#33: Doodling is fun!

When Shane and I went to McKay a couple weeks ago, I randomly picked up a book on drawing cartoons just because. I have always been interested in drawing because my dad is an architect and can crank out some amazing drawings, and of course, I always wanted to be just like him. I didn't end up as an architect (that market is soooo saturated right now) but I still doodle occasionally. I don't get to practice very much and my drawings can't hold a candle to his, but it's still fun. 

I pulled out the cartoon book tonight and decided to give it a shot. Not to toot my own horn here but I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out! 

This guy in the hat is actually the first thing I attempted, from a diagram showing how to show perspective and get the face shapes right. The top three are using the drawing techniques taught in the book, the bottom one I freehanded. Yep, I'll be using their methods from now on haha.

Next I got into the actual "lessons". I decided to flesh these out a lot more. I'm a perfectionist so you can bet that the chins took at least 10 tries before I got them halfway straight and not all squiggly. I'm a lot better at rough sketching out a line, but when it comes down to actually drawing ONE line and that's it, I have trouble. 

My sister has given these next drawings all names and elaborate back stories, which I will share in each photo's caption. 

This is Roy J. Marcus. He's a used car salesman who lives in Oklahoma with
his wife and three kids. 

I didn't worry too much about drawing them EXACTLY like the drawings in the book, but tried to stick pretty close. Roy's eyes are a little less beady than the illustration, and he also has a much toothier grin. 

This is Stanley H. Fillmore. He is Roy's cousin, and the manager of the
local chicken shack. He has a wife and two kids.

This is Susie Q. Marcus, Roy's wife. She works at the bank. 

Susie gave me the most trouble of all three. I just couldn't get her eyes to look quite right (drawing perfect-ish circles is hard!) and they always ended up a little too far apart. Oh well, close enough. 

Just in case you're interested, here's what a sample lesson looks like. I had a lot of fun working on these and hopefully that can be a regular thing in the future. 

Dealing with pre-holiday stress, and a turkey picture!

As we all know, the holidays can be a very stressful time. Apparently for me, I don't even have to wait for the holidays to start enjoying the stress. Yesterday I was on the verge of a major breakdown, and to cope I decided to draw turkeys. 

I must just have a thing for turkeys, because I drew this one last year. 

But seriously, though, I wrote a to do list on Tuesday and came up with two and a half pages of things. 

I don't know how I have this many things to put on a to do list, but there it is. Don't worry, not everything has to be done tomorrow, in fact most aren't urgent at all, just things that have to be done in the somewhat near future. Writing it all out like this helped me visualize what all needs to be done, and it also let me empty my mind so I don't worry about forgetting every little thing. I didn't realize how much had been weighing on me until I wrote it all out like that. 

I also realized that most of my to do items are things that shouldn't be stressful, they should be FUN, like buying Christmas decorations for the new house or hanging up the picture frames I just got. I have decided to stop my ridiculous stressing and just ENJOY myself and the holidays. Because what's the point of buying Christmas gifts if you don't get to enjoy buying and gifting them? That's the whole point. But if I don't touch up the ceiling paint in the kitchen, it won't kill me. 

Happy (early) Turkey Day!

Shane, Charlie, Sheldon and I are currently in the car barreling down the interstate towards Knoxville to spend Thanksgiving with our families! Don't worry, I'm not the one driving ;)

Anyways, I have a lot of things to be thankful for, and I wanted to share a few of them with you:

1. I am thankful we live closer to family now. We sure do miss Maryland and all our friends there, but it's sure a lot easier to drive three hours instead of ten to go home for the holidays.

2. I am thankful that Shane and I are making an effort to be healthier and are participating in the Hot to Trot 5k tomorrow at Turkey Creek. Hopefully we can preemptively burn off some calories. I do wish though that it wasn't so dang early, we have to be there at 6 am (5 am central!) for packet pick up.

3. I am thankful that I was able to buy a cooler on short notice tonight. I thought I was being smart by making all my pies early and then bringing them home, but didn't think of the logistics of them being in the car for several hours. But don't worry, I searched high and low and finally found a suitable model big enough to fit all six pies. Hope my family is ready for a slice of apple, pumpkin or chocolate cream pie!

4. I am thankful that we had no family scheduling conflicts this year. Usually it's difficult to coordinate holidays, but this year we're doing lunch with the Elliotts and dinner with the Horners.

5. I am thankful to not be working retail this year so I actually get to spend the holiday with family. I have done two holiday seasons of retail and that's two more than I would wish on anybody. When you aren't working long shifts and dealing with extremely difficult and ungrateful customers, you're at home, exhausted and hoping you gain your strength back before you have to go back in. Not at all fun.

6. I am thankful that today was my last day at my temp job. It may sound strange to think that someone would be glad to be unemployed, but if you'd seem me working at this job, you'd understand. The whole job was staring at a computer for eight hours a day, clicking back and forth between a zillion different screens and making sure databases matched. And most days, I didn't have very many projects assigned to me, so I would only have  around 1 or 2 hours of work a day. Oh, and we weren't allowed to be on the internet or our phones during downtime, because that was unprofessional. Sitting around getting paid to do basically nothing might sound like a perfect job to some people, but it just  wasn't for me. That's where Mr. Gobbles came from! He was my distraction all day on Tuesday.  

7. Last but not least, I am so thankful that Shane and I already have most of our Christmas shopping done and aren't going out on Black Friday! We somehow managed to knock out most of our list last Saturday, and I must say that I am so relieved. I hate working holiday shopping season, and I hate shopping in it too. Just the trip to Walmart for the cooler almost triggered a nervous breakdown!

Now that you've seen my list...what are you thankful for this Thanksgiving! Feel free to leave a list of your own down in the comments :)

Artscape: A Blast Since 1982

Last weekend, Shane and I went to the 30th annual celebration of Artscape, the largest free arts festival in the United States. We weren't sure what we would find there, and we weren't disappointed!

The weekend was all about the year 1982 (the very first Artscape), so of course they had tons of 80s  pop culture references, karaoke, and even a fashion show.

And yes, it's hard to see, but the guy had on black lipstick. He had some sort of goth grunge outfit before that one, and apparently just liked the lipstick, I don't know.

This looks so stereotypically 80s...a mobile dance party. 

Now let's not forget about the art! It wasn't exactly paintings and photographs, although they did have plenty of that stuff at the vendor booths. This was more interactive, physical, installation sort of work.  There was rock opera, courtesy of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society:

Decorated cars, like the cartoon car, which holds the world record for most hours of airbrush paint time:

Hey look! I found Waldo!

The Heaven and Hell car, which was pretty cool: 

In case you couldn't tell, the left photo is Heaven, the right photo is Hell. 

And lots and lots of sculptures!

Mustache rides, anyone?

My favorite picture from the day, I caught this little girl pondering this sculpture. So cute!

This was a really cool installation piece. Each wooden box held a solar powered speaker, which made music in the sunlight.

Yum, nothing hits the spot quite like a strawberry banana smoothie with sunglasses :) Much needed after being in the sun all afternoon.

If you want to see any more  pictures from the day, you can find them in my Picasa album. Hopefully you are inspired to go and make some art of your own!

The day I tried digital illustration

I got bored today and decided to pull out my Wacom tablet and draw some stuff. Turns out it is really hard, and I kind of only know how to draw two things...

Shane

and Charlie

I actually spent a while on Charlie, trying to get him to look semi-decent. It is way harder than you would think to draw a white fuzzy dog! 

I need to work on my skills and then maybe I there will be more cute drawings in the future.