Maps in Tritones

Yes, I still doodle. I just don't post it often.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is map. A good one for the last week of the year, actually. Where have you been, where are you headed... a person could get really philosophical.

I literally just doodled.

Sometimes my brain just likes to make curved lines. Call it a mind map in a way, although it's not usually what's meant by the term. Curved, branching lines have made my brain happy for a long time. These ones were done on plain old manila with Tritone pencils (2 per page), which is why there are colour variations. They were also done in a darkened room while half-watching television, so the only really conscious thing about them was to try to fill the white (well, yellow) space.

Sorry for the dodgy scans, but the paper was just a little too big for the scanner bed, and cropping would have just cut things off even more. Ah well, call it one last bit of "excuse my mess" for the last day of the year.

Flame in pen & ink, metallic pencil, watercolour pencil, and tritone

Hard to believe that such a simple doodle took that many media... and after all of that the scanner played its usual games with the colours anyway. Ah well.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is hot, which somehow prompted both a drawing AND my first poem in ages, such as it is.

Hey, I'm rusty. What can I say?

A bad morning for Bud the Bug

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is stomp.

I'm, um, sure that Bud will be ok.





Really.

Shell in pen & ink

I've already submitted once for Illustration Friday's word swirl this week, but since I had time this morning I thought I'd add a quick shell doodle. I have a feeling that I'll be getting out my model shells tonight (yes, I have shells that do modelling) and doodle a few more, because shells are fun.

This one was mostly imaginary, as anyone who knows their gastropods (which, actually, I don't. I'm a mammalogist) probably knew immediately. The pens are Stabilo's Point 88, which I picked up at Christmas to force myself to stop thinking only in black monochrome when I'm playing with pens. And why exactly these colours? Well, if you figure that one out, let me know. I'm curious too.

The wrist is still not as stable as I'd like it to be, but I miss pen work so I'm going to get back to it anyway. If it's shaky and people consider that a stylistic choice, I'm fine with it.

Or at least I'll keep telling myself that.

Digital spiral

I know that this is a repeat pic from a post below, but it was too appropriate to not use for Illustration Friday's prompt of swirl.

I'll try to do something new later in the week. Given my recent track record, it may or may not be posted.

We'll see.

Trapped in pen & ink and watercolour crayon

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is trapped.

A warning for all of my stick-figure friends: if you go for a walk on a Moebius strip, it will NEVER END...






And yeah, as usual the scanner did away with the wash, for the most part. I'm used to it.

Radio in watercolour crayons and pen & ink

I get tired of my cheap scanner ignoring watercolours, so I did a phone scan for this one instead. Sorry about my shadow.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is vintage.

This doodle is based on an actual radio that I own. It's up in my old bedroom right now, in fact. It used to belong to my grandmother, who gave it to me when I was a young woman developing an interest in antiques.

This thing is the real deal, folks. Bakelite, art deco styling, vacuum tubes... and it still works, even. It was bought, apparently, specifically to listen to a boxing match. It still blows me away that people would gather to listen to boxing on the radio. Heck, I have enough trouble listening to hockey on the radio, and that at least has more to it than two people hitting each other.

Erm... not a fan of boxing, if you couldn't tell.

I know that if I ever wanted to sell grandma's radio it wouldn't be difficult. There's a pretty big market for vacuum tubes and things like that in the custom amp builders area. It would break my heart to see a pristine survivor like this in scattered parts, though, so if I ever do decide to get rid of it I'm hoping that there's a radio enthusiast or museum out there that might find it as cool as I do.



Just as an aside, I honestly don't know what possessed me to go pen & ink on a shaky wrist day. Just think of the squiggles as artistic license, if you like. They weren't, but whatever works for you.

Poppy in watercolour crayon and pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is nostalgia. This is a very quick and not entirely accurate sketch of an Iceland (or Icelandic, as I grew up with) Poppy (Papaver nudicale).

My cheap scanner has, as usual, decided to make up its own mind about the colours, so just imagine that the background is blue and the leaves and stem are green rather than vaguely yellow.

Anyway.

Iceland poppies make me pretty nostalgic because they're one of the first things that I can remember planting with my mother. They generally become self-seeding and almost weedy around the yard, but they're so cheerful in early spring that I can't help but just let them be. Dad's yard needs a bit of a seed boost at the moment, I think, because after all these years from the initial planting there's only a few plants here and there that are still seeding themselves.

I wrote a poem about them a long time ago, which you can read here if you're into that sort of thing. I'm definitely ok with it if you're not into flower poems, though...

Smoke in watercolour

This is old, which I don't usually do, but I like it. That's unusual, since I'm not much of a painter.

Leafy in various watercolour pencils and pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is wood.



I don't really know what this is meant to be, to be honest. I was just doodling on paper that was completely inappropriate for watercolour, as you can see from the crinkles.

That's ok with me, since I don't know what it is anyway... did I mention that?

Lack of wisdom in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is wisdom, and this is a quick soft-pencil sketch of my wisdom teeth. They were coming in at such a bad angle that they were removed before they even erupted (sounds like the mouth is a volcano when you put it that way. Thanks, dentists), including the one that they had to chisel in two because it was stubborn.

And why am I drawing my teeth?

Well, because I didn't want to go all abstract thought today. Plus, they were there.

I'm not kidding. I'm visiting my Dad, and all my old teeth (and my brother's as well) are here. My mother kept them all. Why?

Damned if I know. Seems kind of weird to me, but then I've never been a mother.

I have left out one thing on the teeth, if anyone's interested. All four of my wisdom teeth have a distinct greenish brown band around the roots. That comes from teenage use of tetracycline for acne, which I don't think they do much of now because (oddly enough) it discolours growing teeth. If anyone out there is actually curious (and if so, why?), I could post a photograph. I won't do that unless you ask, though.



You're welcome.

Dragon in conte crayons

This week's Illustration Friday was dragon. This was from a number of years ago when we had an explosion of meadow hawks. They don't care where they sit when they're posturing. There you go. My hand dragon.

Village Tree in watercolour crayon

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is village.

A tree can be a village of sorts, can't it?



As usual with watercolour and my cheap scanner, I've had to fudge this a bit to get most of it to come through. Also as usual, sometimes I play with silly filters afterwards just for fun. Below, behold this doodle in...

Neon!

Actually, I kind of like it. Maybe I should "draw" in neon more often.

On the Half-skull in "Magic" pencil

This week's Illustration Friday  prompt is orbit. My take is orbit as in eye socket, obviously.

The skull is very loosely based on an ancient Roman skull excavated in London. There's a story about it an other artifacts here, and it's worth a read.

Spin in... pixels, I guess.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is spin. This? Well, to be honest it's from a drawing app that's supposed to be for kids but is endlessly entertaining for my personal inner five-year-old. We all need a little doodle time, I figure.

I'll throw in a couple of bonus spins below; believe me, there were plenty more from that particular session. I just didn't want to overdo it.

Island in Koh-I-Noor "Magic" pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is tropical.

The scanner didn't like this one at all and I had to do a lot of playing to get the colour to show, so sorry if it looks completely digital now. It's not. It's a Koh-I-Noor Magic pencil. Here's the link.

Yes, I got some Magic pencils because at heart I'm still a five-year-old who gets a bit of a thrill at the random colour mix you get from drawing with a multicolour leaded pencil. The Original pencil, for example, is red, blue, and yellow, so you get... almost anything,really. This particular pencil is the one that they call Tropical.

I thought it was appropriate.

It's not just a scribble

Last week's Illustration Friday prompt was soar, and since they haven't gotten around to putting up a new one yet I suppose I'll go over there and post my version after all.

There's a reason behind this.

There's a reason why it's uneven. There's a reason why there are blank patches.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm going to let you make up your own mind.

I realise that my current abstract-ness isn't to the taste of a lot of you, but it's doing something for me and that's pretty important in the end. Realism will come back. Eventually. It always does. In the meantime, just enjoy the colours if that's all you're seeing, because that's all right too.

Punch in Art Stix

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is punch, and this... is scribbly. Scribbly kind of day, really. And Art Stix are pretty good for that kind of mood.

I'll be honest; I've never seen a Punch and Judy show except for little snippets on television. I have a feeling that I wouldn't have liked them as a child. I was too neurotic to cheer on the random "killing" of hand puppets, I'm afraid. Maybe you have to be there in the moment? Ah well, at least this idea prevented me from scribbling a bowl instead.

City in watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is city, and I'll likely edit this post before I put it there because it's a pain posting from the phone with a quick phone scan. Edit: decided not to edit.

Anyway, this is pretty much what the city felt like to me when I first moved to one from a small town. My neighbourhood was ok, but downtown was completely overwhelming and didn't feel like it was made to human scale. And if you could find a sliver of blue sky and sunlight, well, that pretty much made your day.

I'd intended this to be the first layer of something more elaborate, but as I was waiting for it to dry I realised that it already said city to me. All I did in the end was to add a black dot.

That's me, of course.

Just for interest's sake, below you'll find the doodle I did when I was deciding how to approach the prompt. Guess I was having a vague shape day in general.

Branches with chickadee

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is animal. And this is another week of me making myself slightly uncomfortable.

I just don't know where manipulated photos fit in my personal art, you see. I've no doubt that there's art to it, just as I've no doubt that I've put some work into this and made some choices. I almost want to show you the original so that you can see the differences, but in a way that bothers me even more. You know, like I'm a five-year-old trying to prove that colouring outside the lines makes it my picture now.

Ah well. That's as may be. And if I get time later today maybe I'll do something that involves actual paper and I'll feel happier about the whole thing.

A bit of discomfort isn't a bad thing anyway, I figure.