Monday, May 16, 2011

doodle explosion



I've been doodling a lot lately.  I'm in this Norman Rockwell tribute show in July, and I'm doing a couple paintings for it.  I'm using one of my favorite (and one of Rockwell's, too) subject matters:  teenagers.  They are pretty wonderful.  This is my very sloppy color sketch for one of said paintings.  

Here are some sketches that I coughed up in preparation for this piece.  I decided not to edit them or make them pretty, so, what you see is how they were drawn on the page. 

Doodles!


Some of these were done from photos.  It is hard to find good photos of teenagers.  The best way to observe them is in their natural habitat: walking home from school.  In photos they either look like children dressed as adults or they are trying very hard to appear attractive.  In person they can't hide all their appealing imperfections though.  


Most of these are not even whole ideas.  I just needed to warm up.  I tend to give up on a drawing half way through if I think it's not going where I want it to.  That's probably not a good habit.  But I keep doing it anyway.  


Even though this was drawn on a huge slice of 16 field animation paper, somehow my favorite drawings are squashed up against, and cut off by, the bottom of the page.  Mer.


This girl is a prototype of the one from the color sketch.  I think I  did a bazillion drawings of her before I found one that I really liked.  My thought process was something like "This girl will have cute short hair.  What kind of shirt would a short-haired girl wear?  She will wear a skirt because she's afraid people might think she's a boy if she doesn't, because she doesn't know how cute and girly she is.  She wears a lot of necklaces for the same reason..." etc. etc.  Yes it's fun to invent people.  


That head right in the the middle is my favorite thing that I've drawn in a long time.  I like that shoe too.  I considered giving her motorcycle boots, but I like cowboy boots better.  Plus it fits the 'Americana' theme of the show.  


I like that girl on the left a lot.  I wish I hadn't drawn that creepy man head so close to her.  It looks like he's trying to smell her hair or something.  Gross!

I hope you still like me now that you know I do lots of ugly and awkward drawings before I get to a good one.  

(Whoooooaaa blogger is all different now!  I like it.) 



Till next time, when I will have a lovely finished painting to show off!

9 comments:

Food and Drugs said...

Nice characters, as well as your comments on the way they were brought into life.
:-)

Daron Leah Nefcy said...

love the doodles!

Edward Juan said...

more drawing gette! they are good.

kathryn durst said...

charming drawings! :)

Faff said...

Great set of doodles and sketches. Love the way that colour has given so much solidity to the first sketch. You can see how sketchy the line work is yet it looks like a very solid piece of work.

Madeline said...

I've had a rather shitty afternoon and reading this blog post made me feel better. Especially the last bit about the girl head and the creepy man head smelling her hair. It made me laugh.

Gabby Zapata said...

This post made me feel better. I have to doodle around a lot before I get to a good one. Thank you for posting raw work :)

Xavier Yabut said...

Neat sketches!

mlw said...

very talented!