Speed paint #31

Today's Sketch-ercise. Spent a few minutes after the session to roughly flesh this guy out a little more... Pretty tired so I'll save explaining this weeks theme till tomorrow. Here's Tee's, Chris' & Nathan's pieces... Nite folks ; )

-M-

Speed paint #30

& finally here's Friday's Sketch-ercise... Fighter pilot doll... watch out, she's a feisty one!

-M-

Speed paint #29

Here's this evening's Sketch-ercise... [for Thursday]. One more tomorrow to cover today [Friday] & that's my set for the week. Moving onto a whole 'nother theme next week so stay tuned! should be interesting... Been a pretty busy week, & I for one am relieved it's over... Time to R-E-L-A-X; but before you do, check out the pieces Tee Jay, Chris & newest person to join in with my sketch sessions, Nathan produced this week... Have a good weekend guys!

-M-

Speed paint #28

Had a great session this evening with Tee, Chris & Bernie, & would like to welcome our newest member Nathan Martinez who joined us all the way from the US! Would you believe he's only been painting for 3 months but has more drive than many professional artists I know!? *gasps*... He's just started a fresh new blog to keep track of his progress; if you have a few mins, hop over to it & show some support. Great having you join us Nate ; )

Here's Wednesday Sketch-ercise [done today].

-M-

Speed paint #27... [the real one]

Seems Tuesday's mishap with my charger has put me a day in arrears; will have to catch up with this one day lag over the weekend. Here's my Sketch-ercise for Tuesday.

-M-

Speed paint #27 [proxy]

Five minutes into my evening Sketch-ercise, I receive a warning from my comp stating I "now have 10% power remaining"...!!? *looks in bag for charger*... I've only gone & left it at the studio... NUTS!

Here's a bunch of doodles as deposit for now...

Why doodling in bed is a bad idea...
Terrible page... although I like the
bottom-left woman.

-M-

Speed paint #26

So I've just taken on a pretty intensive commission; one of those, "lots to do in very little time" gigs [a cool one though] which has now eaten into my morning Sketch-time... BOOO! So for the next month or so, I'll have to be doing these in the evening after I get home... Here's Today's Sketch-ercise.

-M-

Speed paint #25

Hi folks. Here's this morning's Sketch-ercise... Decided to go for a slightly "rounder" [but still masculine] male today, & add a little variation to the body types. I think what I'm going to start doing with these posts is to share the bio's, backgrounds & statistics of these characters... We do this during our sessions to get deeper into the characters; going as far as whether he drinks Martinis or is a Scotch Whisky kinda guy, where he works, is he hot-tempered or a pushover, & so on...

It's been great fun this week but moving onto le females again next; same character exploration exercise. As always folks, if you'd like to join me with my daily Sketch-ercise, feel free to add me on Skype as: Sketchlounge... Till then, have a great weekend!

-M-

Speed paint #24 [+ some tips]

So with these character studies, what I tend to do before I begin is to gather a few random reference images based on my week's theme [normally I do a quick google image search the night before]... from there I'll pick out a few interesting pieces [3 - 4] that somehow spark off my imagination towards defining a character... The images will range from portraits to full body, & in varied compositional situations. What I'm looking for at this stage are simply elements in each that my imagination connects with... rarely [if ever] will use a single image alone as ref- it's more a mental collage of several...

I've also learnt it's really best to stay loose & keep an open mind about the information you take in through refs; observe & then let your imagination work it's magic. More often than not, I find [when I'm doing it right] my finished design looks absolutely nothing like my refs; even to a point you could argue why th'heck I had them up I the first place... There does of course come a point where it's best to now remove them; for me it's normally once I've laid down a strong framework of gestural stokes... from there on I'm pretty much good to go!

Hope this little explanation was helpful to a few out there?
Here's today's Sketch-ercise...

Oh, Also I recommend picking up a copy of Mike Mattesi's "Force" -fantastic book!

-M-

Speed paint #23

This morning's Sketch-ercise!
So he's some sort of "Hip Cat" Beatnik... or at least a wannabe... Quite like the body-shape/ pose but hate his face... that didn't quite come out right. Fun designing him though. Here's Tee's piece ; )

-M-

Speed paint #22

This morning's Sketch-ercise... "uughh... I'm hit".

-M-

Speed paint #21

Afternoon guys. So here's this morning's Sketch-ercise. Going for full-body designs this week, thinking about shapes, form, posture & strong silhouetting; should be a fun week. Along with my pal Tee Jay, I was joined this morning by my other good friend Chris for a 1st session; here's his warm-up... btw, if you fancy joining in with me on these Sketch-ercises, add me via Skype as sketchlounge. I'm here pretty much every morning from 8am to 9am GMT; always nice to connect with fellow artists/ new people. Either way, I'd really encourage giving this a go as regular daily practice at a time that works for you. It's tough getting yourself to do anything in the morning, let alone draw, but it really is a great way to start the day!

This morning's Sketch-ercise...

-M-

Speed paint #20

Today's Sketch-ercise... Had a bit of an odd request on this one... sorry Ant, couldn't help making him look this sinister.

***DISCLAIMER***
SMOKING KILLS!!!... I DO NOT SMOKE... NOR DO I CONDONE IT... <--- click ; )

-M-

Speed paint #19

Here's this morning's warm-up. Photoshop doing weird things this morning [randomly messing with my colours each time I'd adjust a layers hierarchy]; managed to tame her just enough to get this out at least...

-M-

Speed paint #18

Here's this morning's Sketch-ercise! Check out my buddy Tee's warm-up too.

-M-

Speed paint #17

Today's Sketch-ercise folks! Time to call it a day. G'nite from London Town...

-M-

Speed paint #16

Morning! Here's this morning's warm-up. Had a nice little session with my bud Tee Jay. He's just started a new blog, check out his piece & drop him a 'follow'. Have a Posi+ive day folks!

-M-

Speed paint #15

Here's this morning's sketch-ercise. Another week done! Hope you've enjoyed these lovely ladies as much as I've enjoyed painting them? However, next week I'll be moving onto 'male portraits'; still within the '1940's-50's Hollywood glamour' theme. Btw, these sketches are actually all in colour, just thought I'd have a bit of fun keeping in line with the "look" of this period... I remember there actually was a point in my childhood days whenever watching B/W movie classic, I did half believe life back then was completely monochromatic.... don't judge me, you did to!

Anyways check out these colour photos of life in the early 1900's... this one's pretty amazing too... I may post up my colour versions later this eve if you'd like to see those too?

-M-

Speed paint #14

Morning! Here's this morning's warm-up.

-M-

Speed paint #13

Today's sketch-ercise...

-M-

Speed paint #12

Today's Sketch-ercise...

-M-

Speed paint #11

Hi guys, here's Today's Sketch-ercise... This weeks theme...? 
'1940's-50's Hollywood Glamour'.

-M-