Doodles From My Book

Not much to say ... I found out this week that I'm doing a craft show next week so I've been busy making things for that.  It is the best kind of craft show, where you drop everything off one day and pick it back up several days later... no sitting hoping you sell something!  YES!

I am planning on creating monthly doodle pads to sell so I was looking through the things I have already drawn and found these three things that I never posted.  I wish they had scanned better because I really like the frame of the top left one and its hard for you to see why.

OK, off to create!  Have a great rest of it!

Lady Lizbeth Speaks

Turquoise, Red, Pink and White

One of the things I have decided to pin in Pinterest is color combinations I like and I found that I had pinned this combination more than any other so far!  Total shock to me because I have NEVER used this combination for anything! I'm a black and white person, NOT a pink and blue person!   But isn't it pretty!

So I decided I would play with the plate pattern and try and match the colors with the markers I have.

 And then I drew the following using another picture from my "to draw" board on Pinterest to see if I could come close without being the same...and to use the colors:

Isn't that little girl PRECIOUS!  I don't like my version of her face but .... it is what it is...  I wish I were better!!!  It actually was better pre-color....oh well....gotta keep practicing...

Psalm 27:14

¹⁴ Wait for the LORD;
   be strong and take heart
   and wait for the LORD.

OK, this has got to be one of His hardest directions!  I am in the middle of waiting on Him right now and it is tough!  "The World" offers "right now" solutions but they are just temporary fixes, not long term.  Only God has the permanent fix...so I wait....and wait....and wait.  I just keep reminding myself of the Israelites walking around Jericho, instead of rushing in and trying to take Jericho their way, in their timing, they waited on the Lord and did it HIS WAY!... And, it didn't matter how many days they had already walked around, if they had stopped on day six the wall would not have fallen!  

 Joshua 6:1-27 

Hummmm... that sounds like a drawing to me!... 

And so I went back to the drawing board and spent the last couple of hours on this:

Now I'm going to plaster it everywhere in the house!

It HAD to be fixed!

I can not tell a lie.... there is a tab bit of perfectionism in me that comes out some times!  I drew and posted this

the other day and it about got the better of me.  Its kinda like when you see a flaw in a diamond you can see nothing else.... that's the way I am about this frame.  It is just too asymmetrical for me... there needs to be leaves on the left side too!...and that swill is all blotched up.  But, there was no fixing it in Scribbler Too, there is no eraser and just one undo....Painful! And, I was determined to show the real results because that is what the software does.... if I fixed it you couldn't see the actual results.

OK, so I stood it as long as I could and today I opened it up in CorelPaint and fixed it!  Leaves on both sides and the outside "ribbons" are the same (literally, copied and flipped)  I left the off shoots around the flowers alone, not because I loved them, but because I didn't want it to be an exact mirror image or too matchy matchy, ya know?  OH!  and I stretched them down some so that the opening would be larger.... `Here ya go:

I feel better now :-)

New BOUND Art Journal

That's right, I bought myself a new BOUND journal to doodle in today!  It is hard back book with 102 BLANK pages just waiting to be filled. Can I just say how intimidating that is?!  The good news is, it was cheap...only $6+...so its not a huge deal if I mess something up...BUT, it is bound and meant to stay intact.... no more grabbing a quick sheet of paper and if I don't like it, toss it.  I actually rarely do that because there is always something on the page I like and want to keep...but those pages are for my eyes only :-)... Hummmm...

So, how to start???  I just bit the bullet and turned to the first blank page and drew the top circle.  Easy enough, no big deal.  Then I start watching an English mini-series on Netflix called "Colour Blind".  There is a scene with the main character, a beautiful black girl, wearing a hat that I just loved, so I decided I needed to try and draw that.  MAN!  I really wish I could express how little faith I have in my abilities to draw.  So everything I do REALLY is a major stretch in my confidence!  But, thanks to some REALLY SWEET ladies on Pinterest pinning some of my things I have managed to keep pushing ahead... Yada, yada, yada... get to the picture already nancy!

Not terrible, right?  Wellllll...hold the bus, check the hair and the hat out... where is all that hair coming from???  I meant it to be bushy but I got carried away and put it above the rim of the hat.... and there really should be some hint of ears there somewhere!   ....  GROAN!  Of course I noticed all that after I was way beyond the point of no return.... GROAN!

So, I decided then and there that for this journal I am going to change things as best I can with CorelPaint.  And this is the result....

All better!  I just used the paint brush to paint out what shouldn't be there and then the cloning tool to copy some of the curls back into places they should be  HA! Or course that does nothing for the BOUND version!  Except I printed out the fix and will glue it down across from the goobered up one.  And that will be the plan for the whole book... see, if I can FIX "IT"!

Faces, I Just Never Know

One of the things I doodle most are lady faces... it is probably my favorite "go to" doodle.  And when I start one I NEVER know what it will look like in the end!  That's why I could never draw comic strips or illustrate a book.  I could never get the same character more than once.

Even though, I pretty much use the same steps every time ... they are still all different:

I actually missed a step... I do usually add an eyelid after step 3, sorry.

See how every step I did the nose different?!  Pitiful!

Now, on these three, I actually drew the eyebrows last, almost as an after thought... I just started with the bottom of the nose.  AND, this was a different kind of exercise.  I drew her once, with no hair, and printed her three times to see how different I could make her using different hair styles and colors... Kinda cool.

ANYWAY, the reason I even thought of doing this post was because I doodled another today and was completely surprised at the result.  Pleasantly so because I love how she came out.

I didn't realize she was gonna be black until I drew her lips.  They ended up being really full. At that point I decided to put the two commas on either side of the nose to make it appear a bit wider....If I had known I was going to do that she wouldn't have the original black line down the middle of her nose!  I used a single Copic marker for the skin and just went over the shaded areas several times.  I think it is so interesting how people will use 3 or 4 different shades to color a single face.  NOT NECESSARY!  I don't think anyway. (Unfortunately, the original shading looks sooooo much better than this scan) That has always been my main objection to Copics.  I think it is just crazy to spend $20-$25 to produce a single item (face, hair, whatever!)

That's it!  Have a great day!

Scribbler Too

Just discovered a new toy to play with...yet another way to doodle.   Have you guys found Scribbler Too yet?  It is a free online software package that does some really cool stuff.  I'm not too certain how to describe it.  It adds connecting lines between two drawn lines...resulting in some really weird/cool looking stuff.  It takes a while to figure out what happens when you draw but it is a fun thing to play with.  The bummer thing is, you only get one "undo" so you either have to start all over or know what needs fixing as you go.... Here is what I came up with

Then I did this one... it should have three flowers but I figured I'd better stop while I was ahead!

Once you are done you can save it as a .png and modify it somewhere else.... I wanted to keep what I had done without changing it so I didn't change anything....as tempting as it was especially with these guys....    

And, or course I had to make something so I could incorporate my MFH Polly-Wolly Doodle Font!

Fun stuff!

Circles

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Some people like hearts, well, I like circles... and dots.  And, I LOVE tins, all kinds, but I mostly have round ones... And I mean TONS of them.  I'm that person.  You know the one, the one that believes if 1 is good then I need 50!  And I have the house to prove it.  I thought about taking pictures of the boxes of tins I have EVERYWHERE, but that would take too long and you have probably figured out by now that I don't spend much time at any one task....and that includes writing blogs. :-)  Sorry.

But anyway, to the point.  Because I have so many tins, I need round labels so this week I decided to doodle in the round.  I printed out some circles on paper and just started...as always, without a plan...it just had to be in the round...

Here ya go:  These are not intended to be free printables!!  I SAVED THEM IN 72 NOT 300 to reduce file size so they will be grainy and ugly when printed.  Sorry, they were just doodles, I didn't figure anyone would want them!  And I don't know where the originals are so I can't resave...SORRY!.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I feel like I need to again since there are so many mistakes... I like drawing with a pen...no pencil first.  I'm not too sure why that is...well, sure I do...its about that short attention span I mentioned earlier.... I don't want to take the time to do it again, I want to go on to the next thing.... And THAT is why I have started FOURTEEN different Blogs in less than two years and I'm not an expert at anything :-( ... Everyday now, I wish I had focused on one thing over all these many years so that I could be the BEST at something.  Remember that, if you are a young person, to be really great at something you have to FOCUS on ONE THING!!

OK! OK!  Back to the point.  As I was scanning these for the blog I decided to try and use them for something.  

Hummmmmm..... I'm starting to think now that it would be better to start with the middle and THEN make the frame, but, who knows, we'll see.

I actually really like the next one, but, if I were doing it for real I would definitely "draw" the font in instead of using a "canned font"!  But, that's for another day.  I have a wedding guestbook and 280 buttons for a class reunion to make today and I have stalled long enough!

Embroidery Doodle

Last week I did this doodle

Today I did a test with it.  

I made it into an embroidery pattern.  I stitched it out and then tested coloring it.

I'm not too sure how long the color will last.  That's part of the test.  I just used regular markers so they are TOTALLY water soluble hence the color bleed on 4.  I did that on purpose to give it a watercolor feel... I actually like it, but it needs more, I just wanted to wait until it dried to see what was needed where.  The only thing I believe would be color safe is to paint it with acrylic paint....but that would be an entirely different look.

Proverbs 29:25

²⁵ Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
   but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.

You'll notice that things are crowded...that's because I didn't know where I was going when I started.
- I got the cage first so I drew that.
- I then went out on the web to see how to draw fear, and the little guy evolved.
- I knew then that I wanted to put something in a bubble, so I drew that,
- then drew waves going over the bubble.  Once I started drawing the waves I wished I had drawn the cage on a slant like it was being tossed by the waves, so, rather than start over I erased the waves.
- I finally decided to put the guy in the bed, sleeping because there is peace in trusting the Lord
- When I decided that I needed to hang the cage from something (devils fork) I wanted to put God's hands holding the bubble.... and things got crowded....and it was too late to fix.

Inspiration..

Here ya go...yet another example of starting without a plan and being surprised with what I end with.    
This is the simi-final product... I did it in color and don't like it so this is all I'm willing to show you.  I have decided that I like drawing ... and not so much the coloring.  

I know it is kinda hard to read... It says "Let the Princess In You Rule" (I LOVE THAT!...not original)

It all started with this graphic that I got from the Graphics Fairy.  I just love it and I wanted to see if I could copy it....

My version:

Can I just say that that is one of the hardest things I've drawn so far!?!  I don't know why, it really should be simple! but I kept having to turn the paper around to try and get the jagged sides of the leaves to be jagged in the right direction!  WEIRD!!  Anyway, that one is going to have to take some practice!  I love the look of it so I'm willing to practice.

As I was drawing the above I thought how much it looks like the filigree on decorated cakes like this one:...Isn't it pretty?  I love everything about it except it is covered in fondant. UGH! UGH! UGH!  So now I'm in search of pretty cakes and pinning them in my "Doodles" folder...which I'm sure is confusing to most folks! :-)

So that led to this: 

I started practicing with the top scroll and thought now what?

That led to the sides 

and the princess was the natural progression since I didn't have any words to put in such a fancy frame!  BUT I really like it so I'm pretty certain you'll be seeing it again!