes and how much time "life" takes away from productivity.
Good tip!

Hi Enzie,

One important point concerning "speed" is related to style. The way you paint makes if faster or slower.
Two great guys to mention: Morgan Weistling and Tony Ryder, the first one is a fast painter, and the second one is a contemplative painter. Both produce hight quality and beautiful works, but in very different ways.

I work part-time, but one holiday I stayed in front of my easel for about 15 hours, and once (but only once) I worked for 3 days without sleeping, but I usually like to paint for 4 or 5 hours and take a rest (painting another thing, of course) and than come back the next day, so I can see how the work is going with "fresh eyes".

Every person is different, I wish I could paint full time. I have one friend who paints 14 hours everyday since he was 19, today he is 74, so you can figure how much work he has produced so far.

The love of Art is what makes me pick up the pace everyday. As I said before, I wish I could paint full time.

C. Ya.

Enzie, I'm just a student, so I have no "real life" experience on finishing a painting, but something one of my teachers is fond of saying is finally beginning to sink in: "Think the end from the beginning." If I can get "end" drawing, value, color, or edges on the first or second layer of paint, do it! This has helped me speed up.

Claudemir,

I agree, sometimes I wonder how much one's personalty effects the way one paints. For example, some people are very care free, therefore if something is a bit off, they are ok to laugh it off. Then there are those that are very analytical, for them everything has to make sense and lastly the perfectionist, who can't leave things be and always strives to do better and better, often sacrificing speed for achieving the ultimate goal.

Debra, your teacher is so right.I have often found that if I failed to do a step in the initial stages, it costs me more time to fix it later. It is amazing how much discipline painting requires, isn't it?!

Enzie,

I like this subject. It allows me to peak in on others work styles, similar to an art class studio or workshop. I rarely have the opporunity to visit other artists and this fills that curious void.

I agree with Michele, as an experienced graphic artist and manager I found that deadlines dictate the time. Even a schedule with copious amounts of time the job always seems to fill the gap.

I am more of the analytical type becoming more and more analytical as the painting progresses. Towards the end I can spend a lot of time away from the easel trying to determine the areas that are untrue. It is here that I can spend days viewing and contemplating with little time actually painting. Consequently I try to set up a personal deadline based solely on my experience. Then I try to beat that deadline. I usually miss my deadline but not by much.

I have a friend who never meets her deadlines, she says her clients think her work is worth the money because it seems to be difficult. When she meets her deadlines, her clients say it was easy and they try to bargain in future commissions.

Interesting Claudemir,

It seems to validate the theory of "percieved value".

Claudemir, your friend is very lucky to have such admiring clients. In today's day and age where instant gratification is almost expected, people often are baffled when they hear how long it has taken an artist to paint something.

John, I find it great that you set a time line and try to abide by it.

Someone once told me that the painting let's the artist know when it's done. Hmm, that seems to leave many artists that are hard of hearing, because there sure is a lot of unfinished work out there. Don't you think? ;)

Joking set aside, I believe that there is truth to this statement , because if one knows the fundamentals of drawing and painting and truly follows the procedures of preparatory work, proper layout and paint application, time can be saved from the onset, resulting in a fairly decent painting. Then it becomes a matter of the artists individuality and his/her "critical eye" , weather to push further or leave it be.


Creating art is a curious thing. One person can create something beautiful in a day, another in a week and yet another in a matter of months.

I think time spent making the portrait largely depends on two things - how good your reference material is and how picky the client is. If the resource material is bad - especially in cases of posthumous portraits - and if the client is difficult to please, the amount of rework can go on and on, adding months to the job.

This is an enlightening thread. I've been watching videos by Scott Burdick, Morgan Weistling and others. While they are somewhat compressed for time, they seem to film every brushstroke of the process of painting the face, and edit for time when they get to the background.

Weistling's video is ten hours long, and he seems to spend nearly six hours on just the face. The results are beautiful, but as he points out, it's not a portrait. It looks generally like the model, but I imagine he would have to spend a great deal more time to satisfy a portrait client.

I have trouble making myself slow down. I paint much too quickly, and lose accuracy as a result.

One problem for me is that I have a very hard time painting over dry paint. I feel like I can't come back to a painting, because I'll ruin it if I paint on the previous day's work (didn't oil paint used to dry slowly? Seems to dry instantly now).

For now, I scrub down just about everything I paint -- partly because I never finish anything, so I might as well re-use my canvas -- partly because my skill level is not where I want it to be.

I think I need to make a concerted effort to get out of this box and force myself to paint on just one picture over an extended period of time. Painting wet on wet is not an option for long projects, so I just have to learn to paint over dry paint. Heck. If Rembrandt could do it, how hard can it be?

Hi Jeff, nice to see you again. Some of us here on the Forum (like me) paint several coats of paint on a surface (remembering the 'fat over lean' principle). It's not archievally unwise if you do it correctly and aesthecially I personally like the effect.

For me, speed has as much to do with how many coats of paint I apply as it does anything else.

And hi Enzie, thanks for starting this interesting topic!

Are these the ones you get from that rental place, Jeff?

Painting over dry paint is easy if you oil out the dry surface first. Otherwise I find the drag of the old paint on the new stuff is not pleasant and it's very hard to match colors and values. (I oil out with a 50/50 mixture of linseed and mineral spirits, brushing it over a dry area and wiping most of it off. It restores the true value and color to the dark areas and makes a nice surface to paint into.) The old paint has to be very dry or it will smear during the oiling out, though.

I think it would be just about impossible to paint everything perfectly in one go, so using multiple layers is pretty much essential.

I bought the Weistling Video, and rented others.

I've heard of oiling out the canvas, and I have tried it, but never had it explained as you have. I'll try it again.

Linda: I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong with it, as I'm well aware that almost all oil painters paint over dry paint, but I'm struggling with it.

I didn't mean to get the thread sidetracked, but I seem to have a tendency to do that.

I should start a new thread.

We apologize for this interruption. now back to our regularly scheduled topic.

Hey Enzie,

For what it is worth...... I'm a poke. : )

Jeff,

Those artist's who actually show the painting process from the initial outline to the absolute last brush stroke, can be counted on a hand. I have become a true believer in three week or longer workshops. Only then, is there enough time built in for the instructor to show each and every step and explain. Furthermore, the student has an opportunity to really digest what is being taught and apply the procedures under the watchful eye of the instructor. Most people don't have the patience to watch a somewhat repetitive process unless they adore the technique of their particular master.

Jeff, by realizing that you work too fast you have already started to admit to yourself that there are issues that you need to address before going on to the next step. It does take an iron will to slow down, but it is so worth it!

Regrading the oiling out method, Marvin has taught me to use a dropper to place drops of oil all over the canvas. Then using a soft T-shirt rag you wipe the entire surface down. When just a sheen remains, you rub a clean finger over the area. The finger should also have a slight sheen. If it is too oily you have to wipe more off, if your finger comes away bone dry, use more oil. I hope that helps.

Linda, you are welcome.... At the Getty I was amazed to see that Bouguereau did this huge painting of "Song of the Angels" 84"x60" for the Salon. God only knows how long that took him, but to top it all off he did an exact replica of the same painting in a (I' m guessing now)
30"x40" size. I wonder how he kept himself motivated.

Janel, a poke ...hmmm?! :)

While I am on the subject of motivation, I like to say on those days when I feel there is very little progress and the day just seems to drag on, what motivates me the most is, seeing the beautiful paintings done by our contemporaries. When I see a new post of someone's work I admire, it is the equivalent of eating an energizer bar, drinking a great cup of cappuccino, etc. I perk up, tell myself to get with it and voila-back to the easel it is. Thanks folks!

What I mean is I am slow. I am not sure if you understood what I meant.

I could not agree with you more about being motivated by the work of others. I get such a boost when I see good paintings and this forum is a great blast for that.