May inspiration always light upon you.
This blog will post doodles, random inspirations, observations and serendipity. Doodles are a favorite, because they’re the seeds for future ideas. Posts are in reverse chronological order. (To find a specific blog: scroll down and click it–to return to a scrolling mode, you’ll need to return to Home Page and click Blog again.)
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43. “Gear Cowboy” was a delightful pop-out for my doodle collection
Slowly I meandered across the screen surface with my Apple pencil and the horse rolled into sight. In the back of my mind I wanted to weave in gears in…
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42. The Gardner: a clean-up in process
When I doodle, many don’t make the cut, but every so often one will stand out. “The Gardner” grabbed my attention. I liked the purposeful pose and the whimsy of…
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41. An Average Day at the Office
So I was doodling, practicing some perspective and this scene decided to show up. It came after I looked at the finished doodle, below, and decided it needed something. I…
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40. Sometimes it’s a lazy morning
I like morning paintings. This is a doodle of the morning, done at night. I just wanted to practice people, no other reason. Been doing animals for a while, but…
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39. Of Mice & Mice
I like the soft smoothness that can be brought to geometric shapes. I accomplished that (above) by rubbing out sharpness with a soft digital tool. Here are two mice to…
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38. Taming scribble
I started out, using my iPad and Apple Pencil, and made a line. I moved all over the page with the same line rarely breaking it, but echoing it. Then…
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37. Fancy That!
Out came an armadillo! I am still amazed myself when I see how just a bunch of shapes or scribble can yield something so distinctive and colorful. Below is the…
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36. A Different Drummer
Back with another night’s doodle–this time, thinking of music and flow. All of the arts share in the basic elements of design, such as direction, position, movement, and so on.…
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35. Last night’s doodle
One thing that is all important in growing as an artist, just as in playing a musical instrument or anything you are trying to grow skills within–practice! I had a…
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34. To be structured or unstructured, that is the question
Usually I start out with a very unstructured approach to achieve a structured doodle. I do a “carving process,” after I have piled a lot of random shapes or outlines…
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33. A doodling experiment with AI used as a base
I found it to be not a lot different than normal doodling or painting on an existing photo. Where AI helped me was only at the start point. It enabled…
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32. Auld Lang Syne and The Burnley Ghost
A tribute to my three art “parents:” My birth into the arts began at The Burnley School of Professional Art—a three-year-private art school in an ancient stucco building. It was…
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31. You could roughly translate koselig (pronounced koosh-lee) as coziness
This iPad doodle looks like a fossil or something caught while ice-fishing. It definitely looks frozen. It makes me think of my American-Norwegian heritage, which prompted the title to this…
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30. Back to basics
When all else fails, return to basics! This drawing is pretty simple. But it’s also very complex. I was tired of my tightly aligned geometric doodles and needed a vacation.…
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29. Woman reaching into her purse
Native sculptors sometimes talk about “freeing the spirit that occupies a stone.” I suppose I think of my doodles that way. I look for what my random shapes and lines…
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28. I am tone
I am a magician, because I can create illusions. I can do that by varying my intensity (think pencil pressure and gradation). I can make depth happen in a photo…
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27. I am plane
I’m flat. I started as a mark or dot and expanded myself. I’m thought of as much wider than a line. My purpose is to cover area, I’m usually the…
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26. I am line
I started as a mark, a dot or a point, but I stretched myself in one direction and became a line (which is actually just a concept). I am threadlike,…
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25. Where do ideas come from?
So, we have just talked about ideas being infinite, but now you’ve got a blank page or screen in front of you and don’t feel the smallest inkling of an…
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24. There are no limits
Assume no restraints, no budget, or time limitations. Vow “I dare to be bad”–you have permission to make mistakes, lots of them. Oscar Wilde, a writer had this to say:…
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23. A look at four abstracts
Above is my cookie sheet after baking a couple of juicy pies. This would be referred to as found art. Next is a legitimate abstract created on iPad with Apple…
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22. When you ride a cat, you must tip your hat
This image is a not as precise as most of my geometric doodles look, but I really like how it came out. I experiment with an app called iColorama, which…
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21. Le Robot et L’Oiseau
I liked the French version of this doodle for a title. I was listening to an audio book about future happenings, while I doodled on my iPad. This robot showed…
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20. One of my favorites
This painting is from the archive of my traditional art. It is not digital, and did not come from a doodle. It is acrylic on Gesso, on illustration board–inspired by…
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19. Float your idea in a different medium for a fresh approach
Think of all the different traditional media that might be best for your idea. It will give it an entirely new slant, guaranteed! It could be a rubber stamp, a…
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18. Mr. Potato Head threw a party for his friends
And they brought more friends. They all enjoyed themselves very much, sipping tea and eating fresh baked scones with raspberry jam. As they caught up on their different stories, they…
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17. How to Tame an Alligator
This is a mini lesson on shape. Think of your subject as forced into a shape. A circle, triangle, and square are like the primary colors. It’s where you start.…
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16. Sometimes you just gotta do a chicken
On this one, my stylus and I were at a crossroads. The stylus wanted to do a duck standing in a pond, and I wanted to do a chicken. So…
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15. Skippy the Magnificent and the golden orb
There is a Sci-Fi fan in the house, so I have been exposed to a lot of Sci-fi characters. Skippy is from the Craig Alanson book series “Expeditionary Force”. According…
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14. How a cat arrived in Paris
I keep a digital sketchbook of abandoned doodles. One day, I was poking through its pages and ran across an image which at first, looked like an abstract mouse head.…
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13. Some specific insights
The last blog addressed general arts. This post is more specific to the visual arts. Recently, there was a news item about an astounding bid for a banana secured to…
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12. It’s different for everyone–so where to go from there?
Art is like soul. It is who you are. Your attitudes, likes and dislikes all come intoplay. You can find art in a good golf swing, or a beautiful math…
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11. Photo painting–a form of doodling
Every so often, I will relax and just paint on top of photos. It’s mindless. However, it can produce subtle and sometimes startling, results. I like the flatness it produces…
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10. Wiggly Man with Hat and Umbrella
First came Wiggly Man. Then he cleaned up his act and acquired a hat and umbrella.
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9. A Croak and a Roar
A croak and a roar popped out of my iPad last night. The croak came first, in the spirit of a rather complex, geometric-looking frog. The roar came second. I…
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8. You are your own AI
That thought occurred to me as I struggled with the incoming storm surge of yet another technical evolution. There are really no answers to all the questions. It will rain…
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7. Serendipity
One day there was not a thought in mind, but randomness. I looked at the mess confronting me and faces began to look out. The style called “Expressionism” floated through…
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6. Sweet Nature
I like to abstract and stylize, but I have to admit, it was very satisfying to doodle through this normal scene, as I played with Procreate brushes. It was done…
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5. A Gothic Parody
The doodle portrait below was the inspiration for “Wall Street Gothic”–a parody on Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” I tend to think of Illustrations as cleaned up doodles–they go through a…
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4. Tracing: how I use it occasionally
Yesterday, I ran across a photo of a woman whose head was tilted at an interesting angle. It gave her a sense of intrigue, and I traced her features to…
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3. I saw the bull immediately
I had finished developing some geometric shapes into a compact design and was in the midst of rotating my iPad, when I saw him. A bulbous, snorting nose. At first…
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2. Continuing with the tea theme
I try for different digital styles when I doodle. A designer might refer to that approach as “variations on a theme.” Personally, I think of it as visual adventure, since…
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1. It’s always teatime
Says the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. And the best thing to do with tea is to let it steep. It’s the same with a hot new…