Project Doodle (Day16-21)

I wish I had more time to post in here, but sadly this school semester has ruled over my life like no other... I fully regret not taking that Racquetball course.  Subsequently, my Project Doodle has fallen very behind (total of nine doodles I need to do as of today).  I never thought drawing a 2"x2" doodle every day would be so challenging.  Anyway, I finally finished my six animal drawings with French translations! 

Day16-21 - "Animaux"

Day16-17
chien (dog) and poisson (fish)

Dog look familiar??

Day18-19
calamar (squid) and fourmi (ant)

Day20-21
hibou (owl) and requin (shark)

Since my head has been swimming in physics, physiology and the Nabis period, I unfortunately haven't been able to make a thoughtful post about miscellaneous art/science I've come across lately.  But I have a bunch of inspiring stuff lined up and waiting to be posted, so it will happen eventually.  And hopefully I'll be posting an update on my Figure Drawing II class soon!  For now, I give you this sneak peak:

40min torso study - white charcoal on black paper

Project Doodle (Day10-15)

This past week was crazy busy and stressful, so naturally the first thing to fall by the wayside was this personal project.  I didn't draw anything from January 10-15th (and I was already two doodles behind), bringing me to a grand total of nine doodles I needed to do.  My first idea was to throw my sketchbook and pencil into the air and run away.  Then I calmed down and realized a better/easy way to tackle this problem AND another problem I'm working on - learning French.  I picked a category of words, chose six words to translate to French, and drew a little doodle for each of them.  It only took about an hour, and I killed two birds with one stone - BOOM.  I think I might keep this up in the future.  It's a fast way to make a bunch of doodles and practice French when I don't have time to do either, so win-win.  My next category is animals, although I should probably start working on my verbs and tenses soon..

Day10-15 - "Fruits"

Day10-11
fraise (strawberry) and pêche (peach)

Day12-13
myrtilles (blueberries) and carambole (star-fruit)

Day14-15
pomme (apple) and framboise (raspberry) "Je suis rouge"

Project Doodle (Day7-9)

This week for Project Doodle I went a slightly different direction.  First, I completely nixed the random word generator.  I tried out different generators, and I don't know if it was due to my impatience, but each word was more horrible than the last, so I decided to just let the words come to me.  One of my inspirations this week came from the book The Road, which I finally started reading.  (Warning: If you haven't read it - I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who hasn't - there's about to be a slight spoiler alert)  One day while I was waiting outside my Physics class I read this:

"He was as burnt-looking as the country, his clothing scorched and black.  One of his eyes was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull.  As they passed he looked down.  As if he'd done something wrong.  His shoes were bound up with wire and coated with road tar and he sat there in silence, bent over in his rags.  The boy kept looking back.  'Papa?' he whispered, 'What is wrong with the man?' 'He's been struck by lightning.' 'Can we help him? Papa?' 'No. We can't help him.'"

Even though the entire book up until now has been dark and depressing, that part really disturbed me and I just wanted to forget about it.  Then about ten minutes later in Physics we literally learned everything about lightning, so I gave in and made lightning the word of the day.

Other than changing my source for words, I also got back into the game Katamari Forever. If you haven't played it, the goal is to roll up all the junk/every-day objects in the world into balls and turn them into stars.  No, I'm not ashamed that I enjoy games a five-year-old is capable of playing.  Along the way you can roll up these characters called "Cousins" which you can later choose to be in the game.  Each cousin has it's own theme/unique quality, like this one:

Miso - via Katamari Cousins

It kind of re-inspired the cartoonist in me, so this week I tried to make a character based on each word.  I also changed my media from color pencils to India ink pens.  Anyway, I've talked way too much, here are this week's doodles:

Day7 - Scream

Day8 - Headache
"HI HOW ARE YOU I HAVE A HEADACHE WON'T YOU EXCUSE ME"

Day9 - Lightning
"It's not always great being positive all the time."

As of today, I am two doodles behind schedule, and I don't see myself having time to do this over the weekend.. Looks like I have a lot of cramming to do in the future.

Project Doodle (Day1-6)

As I said, one of my resolutions was to draw something every day using this Random Word Generator, so here is what I've accomplished in the first six days.  I kind of lost momentum around day three (good start), but I made up for it later.  I realized that it's not very likely that I'm going to be able to do this project every day, so I re-adjusted my guidelines a little bit:

Project Doodle:

• Draw 365 doodles throughout 2013 (doesn't have to be one a day)
• Doodles in class may count
• Only count doodles with a one-word-theme

This way, I can make a bunch of doodles in one day if I know I'm going to be busy in the future.  I actually got this idea from this tumblr entry by Trevor Van As.  He does something exactly like this called "Project Daily" (I couldn't think of a less similar name for mine..) where he makes a character in Illustrator every day and posts it by a certain time on his blog.  He has continued to run this project for over 600 days, which sounds insane, but maybe I will grow to love this project that much as well.  We'll see.

Day1 - Muck
"A Schmuck Covered in Muck."

Day2 - Imagination
"Bonjour. Je m'appelle Kangaroo. Parlez plus lentement, s'il vous plait."

Day3 - Compulsive
"I wore my argyle pants today. Things are gonna get wild."

Day4 - Glad

Day5 - Fiver
"Hey, Hey There! Gimmie a Fiver!"

Day6 - Volume

I'm thinking about finding a new random word generator, because this one is boring and sucks.  Fiver.  Really?

One Year of Art (2012)

I've never been very conscious about recording my art in photos (or any part of my life, really), so since I got a new pretty camera last Christmas, I overcompensated a bit and took way too many pictures.  Now that it's the new year (WHAT), I think it's finally appropriate to look back at these folders full of photos on my computer and recap the art I made/encountered throughout 2012.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July (not me)

July (me)

August

September

October

November

December

This year was pretty eventful art-wise.  I took four studio art and two art history classes (Drawing II, Painting I, Figure Drawing I, Color Theory Foundations, Art History Survey II, and early Spanish Colonial Art History).  I visited some museums (Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersberg, FL, Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL, and the San Luis Mission in Tallahassee, FL).  I made my first official scientific animation (which I'm still working on...).  I discovered a plethora of graffiti across the streets o' Tallahassee.  And of course, the event that started this whole blog: I was bitten by a baby copperhead in April.  It may not seem art-related, but being confined to my house for two weeks (plus two more weeks of feeble hobbling) forced me to stop doing things I had to do and gave me time to finally just sit and think again.  I was so caught up in school and work and "real life" problems that I couldn't remember the last time I picked up a sketchbook, and drawing for fun had turned into a waste of time in my mind.  But during my isolation I made the novel realization that drawing is a big part of being a scientific illustrator, and that I should make it an important part of my life again.  Plus I love doing it.  That quality should always give something top priority.

I hope 2013 brings more inspiration and opportunities, for me and for everyone who follows or stumbles upon this here blog.  I can't begin to explain how much I appreciate all the support I've gotten this year.  You guys really help me work hard and push myself, especially when I don't want to.  So thank you :)  And in the spirit of the new year, I made some artistic new year resolutions:

2013 Resolutions
- Paint ten paintings
- Go to more museums
- Sell some things on Etsy
- Learn French... I will explain this later...
- Keep taking pictures
- Make one drawing everyday using this Random Word Generator