Do you know the Speed Art trend?

Every generation has its art and the millennials' gallops somewhere between Street Art and digital art. The key? Saving time in the creative process. Speed Art is painting or drawing done in a short space of time and in one go. It usually involves large elements (though it doesn't have to). Doesn't ring a bell put like that? Maybe if we tell you that Speed Art would be, for example, the stencil graffiti spreading across big cities, you'll recognise it more easily. Right? The truth is it's a broader art than that, and simplifying it this way isn't very Artelista, so let's dig a little deeper into what it's all about.

Speed Art, the story of the artistic trend that's the “fastest in the West (and the East too)”

Although the example we gave earlier is one strand of Speed Art, the truth is that Speed Art goes much further and, above all, it focuses on planning the materials, the technique and the subject so that the execution takes as little time as possible. After all, we're children of the age of immediacy. How could it be done any other way than fast and, sometimes, fleeting? We live in an era where everything arrives, interacts and disappears. With Speed Art, that trend reaches its peak.

The truth is there are real masterpieces, mainly using spray paint, that get done in barely 4 minutes. You can also find other varieties using stencils or straight onto a smooth surface. Although it's often confused with Street Art (a much broader movement), Speed Art may or may not happen as street art.

Are Speed Art and Speed Painting the same thing?

Absolutely not. Speed Painting is the name given to “the act of creating in direct interaction with software applied to a virtual support, a canvas or an image, cutting down the time digitally”. Let's say it's one step further on from Speed Art, which makes it a far more digital art. They do, however, have a lot in common, and you could say that Speed Art may be the step before Speed Painting, becoming a middle point of innovation.

Digital illustration is a common example of Speed Painting, but it isn't the only one. The truth is that although for the most puristic these new art forms aren't art at all, we mustn't forget that art moves forward and that it will always be what it always was: a means of expressing our deepest character, our dreams and fears, our humanity.