Doodle 184 - Drawing random males

OK so I said I would try to draw more men, it is difficult to get out of your comfort zone, but I am trying. Also I am working on the posts that will come up as I am away... here we go!

Grocery shopping - blue mechanicc on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins

The Jaw - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 5 mins.

Face - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins

Doodle 183 - Fairy Tale Concepts

Today I worked on some initial concepts for the fairy tale trading cards I will be doing for my next doodle swap.

Can you guess the fairy tales?

Working until morning - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Into the forest - blue and red mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins

Doodle 182 - Halfway Through The Forest

182 days. It sounds like an odd figure, and I guess it is.

I haven't really counted exactly how many doodles I have created yet, I haven't even tried to average it (if you feel so inclined to figure out how many I have done since the beginning of this project, you can come back with an answer though lol), but I am venturing to say it is around the 300-ish mark.

Over the past few months I have felt tired, out of ideas, sad, even depressed at times, but I have never felt like I could let a day go by without at least putting something down on paper, no matter how small and silly, before turning in for the night.

It hasn't been easy sometimes, traveling, drawing in the car in the middle of the night, while trying to scarf down lunch or dinner, after particular trying days at the office working long hours, or when I was feeling so sick I could barely flop sideways in bed to try and grab my sketchbook.

I probably will still have many days like that ahead, (hopefully not sick days, because I am sick of those darned sick days), but through them a combo of my pig headed nature and your encouragement have helped me keep on at it.

Skill-wise I can feel my abilities return ever so slowly, I can feel my imagination wanting to take larger leaps and my ability to visualize things get a little better with time.

I still need to work on my male drawings; females and animals are always so much easier and fluid to draw for me, but I don't want to limit myself and become a one trick pony, I want to push myself to be as comfortable with male figures as I am with females.

I also need to work on simplifying my characters, being able to reduce them to their essence.

I need to start inking drawings and coloring them in more often than not.

Still, I am very happy I started walking down this path again. I was able to remember how happy I felt when I wanted to draw and could make the lines obey and become what I wanted.

I find myself having to peel myself away from my desk at later and later hours at night when I finally hit my stride and loose myself in the doodles.

It has been a very long time, a very long road, but I am optimistic and I have to thank all of you for that.

Thank you for sticking with me so far. Thanks for your comments, e-mails, notes, tweets, tumblr messages.

Thanks for believing in me more than I did myself sometimes.

Just... Thank you.

Traveler - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Djinn - blue mechanical pencil in plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

Guard - blue and mechanical pencil in plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Doodle 181 - Warming Up

Well, I signed up for another doodle swap, and this time there is a theme, and the theme is: Fairytales.

I am excited and it will give me something to work on when I run out of ideas of my own.

First, I doodled at random and came up with these:

Young Empress - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Muse Weaving a Song - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins

After those two I decided to do a bit of a warm-up for fairy tales, first a random easy to draw fairy queen just because:

Fairy Queen - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 5 mins.

And then I tried another scene from the Little Mermaid to see how I would like to draw it on a card:

The Rescue - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

I gave myself a little break and drew this just to play with a more dynamic pose:

The Escape - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

And finally I drew this:

Concert at the Palace of the Sea King - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

Doodle 180 - Interactive Friday Costumes (Part 2)

Hope everybody had a lovely weekend! I was mostly at home, didn't do much of anything, but I am very ready for traveling soon.

OK, here are today's suggestions, first BelBlue: "This probably isn't much to go on, but how about something with a tricorne hat?"

Highwayman mask - Blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

 Drawing this reminded me of my very short trip to Venice (it was my senior year of high school trip), ah, I so need to go back and take Andrei with me, it is truly enchanting.

Next Sarah said: "I think you should draw a panda bear in a unicorn costume. I'm thinking of Ever After and the horse costume at the end, only better and on a panda :) Hope that made sense!"

I love Ever After, so I knew what you were talking about and tried my best:

Pandunicorn - Blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

And finally Mrsblocko said: "How about Downton Abbey meets Walking Dead?"

It was challenging, but I came up with this:

Clearing Downton of Walkers Before Dinner - Blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. aprox 20 mins.

The staff was busy getting ready for a fancy dinner party and the girls had to take matters onto their hands so the walkers wouldn't bother the guests during dinner.

Doodle 179 - Interactive Friday Costumes (Part 1)

I missed playing along with you guys, so much fun!

OK first, I doodled something on my own, some stuff passed across my pinterest feed and I just had to try it out:

The King's Dead, Long Live The Queen - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

Now for the requests!

MichelleH requested a Victorian-type ice skating steampunk fairy, here is what I doodled so far, mostly victorian though:

Ice Skating Victorian Fairy - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Next, Rachel Ndeto (Hi Rachel! Welcome!), asked for: "...maybe for inspiration you can use dress from the 1910's. I've always admired the long, elegant gowns"

1910's inspired gown - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

 Marebabe asked for: "I would like to see you draw a shy and demure young lady from Jane Austen's era, complete with a bonnet. (They really knew bonnets back then!)"

Demure - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

And finally for today, a very quick sketch inspired by rhonda's request: "i'm going to my first "con" in March and have no idea what to wear. Pictures i've seen are steampunk, victorian and my favorite (i think)- ren faire-ish types outfits. How about something that's feasible for a girl to wear that can be put together rather cheaply?"

Steanpunk Style - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins

I actually used pieces of clothing I already own to do this, a military style jacket similar to this one from Torrid.com:

Available at Torrid.com

And the hip bag is one I also own and bought at Etsy on this store:

Some olive pants, or even jeans, accessories and a corset to wear under the jacket and you could have a comfortable ensemble for a con that isn't too expensive to put together.

Doodle 178 - Interactive Friday is back!

I'm posting today using my phone... I felt rather sick and tired today, hopefully it isn't a flu bug piggy backing onto my sick from last week.
Anyway... Let's play this weekend, I need you guys to come up with costume design descriptions you would like to see turned into drawings. Both male and female, fantastic or not.
I will draw as many as I can and pick at random.
I doodled some before getting really sick, Andrei took the photos for me (Update: I retook the photos to fix the quality a bit).

The Maid - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Lady - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

Doodle 177 - The Engineer

I am starting to get crazy excited about going on a Disney cruise in just 10 days.
I need to make sure I pack my travel watercolor set and my drawing supplies, the Disney ships are so beautiful both inside and out, I should have a ton of inspiration and time to go crazy drawing.

I think I'll bring the copics along too.

Yeah, I am regaining my obsessive drawing self alright.

Anyway, here are today's doodles:

Dance - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

The Engineer - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

Doodle 176 - A bunch of stuff

I decided to go back to the blue pen today, for some reason I feel the most comfortable with that color, but I like blue any day anyway.

First, a warm up sketch:

Sentinel - Blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

Summoning a swift familiar - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

I couldn't resist the siren song of the Adventure Time Fan Art today, overall since tumblr was running wild with sneak peaks of the new gender bender episode, I got the first Fionna and Cake comic book for Andrei and I just can't wait for this to show!

Yes, my name is Saudade and I am a fangirl lol.

Fionna The Human (without her hat) - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Lost in the melody - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

And finally, something I have been rather familiar with lately:

Working late again - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Andrei surprised me today and gifted me the whole series of The Guardians by William Joyce and Laura Geringer. I am excited! This is like food for my imagination.

Doodle 175 - Let the lines fall where they may

Pencil on plain sketchbook.

Pencil on plain sketchbook

Pencil on plain sketchbook

Pencil on plain sketchbook

Pencil on plain sketchbook

Sooo I got carried away today by the need to just throw lines about, and the above is what happened LOL also time nearly caught up with me!

Doodle 174 - Moth Fairy and Aeronaut

Weee! Right under the wire, I was out watching Les Mis (I liked it BTW), and didn't get home till late.

Moth Fairy - blue pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Aeronaut - blue pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Doodle 173 - Octopus Wrangler

Remember the elf from yesterday? Well, I decided to work on her a bit more today, add some details and finally a bit of a story, her name... for now it is Octavia, she was adopted as a baby by a family in a fishing village.

Octavia was an exceptional diver, not so much a swimmer (weird I know, but it can happen, ask Andrei), early on she discovered that she could understand octopus and befriend them sometimes easier than human children her age.

She grew up to be an authority in all things related to cephalopods and is well known for her discovery of a species of octopus that can live for long periods of time on land (given enough water here and there).

Octavia - blue mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 20 mins.

Doodle 172 - Steampunk Elf Design

I am starting to suffer from a bit of cabin fever (being at home and sick for more than 3 days will do that to me). Is there still a sun out there? Have we gotten flying cards yet? Hehehehe... ah yeah...

Hopefully I'll be all better by tomorrow, but for now, here are some doodles I came up with while trying to design an steampunky elf:

Steampunk Elf Design - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 5 mins.

Steampunk Elf Costume Design - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 5 mins.

Steampunk Elf Profile - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 3 mins.

I will try and work it on some more later.

Doodle 171 - You Know You Need To Go Home When...

Yeah... I decided to go to the office today against my better judgement. What can I say, after a couple of days off sick I start getting restless and feeling guilty because there is job to be done, so I soldiered on aaand after managing to do a whole bunch of work (I was impressed with myself), I gave up and just went back to my cave.

Needless to say, I am still sick and if we had had a meeting today at work about sales and cheese, this is what it would have looked like:

Really badly done meeting scenario doodle. - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 3 mins.

Yup, that's a buzzard trying to peck at me, it wasn't pretty and now I am feeling it. Don't be like me guys, stay home and feel better before you attempt a go at the real world again.

Anyway, here is a second little doodle I managed to crank up before my mind gave in:

Little Mouse - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 10 mins.

For some weird reason this snippet of dialogue went through my head as I doodled this:

Guy1: "Oh, look! It's a girl mouse!"
Guy2: "Um... how do you know it is a girl mouse?"
Guy1: "Well, she is holding a purse with a butterfly, has her hair all done and a little trinket on her tail"
Guy2: "That is awfully presumptuous and a bit sexist, for all we know manly mice like that kind of stuff"
Guy1: "And how would you know?"
Guy2: "I don't, that's my point. Have some cultural sensitivity"

Doodle 170 - Adventure Time Fan Art and More

Well, I am happy to report that, after 2 solid days on bed rest, I am starting to feel better.

It got dodgy there for a bit with the flu-like symptoms, but looks like the resting, plus vitamins, chicken soup and ginger ale have done the trick.

I am hoping to get back to work tomorrow and working out again.

Since I was feeling better today I managed to doodle more, I am still feeling a bit out of sorts, so I went with some Adventure Time fan art first and then random doodling:

Flame Princess - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

 

Fionna - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Court Lady - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.

Priestess - mechanical pencil on plain sketchbook. Aprox 15 mins.