Doodle 085 - Preparing for All Hallows' Eve and misc rambling

On yesterday's post LeAnn said she wondered how I decide what to draw since she seems to draw blanks often.

I thought I would give you guys a bit of insight, now, I am not saying this is a fool proof way or even the right way to do it, it just works for me more often than not:

After work I normally take a bit of a breather, play a bit of a video game, watch a show or two, have dinner with Andrei and we talk about our day, before 8 p.m. I sit down in front of my computer, gather all my drawing supplies, put on some headphones and start playing whatever I feel like listening to at the moment.

Right now I am using Spotify at home and work, I find that music helps to keep me focused, I have quite a bit of a case of ADD, my mind races from one thing to another and I work better with multiple projects going on at once, but I try to concentrate my efforts to come up with ideas and music helps with that.

The music I prefer while drawing are soundtracks, closely followed by classical music and melancholic songs.

Once I have that down I start looking at my pinterest, tumblr and devianART feeds, I try to follow people that pin/blog/photograph interesting things, like historical clothing and costumes, architecture, art and yes a lot of geek related stuff.

Every day I see brand new things that can jolt my imagination, sometimes I will try to do my own version of a photo, others I'll start thinking about a story I want to tell sparked by what inspired me and then I start drawing whatever images I make up in my head.

This works often for me, other times I am just not in the mood to create anything at all, be it out of exhaustion, laziness, or just "because". In that case I just sit myself down, let myself browse the internet looking at silly videos of cats, and start throwing lines onto my notebook until something starts taking shape.

Not every day is a good one, sometimes all I want to do is crawl into bed and make up an excuse as to why I didn't draw, but first Andrei would nag me about it, and then I would nag myself about it thinking about the fact that you guys know I have to post every day and you are there waiting lol.

So I just keep trying until I come up with something. Of course one last thing is important: I try not to second guess myself too much, if I want to draw something I just do, no matter how weird, silly or ridiculous it might seem. Anything goes really.

And now for today's doodle:

Gathering herbs and supplies for All Hallow's Eve - green, red and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.

It is Elphaba on a gathering trip to collect herbs and other ingredients before All Hallow's Eve. The glass pumpkin/skull lantern isn't too bright as to not call attention to herself and can scare hostiles away.