008 Speedpainting and the Revenge of the Stressful Timer

Last weekend I attended a live speedpainting event hosted by a deviantArt group. I managed to participate for a few hours and it basically goes like this: you get a theme and you have 30 minutes to come up with a concept for it. It was the second time I took part and I can really tell you, I learned something. Not essentially about painting itself, but how your mind influences your work.
I have already done speedpaintings before, whether from my mind or with reference (these are more studies than speedpaintings), but painting with a set amount of time for yourself or painting with a given amount by others are two completely different things. Stress and adrenaline start to rush, when the timer starts to tick time away, nearing the inevitable 0:00. It´s kind of like taking an exam :)
The first time I participated, my mind was too distracted by that and I even changed my paintings and started all over again after half of the time finished. This was the awful result:

Speedpainting theme: insect predatory creature

 I usually do not start out a painting with much structure and it doesn´t matter how long this phase takes. But within a time limit of 30 minutes, you have to have some kind of structure and organization.
So this time I focused and ignored the timer in my head and tried to bring in some structure. Starting from overall messy general idea to a somewhat nice painting. Results this time where, at least for me, much better:

Theme here: Futuristic SMG

A somewhat exhausting, but very fun task this time was painting for 2 hours straight and finishing 4 speedpaintings:

Themes: Mythological creature, sadistic villain, forest hut and subtle fairy

While the concepts themselves are not very original, I´m quite satisfied, because the event taught me something about time management and structure. Something that also is a vital component in learning how to draw and paint. Time leads to more images, more images lead to more practise and more practise leads to better images.