I actually made myself late with this post, even though I have everything ready to go. I figured it would be nice to change up the header image for year 2, just to set things apart. Turns out that it takes a while to place every doodle I've posted so far onto a single canvas. The outcome's pretty cool though, even if I say so myself.
Sure it's at the top of the page, but if you're interested, the entire collage is posted just below. I didn't count all the images, but I imported all the previous doodles, applied a multiply blend, and placed them across the canvas. Obviously, the sheer amount of doodles sitting on top of each other makes it virtually impossible to identify individual shapes. However, I like the scribbly mess that's left, as I feel like it serves as a good header for each post.
The coolest thing I discovered during this process, was how pleased I am with a lot of my old doodles. Sure they're just doodles, but I rarely look back on things, so to see them all in sequence as I put them together was a nice reminder.
Turns out it's not so bad to have a look back sometimes and realise that your work isn't as bad as you remember. I could pick it apart and ruin my night, but at this moment in time I'll stick to feeling good about what's been accomplished so far.
I've always been a fan of looking at bodies of work instead of individual pieces, and collating all these doodles provided a gallery of sorts. Maybe I'll arrange them as a large piece someday that involved every doodles sitting next to each other instead of in a dirty pile. I think it might look quite nice if I did… hmmm… thinky face…
Anyway, this week was the first that I attempted to draw on multiple days instead of leaving it all to the last minute. I'm pleased to report that although I didn't draw on every day, I managed to squeeze out a doodle over four separate days. That's more than half the week, so I'm calling that a win.
MONDAY I tried to draw someone from a movie or show I was watching (as is often the case), but it didn't turn out like them at all. I forget who it was supposed to be, but I prefer to dig on the thick-border style. I've seen it done many times before and I've always liked it - maybe if I ever drew a cartoon or something, I'd go for a thick border.
WEDNESDAY there wasn't a lot on my desk as I'd cleaned up that night. Thankfully though I was tucking into some seaweed crackers and cream cheese. You know those little cream cheese triangles you get from the supermarket called "Laughing Cow"? Well I had a crack at doodling their logo/mascot. It came out a bit wonky, but ultimately I think you can tell what it's supposed to be. Ultimately though, I enjoyed playing with different shading, like the straight lines that pass through the entire image. I'll do more of that later in the week.
THURSDAY was a movie called Elysium where some dude gets a mech suit screwed into his body. It actually reminded me more of playing The Surge, which also features a mech suit being fixed to a dude's body in a rough and painful way. I wasn't trying to replicate anything in particular with this simple little doodle, just playing around with where the bits might go.
SATURDAY featured a western that inspired some dirty cigar smoking, and a bit of a 19th century woman. The crossed lines on the dress are another example of that consistent shading that might appear to be on another layer as it's so uniform with itself. I also tried drawing one of a character's head, but it didn't come out looking anything like them. Not to worry though, as I realised that I really like drawing heads and playing with all the elements that change the personality and visage of a face. It's amazing how subtle you can be to evoke a striking change in demeanour.
This first week was a bit of an awkward start, as I'm focusing more on getting into the swing of things than actually creating anything worthwhile. Of course, every mark on the page is worthwhile, but I'd like to start driving these doodles in a more meaningful direction. We had a year of messing about aimlessly, so perhaps it's time to at least aim for improving consistency or quality.
Going over the past year of doodles has given me a little boost to the purpose of the exercise, which is probably a good thing to have every now and then. For better or worse, I feel like having a consistent record of ideas and marks, has actually helped me improve a little. Although, I'm not claiming that the doodles will be any better, just that the process is a little easier than when I started.
If nothing else, that's really the value in all of this: refining and developing the process, so it can get out of the way and open up to more creativity. It only makes sense to me that the more natural it becomes to transfer a thought onto the page, the more complex and detailed those thoughts can be.