Doodle 091 - Valkyrie and Elf

I have been working on setting up a store for everybody that has been asking about purchasing prints. I asked a friend who is an illustrator about where she would recommend I set up shop.

She pointed me in the right direction and I am happy to say I'll probably have something up and running either by the end of this week or just in time for the 100th doodle giveaway. Yay!

Hopefully once it is set up and orders go out the finished product looks good and you guys are happy with it. Also, I am trying to keep the drawings as close to the original as possible, very minor edits so the levels are right.

Anyway, I'll make sure to let everybody know when I get my shop set up and ready.

Since I was poking around with that project I ended up just doing 2 very quick doodles:

Elf costume design sketch - blue and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.

 I wanted to try and draw an outfit, this is what came out.

Valkyrie - blue and black mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 5 mins.

Then I just drew very quick lines and a nebulous Valkyrie emerged.

OK I am off to tweak some more stuff and then bed. :)

Doodle 079 - Vanellope von Schweetz candy hair ornament tutorial and female Captain America

Tomorrow after work Andrei and I will be hitting the road to visit Walt Disney World and attend a special screening of Wreck It Ralph. This means there won't be an interactive Friday this week.

Also I said I was going to post a tutorial tomorrow, but then I figured I'll be running around like a chicken without a head all day tomorrow and I decided to post it today instead. Hooray!

This craft is actually super easy, I decided to do it once I got confirmation that we would attend the screening, also I am a big dork, but that goes without saying.

Vanellope is a character in the movie, she is part of a game called Sugar Rush, the game takes place in a world that looks a lot like Candy Land, all the characters sport clothing that is made out of candy... well pretty much everything is made out of candy, and Vanellope's hair happens to be sprinkled with gummy bears, peppermints and... sprinkles:

Vanellope shaking hands with Ralph - Disney

My hair is pretty dark too, so I decided it would be fun to wear some sprinkles on my hair Saturday for the movie, it is a bob at the moment, so the pony tail with the Twizzler scrunchy is off though.

For the madness to begin all you'll need are:

-A hot glue gun (and glue sticks for it)
-Short or long bobby pins (depends on your hair length) that match your hair color more or less.
-Hair clips (also close to your hair color)
-Small beads or ornaments that look like candy.

When I decided to go on ahead and try to do this, the first place I hit up to find "candy" was Michaels. It is super close to my office, so I went over there on my lunch hour with Andrei and I found these:

Peppermint bead ornaments from Michaels. A bit over $2 after coupon, yay!

They are starting to roll out all the Christmas decor, so if you want peppermints and candy canes that are small enough for hair ornaments I would go now and stock up. These peppermints are an inch in diameter, perfect!

After work we had to do some shopping at Walmart, and in their kid's craft section, I found these on clearance:

Foam Beads.

At first they looked like they might not work since they have these designs printed on them, but they had a blank side, plus foam is super light, so they wouldn't be uncomfortable to wear or weight my hair down, plus they are all less than one inch, perfect size for sprinkles.

I also picked up some hair clips and bobby pins while there, nothing fancy, the cheapest I could find on black.

I was worried the candy ornaments would be difficult to separate from the hooks they came on, but it was actually just question of a simple twist and pull and I had all of them off without even getting the hooks off the package:

Yay candy!

These had a lot of tiny transparent beads glue to them, it gave them a cool frosted effect, but the beads kept coming off, I rubbed them with my fingers to get the excess out and to totally get them off one of the sides of the ornaments so they would stick well to the hair clips I was using.

Candy on hair clip test.

After that I opened the pack of foam beads and looked at the shapes and colors available:

The blank side was perfect.

Then I tested them on long bobby pins, the beads have a small hole through them already, so all you have to do is skewered them with the bobby pins. A small drop of hot glue does help keep them in place:

The long bobby pins were too much for my short hair, so I tried shorter ones I had already:

 

Once I had figured how I wanted to place the beads and ornaments I broke out the hot glue gun and did the last part of this super quick craft:

Before.

After: 3 minutes later... done!

Yup, just a bead of hot glue on the pins and clips will keep everything in place.

And then all you do is randomly place the candy all over your hair (after the glue has cooled off and dried, of course):

Sorry bout the bad photos, bad light, plus camera phone, plus me being lazy equals... photographic mess.

Anyway, They do look better in person and like candy, so I am pretty excited to wear them on Saturday.

Now for today's doodle. I did a quick female version of Captain America... I don't know why, I just did LOL:

Female Captain America. - graphite and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Doodle 066 - Warrior and Interactive Friday Time

Yay! The weekend is here, I am so happy, this Saturday we will be very busy though, for some reason every single festival seems to fall on either this Saturday or next, so we'll try to hit up as many events as we can just for fun.

Here are today's doodle

Warrior - non-photo blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.

Just a quick warrior sketch, partly inspired by Moribito, one of my favorite animes. I gravitate toward stories with strong female characters, I recommend it, it is based on a series of books that I have on my to-read list.

And now, for this Friday's interactive theme! I need to practice character design and study from the masters of animation, so this weekend it will be all about animated characters from movies. Think Disney, Dreamworks, Blue Sky, etc.

First 6 get drawn for sure, anything else I might or might not get to depending on how I feel over the weekend and how much running around outside I end up standing LOL.

Ready? Go!

Doodle 065 - Ice Princess and Agent of Mischief

Another week that is flying by, to be sincere I barely know where the whole year is going, I am enjoying October to the fullest and the weather is finally starting to cool off, slowly, but surely.

Today I drew a couple of things, first a Snow Princess:

Snow Princess - Prismacolor non-photo pencil and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.

She is cool, calm and calculating, but at the same time rather shy.

Then I drew this:

Agent of Mischief - Prismacolor non-photo pencil and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

I imagine this is an agent of mischief, his job is to create chaos and confusion.

Doodle 064 - The Guardian of the Forest

Alright! Half the week is over, we can do this! Hehehe.

Here is today's doodle:

The Guardian of the Forest - blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Just a random mythical/fairy tale creature that protects the forest it resides on.

Doodle 044 - Nearly floating

Is everybody ready for Friday? This week has gone by rather fast, mostly because work has been as busy as ever, but I count that as a good thing.

I really didn't have a direction to start drawing today, so I sort of just let the pencil take the lead on my first doodle:

Nearly Floating - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. No references used. Aprox 15 mins.

Sometimes just letting the shapes take seems to work.

After that I decided to sketch a dress by costume designer Eiko Ishioka that I had seen on my Pinterest feed a couple of days ago. I thought it was lovely, so I added a bit of a character to wear it:

Original gown by Eiko Ishioka.

Princess Bride - Blue and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mins.

Alright! I am off to bed, I have been a bit insomniac lately, so I'll try to get some decent sleep in today.

Doodle 019 - Regal

A quick regal doodle for Sunday.

I have no idea where this one came from, her face, overall the eye area isn't as nice as I would like, but I sort of like it.
Hope everybody is having a good weekend!

Regal - Graphite and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 20 mins.

Doodle 018 - Moleskine, Coats and Shiba Inus

Another work week finished, another doodle and something new.
First: Today's doodle (this will allow you to skip my rambling if you want to).

Costume design doodle - Graphite, mechanical pencil and some ink using a micron pen on plain moleskine notebook. Aprox: 30 mins.

I enjoy drawing outfits, I have been playing with designs of a coat like this for a while. I am not very good at sewing (my biggest achievement so far has been an cute pleated apron), so I doubt I'll ever be able to make something like this.

Shiba Inu - Graphite, mechanical pencil and some ink using micron pens on plain moleskine notebook. Aprox: 20 mins.

 I love Shiba Inu dogs, I will probably turn this one into a vector illustration.

And now, to the rambling: you might have noticed that I use moleskine notebooks a lot for drawing. This doesn't come out of a devotion for the brand or type of notebook, it is actually kind of a silly story.

While in college I would mostly draw on any sketchbook I found on sale, I would go to Michaels and buy a bunch of whichever was "buy one get one free" and then apply a coupon to keep my costs down, (thrifty sketchbook hoarders, unite!).


When you are sketching it really doesn't matter what paper you use, sure, you can have a favorite, maybe you like something more rough that your pencil can grab onto, maybe you like smooth paper to glide over, but in the end, any paper is good when you just need to pour out some ideas. Getting a sketchbook helps keeping your doodles wrangled in one place though, otherwise you end up with a bunch of loose sheets floating about and they get difficult to store and keep track of.

It is also nice to see the drawings in order and figure out where you improved or what needs more work.

All in all, you don't need a fancy notebook to begin with, that said, sometimes a fancy notebook is nice.

I ended up with a rather sizable collection of moleskins when Borders went under. There was a Borders bookstore very close to my office, I used to visit and buy books on time to time during my lunch break, when the "going out of business" sales started I would check stuff out on time to time as the price cuts got deeper each week.


During one of my excursions I noticed and entire moleskine display with a big SALE sign on it. At first the different colors available caught my eye. I just automatically went for the blue and turquoise ones, but as I looked them over and discovered most of them were unruled... I sort of lost it and let my art supply hoarding tendencies take over.


I am sure everybody has a dormant (or not so dormant) magpie like reflex that allows you to hoard stuff, for some it is all about shoes, for others shiny things and jewelry in general, some like purses, others clothes, etc but for me... it is all about art supplies, especially pencils, brushes and acrylic paint colors. I am not kidding, I normally take my husband with me to the art store because he will tell me when I am getting out of control. My eye literally twitches and I have to take several steps back and have a little talk with myself about budget, needs, and space.


Anyway, this time my husband was there as well, but before he could do anything to stop me, I had loaded an entire basket with moleskine notebooks (I will also add, I had never owned one before, so I was def. going out of my gourd), and I was guarding them with Smeagol-like zeal... I might or might not have uttered a "My preciousss" while stroking my loot. I guess we were lucky they didn't have carts available, otherwise I might have just emptied the entire display into one and laughed maniacally all the way down the check-out line and out the door.


Once we got home and dropped the bag filled with notebooks onto the living room's floor I started to figure out the scale of the purchase I had just made. Moleskines are not famous for being cheap, I was lucky and they were on sale, and even if they had been affordable run of the mill notebooks, the sheer amount of bound paper I had just brought into the house would still be ridiculous.
Don't believe me? Ok well, here's a photo of what's left. I have used about 3 other packs of notebooks already.

Behold! Mount Doom Notebook!

 My husband just looked at me and said something along the lines of: "Well, this should get you drawing... right?". Short answer: "No".

The poor notebooks sat on a bookshelf glaring at me for months. I know notebooks can't glare, but to me, it felt as if they were... judging me along the way for not cracking one open already and draw.
Now that I have been drawing again and going through a notebook here and there I can say... I like them!

They are smart-looking, the paper is high quality stuff, my graphite and leads slide on the surface easily and that helps keep my hand from cramping up. The smaller sizes are great to keep on my purse and doing quick sketches, the larger ones are good for more detailed drawing, but I wouldn't recommend it to lay down drawings you intend to develop a lot.

The pages are too thin for really heavy inking, they do work well with some ink, they can wield some watercolor use but wrinkle at the edges. Still, the watercolor won't bleed through to the next page, which I was surprised about. I am probably going to tinker with acrylics and see how they do with those.

Several of my creative friends say they don't buy moleskines just because they are intimidated to doodle on them. They feel pressured to turn every page into a beautiful drawing, and I can totally understand why. When you see what other artists do with theirs, you sort of feel like you have to take advantage of yours and make it amazing. I decided I didn't care, that it was MY notebook and anyway, it was just blank paper, so I dove right in, but that's just me.

Hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a bookshelf's worth of filled-in notebooks to feel proud of, not because every page is an incredible piece of art, but because I kept trying, even when I messed up... and in the end, isn't that with life is all about?

Doodle 017 - Missing winter

You could say I only have 1 season I dislike, unfortunately, that season happens to be summer. I might have a lot of reasons to not like it, but it all boils down to the fact that... I just don't like the heat.

I know it sounds silly, overall since I live in Florida at the moment, and the summers here are muggy, wet and sauna-like. It took me about 5 whole years to be able to go outside in the middle of August and not feel like Darth Vader was force-choking me.

And so, when fall starts to get closer, even when the temps don't seem to change much around here, I feel a bit happier, and by the time Halloween comes around the corner I am in the best mood of the whole year.

I guess this is why today I ended up drawing this:

Winter scarf - Graphite and mechanical pencil on plain moleskine notebook. Aprox 20 mins.

Doodle 013 - Taking the dragon for a stroll

I could start this post by griping about the fact that it is Monday... but instead I will post a video I found yesterday that illustrates my feelings about today:

 

Now, imagine I am the panda, the cage is Monday and the panda caretaker is reality... damn you reality! *Shakes fist*

Needles to say, I felt a bit off most of the day, and then just downright sad when I got home after work, but I sat myself down and doodled practically nothing for a couple of hours until... I went and checked my pinterest feed.

Oh yeah,  I am about shoulder deep into pinterest. It is an awesome place for visual types, like me, to gather stuff. I might even be a bit, (or OK maybe a lot), addicted.

I use pinterest as a tool to cheer myself up with geeky things I love and to keep reminding myself of what I want to achieve.

For example: I have a whole board dedicated just to what I believe would be my dream job: Character, production design and storyboarding for animated features.

Anyhow, one of the people I follow, Claire Hummel, who BTW is an incredible artist, has an awesome collection of pins to use as reference for costumes on her drawings. So I got inspired and drew this just by grabbing a jacket from one of her boards and going from that:

Taking the dragon out for a stroll - Graphite and mechanical pencil on plain moleskine notebook, aprox 10 mins.

The dragon finagled its way into the drawing when I found it a tad static, things just seem to flow that way sometimes.

Some days are harder than others and my creativity is affected by the way I feel. Consistency and discipline do help a lot, so I am happy I managed to draw something out. I didn't get discouraged because I knew you guys were cheering me on as well.

Doodle 008 - Shapes

Tonight I decided to reign myself in after a rather eventful day by trying a technique based on shapes.
They taught me this at art school very early on.

I was a bit stuck wondering what to draw, my brain was still fluttering about, so I started with one single circle, I am sure you can guess which one, (hint, it is very near the center of the drawing), then started to add curves around it and slowly this drawing emerged.

This was specially challenging because I was trying to keep my lines from shaking too much.

Round the Queen - graphite and mechanical pencil. 15 mins aprox.