Doodle 108 - More Artist Trading Cards

Today I kept working on the trading card set I have to finish soon. I have had quite a crazy week at work, so I am really excited for the weekend, I'll finally have time to go to the post office, send some stuff out, get my Christmas card list started and clean house... because I am going to need a rescue team to get us out if we don't get things under control soon... yeah, if I skip any doodles, someone contact the authorities because we are probably buried under things that need to be laundered or recycled lol.

This Friday I won't have an interactive theme so I can get my trading cards done, chores and start on my vynilmation project before the holidays rain upon us.

But don't worry, I'll make it up to you guys with a surprise right in time for the holidays.

And without further ado, here are my doodles for today:

More Winter Animals! - non-photo blue pencil, micron pen, prismacolor pencils on cold press watercolor paper cards.

Doodle 107 - Winter Drawings

One of the new things I have decided to do as part of my year-long project is drawing artist's trading cards.

I have known about them for many, many years, I thought of doing some while in college, but between work and school I decided I had more than enough on my plate.

Finally, I joined a group of designers and artists that does "doodle swaps" on a general basis. This time I jumped at the opportunity and now I have to start working on my set of cards if I want to send them out on time.

I figured my theme would be "Winter", today I did my first 3 cards, they are not finished, mostly because I want to keep them a surprise for my fellow swap participants until they get them in the mail:

Winter Doodle Cards - non-photo blue pencil, micron pen and prismacolor pencils on cold press watercolor artist trading cards. Aprox 40 mins.

These were a lot of fun to draw, I might have found a new giveaway type of item that would allow me to spread the love more. The cards are just 2.5'' x 3.5'', so they are kind of cute.

Doodle 086 - Horse Studies

When I started drawing today I decided to play around with a deer at first:

Ancient Forest Deer - green and black mechanical pencil. Aprox 10 mins.

I wanted to give it a more fantastical feel... I nearly turned it into a dragon to be sincere.

After that I remembered I had to study horse anatomy, so I did a search and started to draw from random photo references:

Hoof and eye details - green and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Horse head - green and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Horse jumping - green and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 20 mins.

Melancholic horse - green and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 20 mins.

Practice makes perfect, never be affraid of tackling difficult things to draw, it might not look right at first, but the more you try the better you will get. I still need a lot of practice, but I won't give up :)

Doodle 083 - Sleepy Bat

Thanks for the comments on yesterday's post guys, since there seems to be interest I'll def. do a giveaway for one of my sketches or a watercolor piece. I am probably going to be on the road when I hit my 90th drawing so I will do the giveaway when I hit the 100th post.

I am excited, it should be fun!

Today I was inspired by the silliest thing ever:

Cute yawning bat via s-kinny-l0ve on tumblr

Yup, it is a small gif of a yawning bat that was on my tumblr dashboard this evening.

We had a bunch of bats back in Madrid when I was little. They would come out of hibernation and pretty much claimed the night skies over summer swooping down from high apartment buildings and right over our heads as we walked around the street.

I must say, none of them were as cute as the one on the gif, sure it has bony wings and teensy vampire like teeth, but it is still fluffy and has beady adorable eyes... call me crazy (because well... I am a bit crazy), but I think this one is just so cute!

So... I decided to make a quick couple of sketches:

Cute little yawning bat - red and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine. Aprox 6 mins.

Waking all the way up - red and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 5 mins.

Doodle 072 - Shapes and animals

Not that long ago (maybe about 6 months or so) I finished a couple of master classes taught by Alex Woo (a story artist for Pixar) and Stephen Silver (character designer, he created Kim Possible, for example) via schoolism.com. At the time I was still not drawing much... if at all, so in an effort to get back into the groove I decided to take a gesture drawing and a character design class.

Hindsight, I wasn't really ready to get back in the game, I was forcing myself to do it hoping it would, somehow, restart my passion for drawing. I found the classes wonderful, but soon I became rather stressed because well... Alex Woo and Stephen Silver were grading my exercises, and I really have a lot of respect for both of them, plus my work was still very stiff, rusty and my heart was still pretty conflicted about allowing myself to draw at all.

All in all, I found myself thinking: "OMG, OMG, OMG what am I doing?! This doesn't even look passable, oh I am sooo bad!" more often than not, but both Alex and Stephen were wonderful and steered my frantic and rather mediocre looking efforts to draw every lesson with patience and expertise. I learned so very much from them, and eventually the idea that I HAD to re-start this project started to germinate in my mind until I finally got the guts to do it.

Anyway, I bring all this up, because one of the exercises that Stephen taught us, was to use shapes as bases to create characters, this makes the characters easy to recognize, memorable and gives them interest... I am probably not explaining it very well, so here is what I tried today:

Shape exercise with animals - blue mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 1 hour.

The above is what I ended up with, I still need to work a lot on making what I draw consistently interesting and unique, in a sense, I have to find my own style, something that will set me apart and makes me comfortable, I can tell I have sort of a style, but it needs more practice and polishing.

Owl detail - blue mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook.

Pigeon - blue mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook.

Cat and shaggy dog - blue mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook.

Now, someone tell me they find that cat above familiar too, because I think I have seen it before and I can't quite put my finger on it... I don't know.

Bird and cat - blue mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook.

Another day down, gotta keep trying my best. Never give up, never surrender!

Doodle 063 - Loki and Thor... bunnies

Remember how I said that sometimes I get these odd ideas and I just go along with them?
Well, it happens a lot, so I first drew this:

Loki Bunny - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins

 Yup... it is Loki as a bunny... he isn't very thrilled about it either, but hey, things happen, right?

So, since I had sorta drawn Loki I decided to give Thor a try:

Thor Bunny - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Thor doesn't care if he is a bunny, he is still bent on being heroic and well... Thor-like.

Hehehe... ah, my mind is quite an interesting/dangerous place to live in.

Doodle 062 - Geese, Clouds and Inspiration

A new month, a new week and a new set of doodles.

When I first began drawing again I did so for me, to regain the dreams I had lost and try to hang onto what little sanity I have left (or display hehe), so it was very surprising to find that I had inspired people to try and draw as well.

One such person is LeAnn, I read each of your comments and e-mails and try to keep up with answering, so when I opened my e-mail one day and saw that one of you guys had actually sent me one of your drawings it made me very happy.

You see, for a long time I thought I was alone, sure, I had Andrei, but when you keep things to yourself and muddle through life it can start isolating you in many ways, so now that I have all of you to share my journey it is a rather nice feeling to know that my silly doodles have helped you, afterall, you have helped me so much with your encouragement.

I asked LeAnn if I could share her drawing, she said yes. She wrote that she used to love drawing, but after a while she stopped and lost confidence on her talent, all that sounds very familiar to me, since I find myself on the same boat. Now she is just re-starting after reading and watching my own doodles day by day:

Olive the pug puppy by LeAnn

 I want to encourage everybody who has ever lost confidence to keep trying, it is hard, I know, but once you start your own journey and keep on at it, you will find yourself learning new things, wanting to figure things out and creating things you never thought you had the skills for.

And now for today's doodles; first I just drew something very simple and silly... yes, it is a calf sitting inside of a bag... I don't know, sometimes I start things and decide to just let them be. At least it is cute.

Calf in a Bag - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 3 mins.

After that I kept trying to figure something else to draw, this is what turned up:

Goose King - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine, aprox 5 mins.

I think that's what geese around town see themselves since they pretty much rule the roost.

Finally after drawing some random lines I ended up with this:

Shaping Storms - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins. (Click to enlarge)

It is a storm shaper, she uses a special paddle to create storm systems.

Doodle 049 - Octo Knitter

You could say I am tired today, my drawing arm was so not used to all the drawing (at a larger scale) I did yesterday, hehehe, I need to build my artistic muscles back up.

To rest my arm and my drawing hand I did a silly little doodle today and decided to color it in with some prismacolor pencils:

Knitting Octopus - Graphite, mechanical pencils, micron pen and prismacolor pencils on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 20 mins

Yup... it is a knitting octopus. Haha! Yeah... I have no idea why, it just happened... ok maybe it is about the fact that I am nearly done with my latest scarf, this time the whole thing goes around my neck about 4 times. Yup... that's one long scarf.

Doodle 035 - Randomness

Today I'm back at work, but it involved a lot of waiting and will still take some late hours, I drew some random things here and there, I wasn't specially inspired, but the more I draw, the easier it gets to just make things happen.